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U.S. Oil Stockpiles Fall To Critically Low Levels As Iran Continues To Mess With The Strait Of Hormuz

June 17, 2026 by Michael

Those that believe that the global energy crisis is going to be magically solved by a “memorandum of understanding” that is already being violated by both sides are going to be in for a very rude awakening. As you will see below, the Iranians have continued to launch drones at commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. How are shipowners and insurance companies supposed to feel comfortable while this is going on? In the “memorandum of understanding”, Iran agreed to allow commercial vessels to travel through the Strait at no charge for a period of 60 days. Hopefully that will actually happen. After the 60 day period is done, the Iranians have already announced that they are going to go back to charging ships to pass. Any ships that do not pay up will be subject to attack. Meanwhile, global oil supplies will just continue to get tighter and tighter.

Over the past couple of months, the U.S. has been the supplier of last resort for the entire world.

This has kept oil prices at reasonable levels.

But once our stockpiles are gone, we won’t be able to do that any longer.

Unfortunately, our stockpiles are rapidly disappearing. It is being reported that total U.S. oil inventories have now fallen for 10 weeks in a row…

U.S. crude oil inventories fell for a 10th straight week last week as demand surged, pushing total stockpiles to their lowest level in over 40 years as the Iran war continues to upend global energy markets, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday.

Total crude inventories, including ‌commercial stocks and those in the Strategic Petroleum, plunged by 17.2 million to 758.5 million barrels last week, its lowest since March 1985, the EIA said.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is in better shape than commercial oil inventories, but even it has fallen to the lowest level since 1983…

The U.S. supply of emergency oil has hit its lowest level since 1983, according to newly released federal data.

The U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) is down to 340.3 million barrels, according to the data released on Monday.

The last time that levels were this low was 1983, when the Reagan administration was filling up the reserve for the first time. The U.S. established the emergency oil reserve in 1975 after an oil producer embargo against the country triggered an energy crisis.

We should have never allowed ourselves to reach such a dangerously low level.

But I am far more concerned about what is happening to our commercial oil inventories.

The tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma are about to hit critical operating levels, and even CNN is writing about this…

Today, neighboring Cushing is the hub of America’s energy market. It literally provides the oil plumbing for the United States. It’s where America’s benchmark West Texas Intermediate oil is priced and warehoused. From there, it’s piped to refineries around the country.

In normal times, Cushing stores around 40 million barrels of oil with capacity of up to 75 million.

These are not normal times.

Right now, there are approximately 21.6 million barrels of oil at Cushing.

That sounds like a lot.

But as CNN has correctly noted, once the tanks at Cushing drop below 20 million barrels of oil “they effectively hit empty”…

Cushing’s current inventory is 21.6 million barrels, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

That’s dangerously close to operational stress levels, the tipping point at which Cushing struggles to supply all of its customers with the oil they demand.

When Cushing’s reserves get below 20 million, they effectively hit empty, scraping the bottom of the barrel of what is largely unusable sludge.

And when Cushing runs empty, strange things happen to the oil market.

To say that “strange things” will occur is a major understatement.

Once we hit the 20 million barrel mark at Cushing, there will be widespread panic.

We cannot drop below that level, because the storage tanks need a certain amount in them in order to be able to keep operating…

In oil storage tanks, “tank bottoms” refer to the unusable layer of sludge, sediment, water, paraffin, and other residues that settle at the base. These cannot be easily pumped or processed without operational issues.

At the Cushing hub level, the operational stress threshold is around 20 million barrels. Below this, pipelines lose pressure, blending and transfers between tanks become difficult or impossible, and outbound flows to refineries or export terminals can be curtailed or delayed.

Experts note that much of the remaining volume at current levels (potentially only 1–1.6 million barrels truly usable) consists of this sludgy material.

There is no way that we can keep supplying the rest of the world.

In fact, in very short order we won’t have enough oil to supply everyone in this country.

On Wednesday, President Trump openly told the press that the U.S. is on pace to “run out of reserves in about four weeks”…

President Trump’s comment at the tail end of the G7 press conference about rapidly depleting crude reserves may have been the clearest admission yet of what is really driving the urgent push for an MoU with Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

“We run out of reserves in about four weeks,” Trump told reporters.

This is one of the reasons why Trump was so desperate to make a deal with Iran.

But the deal is already failing.

According to NBC News, the Iranians “launched multiple drones toward commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz” after the memorandum of understanding was signed…

Iran has launched multiple drones toward commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz since the United States and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding on Sunday, according to a US official, NBC News reported on Tuesday.

The official said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has been carrying out repeated drone launches targeting shipping lanes in the strategic waterway. US forces have intercepted the drones before they could threaten commercial or military vessels, the report said.

According to NBC News, the official added that the IRGC has launched multiple drones each night since the agreement was signed, and that the US military continues to coordinate with commercial shipping operators to support safe transit through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranians were supposed to open the Strait of Hormuz.

Of course we were told the exact same thing when the first ceasefire agreement was signed, and that never materialized either.

But let’s assume that the Iranians stop attacking vessels in the Strait and decide to keep their word.

According to the text of the memorandum of understanding, the Iranians will have the right to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz once a 60 day period of free passage is over…

Upon the signing of this MOU, Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements using its best efforts for the safe passage of commercial vessels with no charge for 60 days only from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman, and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the need for removing the technical and military obstacles and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialog with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf or littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

As I have discussed previously, the Iranians have repeatedly stated that they intend to charge ships to pass through the Strait once the 60 day period has been completed.

And even if everything goes perfectly, it would still take many months for traffic through the Strait to return to close to pre-war levels.

Meanwhile, the world will continue to run an oil deficit.

Stockpiles will continue to be depleted, and there will be shortages.

Hopefully the shortages will be isolated.

But I wouldn’t count on that, because I am convinced that the war in the Middle East is far from over.

If all-out war erupts again, that will make the crisis that we are facing so much worse.

So let us hope for the best, but let us also get prepared for the worst.

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.

Giving Iran Permanent Control Of The Strait Of Hormuz Will Be A Disaster For The Global Economy

June 15, 2026June 15, 2026 by Michael

When we were told that the ceasefire extension with Iran would include “the toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz”, I didn’t realize that this was only for a period of 60 days. As you will see below, once the 60 days are over the Iranians will be allowed to charge vessels for passing through the Strait of Hormuz on a permanent basis. Any vessels that attempt to pass through the Strait without permission will be subject to attack by the Iranian military. In other words, the nightmare scenario that we have been enduring for the past several months will be institutionalized. I am shocked that U.S. negotiators would actually agree to this. With the Iranians in control, I seriously doubt that the flow of oil and natural gas out of the region will return to pre-war levels any time soon, and any oil and natural gas that does get exported will cost quite a bit more thanks to the protection racket that the Iranians will be running.

This is so humiliating.

The one thing that U.S. negotiators were supposed to get from this first stage of negotiations was the permanent toll-free opening of the Strait of Hormuz.

But instead, they handed sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz to Iran…

Iran’s state-run Fars News Agency on Monday cited a “knowledgeable source” who said the U.S.-Iran peace deal “includes U.S. acceptance, for the first time, of Iran’s right to collect fees for maritime services” in the Strait of Hormuz.

According to the source, “explicit emphasis on Iranian-Omani sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz” was added to the deal during “the final moments of the negotiations.”

These final revisions to the deal supposedly stated that “future administration of maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz” will be “determined” by Iran and Oman, which lies on the opposite side of the strait.

Iranian negotiators wiped the floor with U.S. negotiators at the negotiating table.

I could think of other less polite ways of saying that, but I think that I shall refrain from doing so.

The only good news is that there will be a 60 day period for vessels that are currently trapped in the Persian Gulf to pass through the Strait of Hormuz without being charged…

The source told Fars that these revisions to the deal mean “the United States has effective accepted Iran’s right to collect related service fees,” after a 60-period of toll-free travel through the strait has elapsed.

“This principle is repeated elsewhere in the text. Iran will accept the passage of ships without charge only for 60 days. This means the United States has accepted the principle of collecting fees, while securing only a 60-day exemption from Iran,” the source said.

Now that this precedent has been set, how long will it be before we see other nations start to monetize key chokepoints around the globe?

This is a red line that should have never, ever been crossed.

Iran’s foreign ministry has confirmed that once the 60 day period has concluded, a “maritime service fee” will be imposed upon all vessels that wish to travel through the Strait of Hormuz…

Iran will charge a “maritime service fee” in the Strait of Hormuz, its foreign ministry spokesperson said on Monday, as Tehran expressed “deep mistrust” in the US despite signing a memorandum of understanding with Washington to stop the war.

Talking to reporters, Iran foreign ministry spokesperson Esmail Baghaei said Iran would not charge a toll for ships crossing the key strait under a new framework deal with the US.

“We have always maintained that we do not seek to collect transit tolls, but fees for navigation services, environmental protection, ship insurance and other necessary services will be charged,” he said during a press briefing.

So how much will “navigation services, environmental protection, ship insurance and other necessary services” cost for each ship?

A million dollars?

Two million dollars?

The regime in Tehran could soon be absolutely swimming in cash.

And as they have shown in the past, they like to use their money to export their “revolution” to other countries.

If you feel sick after reading that, it is certainly an understandable reaction.

But for a moment, let’s imagine a wildly optimistic scenario in which Iran allows all vessels to travel through the Strait of Hormuz and only charges a “reasonable” protection fee.

Even in such a scenario, it would take an extended period of time to remove all of the mines that the Iranians have laid.

Some say that could take weeks, while others insist that it could take months.

In addition, shipowners and insurance companies will need time before they are convinced that it is safe to travel through the Strait of Hormuz once again…

Meanwhile, shipowners, insurers and vessel crews will need to be convinced that it is safe to pass through the Strait of Hormuz before full-scale maritime transit could resume.

“Even if the Strait is considered reopened, this does not automatically mean traffic will normalize immediately,” Dimitris Ampatzidis, Maritime Risk & Compliance Manager at Kpler, told NBC News.

“Vessels that have been delayed or held back would need time to exit, complete voyages, and potentially return for new loadings,” he said. “That process could take roughly 2–3 months.”

I very much agree with that assessment.

On top of everything else, it could take months for oil and natural gas production in the region to fully ramp up…

Middle Eastern producers have been forced to shut in more than 10 million barrels per day of oil production since the Strait of Hormuz was closed three and a half months ago. Producers will need months to fully ramp up wells to previous output levels, while the status of the Strait of Hormuz – even if it re-opens on Friday as expected – is still unclear.

This is a very important factor that is not getting nearly enough attention from the mainstream media.

One industry expert has warned that it would take Iraq “about a year” to get production back to previous levels…

“Places like Iraq could be much more challenged because they’ve had a much bigger shut-in, their fields are more difficult,” Alan Gelder, senior vice president of refining, chemicals, and oil markets at Wood Mackenzie, said.

“It may well take about a year before they get back,” the expert told AP.

Of course there are also oil and natural gas facilities all over the Persian Gulf region that have either been seriously damaged or destroyed.

Fully repairing and rebuilding all of that infrastructure could take years.

Meanwhile, global energy inventories will continue to get tighter and tighter.

What I have just described is the absolute best cast scenario.

So what would happen if the ceasefire breaks down and more war erupts?

Personally, I believe that is a far more likely scenario.

It has been said that the original ceasefire with Iran was the most violated ceasefire in history, and those that are convinced that a 60 day extension of that ceasefire will magically make everything better are not being rational.

The “Godzilla El Niño” That Has Now Begun Could Do Trillions Of Dollars Of Damage To The Global Economy

June 14, 2026June 14, 2026 by Michael

A very intense El Niño has formed in the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean much earlier than originally anticipated, and we are being warned that it could cause trillions of dollars of damage to the global economy. Considering everything else that is going on in our world right now, that is really bad news. It is being projected that the El Niño that has developed in the southern Pacific is likely to rapidly transform into a “Super El Niño” of frightening strength. At the same time, a “9,000-mile marine heatwave” has developed in the northern Pacific. Many believe that these two marine heatwaves will combine to form a “Godzilla El Niño” which will be unlike anything we have ever experienced before.

Last week, we received official confirmation that an El Niño “has officially formed in the Pacific Ocean”…

A powerful El Nino has officially formed in the Pacific Ocean, with meteorologists warning Thursday that it is poised to reach historic strength and intensify extreme weather events across the globe.

The natural warming cycle is expected to exacerbate global temperatures, already elevated by fossil fuel emissions, and could supercharge severe weather patterns worldwide. The phenomenon is predicted to rival or even surpass the record-setting El Nino of 1997, which caused billions in damages through heatwaves, floods, droughts, tornadoes, and wildfires.

The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration formally confirmed the existence of the El Nino, a warming of the Pacific near the equator that profoundly affects global weather patterns.

This wasn’t supposed to happen yet.

Normally, El Niños start once the summer is over, but this one “is developing much earlier and faster than expected”…

“Most El Niños begin in the fall, so this is developing much earlier and faster than expected,” AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Chad Merrill said. “The weather patterns here early in the summer are also lining up to what is expected with an El Niño.”

Needless to say, this isn’t a good sign.

It appears that this El Niño is going to be a whopper, and that should deeply trouble all of us because a couple of other very strong El Niños in the past literally cost the global economy trillions of dollars…

For example, the 1982-83 El Niño led to $4.1 trillion in global income losses, while the 1997-98 El Niño cost about $5.7 trillion, a 2023 study suggested.

“The current forecasts imply this could be the costliest El Niño on record,” said Justin Mankin, a Dartmouth geography associate professor who studies El Niño’s economic impacts.

If the El Niño that just formed becomes the strongest of all time, it could potentially cause more than 10 trillion dollars of damage to the global economy.

In the months ahead, global food production could drop precipitously, supply chains could be severely disrupted, and we could witness an endless series of extremely destructive weather disasters…

El Niño tends to slow down global economic growth and cause trillions in losses, primarily due to the fact that it triggers disruptive weather patterns that impact agriculture, infrastructure, and supply chains.

In the years it forms, El Niño triggers wide-ranging changes in weather and climate patterns that result in a potpourri of global disasters, including devastating floods, crop-killing droughts, plummeting fish populations and an uptick in tropical diseases worldwide, experts say.

The strongest El Niño on record was the “Super El Niño” of 1877 and 1878.

That “Super El Niño” was one of the primary reasons why approximately 50 million people starved to death during the Great Famine of 1876 to 1878…

Climate officials added that this El Nino will likely be one of the strongest since 1950, and there is a fear it could match an event from 1877, which triggered severe droughts and crop failures around the world, contributing to more than 50 million deaths globally.

Many climate historians think the 1877 event reshaped world history, and some consider it one of the first ‘truly global climate disasters.’

In 2026, farmers all over the world are already dealing with seemingly endless drought, much higher diesel prices and an unprecedented fertilizer crisis.

Now we are being told that the El Niño that has just formed “could have a multiplier effect on wheat, rice, and corn, which are already at risk due to reduced fertilizer availability”…

“A Super El Niño, combined with the current Middle East conflict and resulting fertilizer shortages, could have a multiplier effect on wheat, rice, and corn, which are already at risk due to reduced fertilizer availability during the planting season,” said Saskia van Gendt, chief sustainability officer with Blue Yonder, a supply chain management company, in an e-mail to USA TODAY. “This will result in near-term shortages and price increases, along with a prolonged impact, since these crops are used as animal feed and in processed foods.”

Yes, there will be shortages and price increases.

The experts keep telling us this, but it just isn’t sinking in for the general population yet.

Some of the tropical areas of the globe that we import a lot of key commodities from will be hit particularly hard by this El Niño…

David Warrick, senior vice president of strategy at Overhaul, a supply chain risk management company, and former head of Microsoft’s Global Supply Chain, told Newsweek that of the imported products that could be impacted, “rice is the most immediate concern,” pointing to Thailand, Vietnam and India as key exporters that are all vulnerable to drought conditions caused by an El Niño.

“After rice, I’d flag coffee, cocoa, palm oil, and sugar—all tropical commodities highly sensitive to El Niño-driven heat and drought,” he added. “For American consumers, that translates to pressure on everyday grocery staples like cooking oils, chocolate, packaged foods, coffee.”

Warrick warned that when major exporters are hit at the same time, “import-dependent countries scramble, and prices spike fast.”

For years, I have been warning that global food supplies were getting tighter and that shortages would be coming.

Now we are here.

In wealthy countries such as the United States, high food prices will go even higher.

In poor countries all over the planet, many of those that are currently hungry will soon be starving, and many of those that are currently starving will soon die.

The number of people in the world that were experiencing acute hunger was already at a record high before the war with Iran even started.

The war took our troubles to a new level, and now a “Godzilla El Niño” threatens to change everything.

Even The Mainstream Media Is Admitting That The Coming Global Food Crisis Has Now Arrived

June 11, 2026June 11, 2026 by Michael

We have been warned for a long time that a nightmarish global food crisis was coming. We are facing an unprecedented fertilizer shortage, extremely high diesel prices and long-term droughts in many of the most important food producing regions of the world, and now a “Super El Niño” is in the forecast. So a lot of experts have been projecting that we would experience a very serious global food crisis beginning in the second half of this year, but the truth is that it is already here.

In fact, even the mainstream media is openly admitting that it is already here. The following comes from a Telegraph article entitled “The hunger crisis experts warned about is here – and it’s about to get worse”…

Pregnant women in Kabul, sheep-herders outside of Modigushi, the urban-poor in Colombo. As the war in Iran passes 100 days, these are the people on the front line of a new hunger crisis.

Months ago, the UN cautioned that a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz would push millions into hunger; now they say their worst fears are materialising.

A report produced by the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN’s food-assistance branch, found that 45 million additional people now face “critical” levels of food insecurity as a direct result of the war in the Gulf.

Officials with the World Food Program are having an “I told you so” moment.

They warned that if the Strait of Hormuz did not get reopened this would happen, and now they are being proven correct…

“We told the world the closure of the Strait was going to have a massive impact,” Dr Jean-Martin Bauer, the World Food Programme’s director of food security analysis, told The Telegraph.

“There have been impacts on energy markets, on trade, on shipping, and all these are combining to create this cost of living crisis affecting millions of people.”

In impoverished nations all over the planet, hunger is rapidly growing.

For example, just consider what has been going on in Somalia…

The proportion of Somali households that can no longer afford what the UN calls the “basic food basket” – things like cooking oil and grains – has risen from 47 to 60 per cent in late 2025, according to the WFP’s analysis.

It means ultimately an additional 2.5 million people in Somalia could be unable to afford a basic food basket by the end of the year.

Of course this is just the beginning.

Globally, a lot less nitrogen fertilizer will be used this year as a result of the crisis in the Middle East, and one UN official is telling us that the effect this is having on food production is becoming “increasingly visible”…

The greatest risk of the Strait of Hormuz closure for the agri-food industry is not an immediate food shortage, but a fertilizer and production shock. This was the opinion of the UN FAO’s director-general, Qu Dongyu, speaking at the 181st Session of the FAO Council (June 8–12). As the crisis hit its 100-day mark, he said the effects of the crisis on farmers globally are “increasingly visible.”

Dongyu gave recommendations for countries to address the impacts of the Strait of Hormuz crisis, particularly “the urgent need for efficient fertilizer use” as global agri-food systems face “unprecedented challenges.” Farmers across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are grappling with higher production costs and “difficult choices regarding fertilizer use and crop decisions,” he said.

It really doesn’t matter if the U.S. and Iran can reach some sort of an agreement now or not.

The damage that has been done to the spring planting season in the northern hemisphere is irreversible at this stage.

And now a “Super El Niño” is coming.

In fact, the beginning of El Niño conditions has been confirmed in the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean…

A long-anticipated and dramatic global climate shift has arrived, federal forecasters said June 11 as they confirmed the start of El Niño conditions.

The announcement also adds to mounting evidence suggesting this El Niño will be unusually strong, potentially supercharging droughts, heavy rainfall events and heat waves.

Now we shall wait to see how strong this El Niño will become.

Many are forecasting that it will be the strongest El Niño of all time, and if that turns out to be the case global food shortages will almost certainly get a whole lot worse.

Here in the United States, “a drier, warmer summer” is expected for the major food producing areas in our heartland…

There is potential for a drier, warmer summer across the Northwest, northern Plains, and the Upper Midwest, prolonging ongoing drought in some areas and increasing wildfire risk, according to AccuWeather. Overall, El Niño increases the chances of above-average temperatures across the northern and western United States.

We are already in the midst of an epic multi-year drought.

How much drier can things possibly get?

Unfortunately, conditions are expected to be exceedingly dry in other “breadbaskets” around the world too.

So brace yourself for much higher prices for wheat, corn, rice and barley in the months ahead.

This will have a dramatic impact in poor countries all over the planet, but it will also significantly affect us here in the United States too.

According to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, we have already been witnessing a “remarkable increase in food insecurity” among low income U.S. households…

A new economic report identified a “remarkable” rise in food insecurity, potentially explaining gloomy consumer outlooks despite strong economic fundamentals.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York released a report on Wednesday identifying uncertain access to adequate food and consumer pessimism on the rise in certain vulnerable groups across the country.

The report, which relies on newly collected data from the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE), found a “remarkable increase in food insecurity, particularly among lower-educated and lower-income households and households with young children.”

It also identified “a contemporaneous increase in pessimism among the same groups, along with a sharp decline in job-finding expectations.”

If food prices continue to soar, what is that going to mean for millions of U.S. households that already struggle to put food on the table?

I wish that I could get more people to understand that this is really happening.

In this generation, we have never seen as much hunger among l0w income U.S. households as we are witnessing now, and the truth is that conditions are going to get a whole lot worse.

There is no magic button that can be pushed that is going to fix this.

The food crisis that we were all warned about has arrived, and the vast majority of the population is completely unprepared for it.

A Historic Energy Squeeze Is Locked In: U.S. Oil Inventories Have Fallen For 7 Weeks In A Row, And Global Oil Inventories Will Soon Hit The Lowest Level Ever Recorded

June 10, 2026June 10, 2026 by Michael

Now that the war with the Iranians appears to be fully back on, there will be no turning back now. President Trump just told reporters in the White House that “we’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard”, and so it should now be apparent to everyone that there isn’t going to be any sort of a “deal” any time soon. What this means is that we are headed for a historic energy squeeze of unprecedented magnitude.

So far, we have not experienced the full consequences of the war with Iran because we have been running through commercial oil inventories and national strategic stockpiles.

But that cushion is rapidly being depleted and in the not too distant future it will be gone.

Let me try to illustrate this in a way that just about everyone will be able to understand.

If you lost your job today, you probably would still have enough money to keep paying the bills for at least a few months.

But if you didn’t find a new job within a certain amount of time, you would potentially be in danger of getting kicked out into the streets.

We are facing a similar scenario with global oil supplies.

We had enough stored up to keep going for at least a few months, but some time this summer we will start hitting critical operating levels.

Once we reach that stage, gasoline prices will go nuts and shortages and rationing will begin to spread around the globe.

We won’t be out of oil.

But we won’t have enough for everyone to use as much as they normally would.

Today, it was being reported that by the end of this year global oil inventories will hit the lowest level since records began being kept…

Oil stockpiles in the world’s largest economies are headed toward the lowest levels since at least 2003 as inventories are drawn down at a record pace due to the lost output from the Iran war, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said on Tuesday.

Total oil inventories in the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will fall to just under 2.3 billion barrels by December, the EIA said, based on its current assumption that marine traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is unlikely to return to pre-conflict levels until early 2027. The OECD stockpile has not been this low since the EIA began keeping records in 2003, the agency said in its monthly Short-Term Energy Outlook report.

The rapid inventory drawdown, which is needed to make up for 11 million barrels a day of lost Middle Eastern output, creates the foundation for a sharp increase in oil prices in the months ahead, the agency said.

Right now, the world is running an oil deficit.

In other words, we are consuming far more than we are producing and this cannot go on indefinitely.

Here in the United States, oil inventories have dropped for a seventh week in a row…

U.S. crude oil inventories fell for a seventh consecutive week and product stocks were mixed as refineries stepped up their capacity use, according to data released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

This is a slow-motion disaster that everyone can see coming.

One industry expert is warning that even if the Strait of Hormuz opened tomorrow, we are facing “disruptions that will probably last for at least three to six months”…

David Victor, the director of the Deep Decarbonization Initiative at the University of California, San Diego, said that in his analysis, even if the war ended tomorrow and the Strait of Hormuz was fully open, “we’ve already locked ourselves into disruptions that will probably last for at least three to six months.”

Prices, Victor explained, wouldn’t necessarily stay around their wartime highs for that whole time period. Rather, the end of the war would have a delayed impact on energy markets for the same reason the beginning of the war did: it takes time for such a change to work its way through global supply chains.

Of course the Strait of Hormuz is not going to reopen tomorrow.

In fact, there is no end to the war with Iran in sight.

So we are going to have some major problems on our hands.

It isn’t just an oil squeeze that we will be dealing with.

So many important commodities that normally come out of the Middle East are not getting exported, and this will manifest in thousands of different ways.

For example, hospitals in India are already facing a very serious shortage of cancer drugs due to the war in the Middle East…

Indian hospitals are running out of two life-saving cancer drugs as the war in Iran continues to disrupt the supply of raw materials.

Stocks of cisplatin and carboplatin, two of the most widely used chemotherapy drugs in the country, have begun running dry over the last three weeks, doctors and pharmaceutical industry representatives have said.

The two closely related drugs are derived from platinum, a precious metal that has surged in cost due to the Middle East conflict and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, and form the backbone of treatment for about 60 per cent of advanced cancer cases.

And the UN’s World Food Program is already being forced to divert food from the hungry in order to give it to those that are starving…

Ripple effects from the war in Iran are threatening millions more of the most vulnerable people with crisis levels of hunger or worse, World Food Programme (WFP) acting Executive Director Carl Skau told CNN.

The closure of the Strait of Hormuz has driven up the cost of fuel exponentially, making the organization’s operations far more costly. The escalating fuel costs have also driven up the price of food around the world. And critically needed supplies of fertilizer from the Gulf to plant crops in places like Sudan have been stymied by the snarling of the critical waterway.

It is a devastating mix for an organization that was already having to make unimaginable choices due to significant cuts in funding.

“In many places, we’re already taking from the hungry to give to the starving,” Skau said.

This is the reality of life in 2026.

Widespread global food shortages are coming.

There is no way to avoid it now.

The consequences of the war in the Middle East are already being felt all over the world, but what we are witnessing now is just the beginning.

The Purchasing Power Of The Dollar Has Collapsed And The Majority Of The Population No Longer Believes In The American Dream

June 9, 2026 by Michael

Did you know that the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by more than 97 percent since 1913? Sadly, as you will see below, the decline in the purchasing power of our currency appears to have greatly accelerated in recent years. Thanks to the rising cost of living, most Americans have lost faith in the American Dream. In fact, a new survey that was just released discovered that 51 percent of us believe that the American Dream is now out of reach for most people…

Just over half of Americans say the American Dream is out of reach for most people right now, according to a new CNBC and SurveyMonkey American Dream Pulse Survey.

Roughly 45% of respondents said the American Dream is only achievable for some people, and 6% said it’s not in reach for anyone, according to a study of 4,130 U.S. adults, conducted May 6 to 11.

I was stunned when I read that.

For decades, people have been moving to this country because they want to live the American Dream.

But now the majority of the U.S. population no longer believes that most of us will be able to achieve it.

Today, we have more money than ever.

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that the cost of living has been rising very rapidly. The same survey that I referenced above found that approximately 80 percent of us think that the cost of living is one of the primary obstacles to achieving the American Dream…

Roughly four in five survey respondents identified cost of living as one of their biggest financial hurdles to achieving the American Dream. Three in five cited housing prices, almost half pointed to healthcare costs and nearly as many blamed low wages.

For years, I warned that the decisions that our leaders were making would result in very painful inflation.

Unfortunately, that is precisely what occurred.

According to Brownstone Institute President Jeffrey A. Tucker, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by close to 50 percent since the beginning of the COVID lockdowns…

Think about the implications. Isolating from the beginning of the Covid period to the present, Elliott’s data estimates as much as a 40% loss in purchasing power over six years. Or perhaps closer to 50%. Here is a zoom in of the above chart covering 2019 to the present.

This seems correct to me. Government data, meanwhile, logs only a 26% loss. That’s a massive gap between the official data and what prices actually reveal. With an AI re-rendering that tracks purchasing power – the flipside of the increase of prices – we get numbers closer to 50%. That means that Covid cut the value of the dollar in terms of goods and services to half its former value.

I believe that his analysis is quite accurate.

There are some things that I regularly purchase at the grocery store that have more than doubled in price since the start of this decade.

Of course the slow death of the U.S. dollar has been going on for a very long time.

Using very conservative numbers, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has dropped by more than 97 percent since the Federal Reserve was established in 1913…

$100 in 1913 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $3,363.84 today, an increase of $3,263.84 over 113 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.16% per year between 1913 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 3,263.84%.

This means that today’s prices are 33.64 times as high as average prices since 1913, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 2.973% of what it could buy back then.

This is one of the reasons why I rant so much about the Federal Reserve.

The way that our system has been designed is fundamentally flawed and the Federal Reserve needs to be abolished.

But that isn’t going to happen, is it?

We are just going to continue going down the same old road, and consumers will continue to suffer.

The CEO of Kraft Heinz recently admitted that U.S. consumers are “literally running out of money at the end of the month”…

Kraft Heinz (NASDAQ:HKC) CEO Steve Cahillane recently offered one of the bluntest assessments yet.

“They’re literally running out of money at the end of the month,” Cahillane said in a recent interview (1). “We’re seeing negative cash flows in the lower-income brackets where they’re dipping into savings.”

The company behind brands like Heinz, Kraft and Philadelphia is now cutting prices (2) on some products that had grown too expensive, increasing promotions and rolling out smaller package sizes at lower price points.

Cahillane said that the industry has endured years of “volume degradation” because consumers had to absorb “too much price.” Another inflation shock, he warned, is the last thing households need.

Many U.S. households are now permanently in a state of financial crisis.

When your bank account is constantly near zero, it can be absolutely soul crushing.

But that is where most of the U.S. population exists today.

As a result, Americans are using buy now, pay later platforms to purchase gas and groceries more than ever before…

Americans have run their credit cards to the limit. Now they’ve turned to buy-now-pay-later plans to buy gas and groceries.

This is yet more evidence that American consumers are broke, stressed, and buried in debt as inflation steals their purchasing power.

Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) platforms allow users to purchase items by paying several smaller installments (typically around 4) over time.

Block operates the Afterpay BNPL platform. The system was originally set up to provide short-term financing for bigger purchases. But according to company data, usage is expanding into everyday spending categories. The average customer used Afterpay to purchase gas 3.6 times and groceries 2.2 times between Feb. 4 and May 15.

Most U.S. households are just one accident or emergency away from financial disaster.

Living on the edge can be very stressful.

Sadly, the number of Americans that are falling over the edge and into bankruptcy just continues to rise…

Total U.S. bankruptcy filings, which include filings made by both businesses and individuals, rose by 7 percent in May on a year-to-year basis.

Individual bankruptcy filings rose by 8 percent during the one-year period. While overall commercial filings were down marginally by 0.1 percent, bankruptcy filings made by small businesses jumped 36 percent, according to a June 5 statement from the American Bankruptcy Institute (ABI).

“The May data reflects a continued but measured uptick in bankruptcy activity, particularly among small businesses,” said Michael Hunter, vice president of Epiq AACER, the company that provided the bankruptcy data.

The top one percent controls about a third of all wealth in this country now.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of the rest of us are really struggling, and Americans are not particularly optimistic about the future…

Roughly 48% of Americans said their financial situation was worse in May than a year ago, the highest share since January 2023, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Survey of Consumer Expectations.

Consumers are also less optimistic about the future. The share of households expecting their finances to improve over the next year, relative to those expecting them to worsen, fell to its lowest level since October 2022, the New York Fed said.

If you are really struggling because of the rapidly rising cost of living, I want you to know that you are not alone.

There are millions upon millions of others that are in the exact same boat.

Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and there is no easy fix.

So hold on tight, because all of us are just going to have to do the best that we can to survive in this very difficult economic environment.

“Everything Is Fine”: The Skeptics Mock As Plagues And Disasters Erupt All Around Us

June 8, 2026 by Michael

No matter how bad things get, some skeptics will simply never admit that what we are experiencing is unusual. We live at a time of seemingly endless wars, growing global hunger, alarming outbreaks of disease and constant natural disasters, but they just keep telling us that everything is fine. Russia and Ukraine are absolutely pummeling one another, Iran and Israel are firing ballistic missiles at each other, and we are facing severe shortages of oil and natural gas in the months ahead. Meanwhile, global food production will be way down this year thanks to a historic fertilizer crisis, unprecedented drought and a “Godzilla El Niño” that is on the way. I just don’t understand how some people can be so cavalier about all of this.

Everything is being shaken, and that includes the ground underneath our feet.

Less than 24 hours ago, a magnitude 7.8 earthquake absolutely rocked the Philippines…

At least 32 people have died after a powerful earthquake struck an island in the Philippines, causing landslides and buildings to collapse into rubble.

Eyewitnesses on Mindanao in the south of the country said people rushed out their houses into the streets for safety as the ground shook, while footage of a school in Digos showed young children screaming as the earthquake causes an outdoor structure to collapse.

The magnitude 7.8 earthquake also triggered tsunami waves exceeding a metre that impacted nearby coastlines.

This was an immensely destructive quake, and there was a tremendous amount of panic as numerous large buildings suddenly collapsed…

Of course most of us will have totally forgotten about this disaster by tomorrow because the news cycle will be feeding us lots of new things to focus on.

But one of these days “the Big One” will hit the west coast of the United States.

In fact, scientists have determined that the amount of tectonic stress that has built up in Southern California is at the highest level ever recorded…

Since the last major earthquake to affect the wider Los Angeles region, the Fort Tejon earthquake of 1857, with a magnitude of 7.9, tectonic stress along the fault segments has built up continuously during a prolonged quiet period that has long concerned researchers, given the potential for a large future rupture.

In a new study led by Dr. Liliane Burkhard of the Division of Space Research and Planetary Sciences (WP) at the Physics Institute of the University of Bern, an international research team modeled 1,000 years of earthquake history along the southern San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems to estimate the present-day stress loading at Cajon Pass. Researchers from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, the U.S. Geological Survey Earthquake Science Center in Pasadena, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego were involved.

The results show that tectonic stresses in the region have reached and, in some cases, exceeded the highest levels of the last millennium.

I am convinced that earthquakes will be a major theme over the next 12 months, and I am also convinced that volcanic eruptions will be a major theme as well.

Right now, 41 volcanoes are currently erupting around the world.

But the skeptics insist that there is nothing to be concerned about.

They are also telling us that we will get through the global energy crisis just fine too even though the “absolute operational minimum floor for the global oil system” will be hit just a few short months from now…

The absolute operational minimum floor for the global oil system is estimated to be about 6.8 billion barrels. Below that, the system will simply not function. On our current trajectory, the world will reach that point in September, if not before. It turns out there really weren’t 8.5 billion barrels of available oil inventories across the world at the beginning of the war, only 8.5 billion minus 6.8 billion, or 1.7 billion. Big difference!

The moment we reach “tank bottoms” actually comes before we reach operational minimum. Technically, “tank bottoms” refers to the sludge that builds up on the bottoms of storage tanks, which must be periodically cleaned out and disposed of or processed to extract valuable products. In this context, this moment is when practical commercial storage runs very low, so as not to be a reliable buffer between current supply and demand. That’s when a bidding war will begin, and oil prices are likely to spike to $150 a barrel or higher, oil industry executives say. That moment is not far away, even as the world sleepwalks through the greatest oil crisis in history.

The only way we avoid a nightmare scenario is if the Strait of Hormuz opens immediately.

And that is not going to happen.

Meanwhile, the New World screwworm continues to pop up in even more locations in the Southwest…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Monday confirmed three additional cases of New World screwworm, including two in Texas, according to the agency’s animal health arm.

The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service said the two Texas cases affected a calf in La Salle County and a goat in Gillespie County.

APHIS clarified that a fifth case reported earlier on Monday in a dog in Andrews County would be reclassified as the first case detected in New Mexico. The veterinarian who reported the case is located in Texas, the agency said, but the dog resides at a household in Lea County, New Mexico, which borders Texas.

The size of the U.S. cattle herd is already the smallest that it has been since 1951.

So what is going to happen if the New World screwworm starts spreading like wildfire?

Another plague that is deeply alarming authorities is playing out in central Africa…

The number of confirmed Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) has risen to 544, in the wake of the US’s health protection agency warned the outbreak could become the largest on record.

The epicentre is in DRC’s Ituri province, where Africa’s top public health agency, Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), have said there have been 515 confirmed cases out of Congo’s total of 544. At least 91 are confirmed dead, with a further 19 cases and 2 deaths in neighbouring Uganda, according to the two countries’ health ministries.

The number of confirmed cases is much higher than we were being told a few days ago.

But that isn’t the real story.

The real story is that hundreds of people have been dropping dead, and it appears that Ebola is the culprit.

But they won’t be added to the total that are “confirmed dead” until testing is complete, and that could take a while.

At the same time, hunger is rapidly growing in impoverished nations in Africa and elsewhere, and many major food exporting countries are experiencing severe drought.

Here in the United States, we have been experiencing our worst spring drought ever…

The United States experienced its worst spring drought on record last month, with more than 60% of land in the lower 48 states experiencing moderate drought or worse.

The drought has sparked alarm among farmers and environmentalists across the country, who warn that food supplies may be impacted and wildfires may blight areas where they are not usually seen.

The dry conditions are concentrated in the southeast, where moderate to exceptional drought covered 99.81% of the region at its peak in April, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Severe to exceptional drought covered more than 80% of the region, the highest level in April since the monitor began collecting data in 2000.

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor map shows that drought conditions stretch from coast to coast.

In fact, you could literally drive all the way across the nation without ever leaving areas that are being stricken by drought.

That is crazy.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, now a “Super El Niño” will make drought conditions in much of the country even worse.

According to the Daily Mail, it is now being projected that the “Super El Niño” that is coming “will likely be the strongest ever recorded”…

The brewing super El Niño will likely be the strongest ever recorded, new predictions suggest.

The latest modelling from the European Centre for Medium–Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) shows that sea temperatures will be well above average later this year.

Scientists measure the intensity of El Niño using the Niño 3.4 index, which records sea surface temperature anomalies between 5 degrees north and 5 degrees south latitude, and 120 degrees west and 170 degrees west longitude.

We have never experienced anything quite like this.

Meteorologist Ben Noll is warning that equatorial waters in the Pacific are likely to be much warmer than during any previous El Niño in all of history…

In almost every scenario, temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean will climb 3°C (5.4°F) above average by December.

However, some worrying simulations show that the sea surface will be more than 4°C (7.2°F) warmer in this critical region.

Ben Noll, a meteorologist and global weather writer at the Washington Post, wrote on X: ‘Almost every scenario now reaches past +3˚C, with a cluster of high–end scenarios in excess of +4˚C. This outlook now depicts the strongest El Niño on record.’

There will be monster droughts, unprecedented heatwaves, widespread crop failures and horrifying levels of global hunger.

Tens of millions died during the Super El Niño of 1877 and 1878.

How many will die this time around?

Of course the skeptics are not moved by any of this.

They insist that we have faced tough times before and have always come through them.

So they believe that everything will be just fine somehow.

Meanwhile, tech billionaires have been constructing giant underground bunkers in anticipation of the chaos that is ahead…

American tech billionaires have taken it a step further, with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg installing a 5,000-sq-ft underground shelter at his compound in Hawaii with its own energy and food supplies and blast-resistant doors.

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has a reinforced concrete basement under his home, while Peter Thiel, the billionaire chairman of Palantir, previously filed plans for a bunker-style compound in New Zealand.

We really are living during one of the most apocalyptic eras in human history.

Sadly, what we have experienced so far is not even worth comparing to what is eventually coming.

The chaotic years that are ahead of us are going to be absolutely insane.

But many of the skeptics will just keep on mocking until disaster suddenly overtakes them and they are no longer able to mock anything at all.

The Ogallala Aquifer Is Dying – As The Largest Supply Of Groundwater In The United States Vanishes, Farmers Are Deeply Concerned About What Is Next

June 7, 2026June 7, 2026 by Michael

Gigantic underground aquifers are being rapidly depleted all over the world, and once that water is gone it will take a very long time for it to come back. In fact, in some areas of the United States the recharge rate is less than an inch per year. That is a major problem, because more than half of the water that U.S. farmers use for irrigation comes from underground aquifers. What in the world are our farmers going to do once that water is gone?

The largest underground aquifer in the United States is known as the Ogallala Aquifer. It covers a vast area under portions of eight different states, and it accounts for approximately 30 percent of all groundwater that is used for irrigation in our nation…

The Ogallala Aquifer (oh-gə-LAH-lə) is a shallow water table aquifer surrounded by sand, silt, clay, and gravel located beneath the Great Plains in the United States.

As one of the world’s largest aquifers, it underlies an area of approximately 174,000 sq mi (450,000 km²) in portions of eight states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas).^[1] It was named in 1898 by geologist N. H. Darton from its type locality near the town of Ogallala, Nebraska. The aquifer is part of the High Plains Aquifer System, and resides in the Ogallala Formation, which is the principal geologic unit underlying 80% of the High Plains.^[2]^[3]

Large-scale extraction for agricultural purposes started after World War II due partially to center pivot irrigation and to the adaptation of automotive engines to power groundwater wells.^[4] Today about 27% of the irrigated land in the entire United States lies over the aquifer, which yields about 30% of the ground water used for irrigation in the United States.^[5]

The Ogallala Aquifer is one of our most important natural resources.

Unfortunately, it is steadily drying up.

In fact, the amount of water that it has lost since the 1940s is roughly equivalent to the entire volume of Lake Erie…

The Ogallala Aquifer sits under eight states and 111.8 million acres of US farmland. A windmill can lift only a few gallons per minute, useful for drinking water but useless for agricultural purposes. In the 1940s, electrification reached the Great Plains and a Colorado farmer invented center pivot irrigation, a sprinkler line on wheels that rotated around a central wellhead. The 1949 version could lift thousands of gallons per minute and irrigate 40 acres.

Since then the aquifer has lost 286.4 million acre-feet of water, comparable to draining Lake Erie entirely. The parts of it beneath arid states have seen much bigger drops. Large parts of Western Kansas have lost 50 percent of their aquifer depth. Texan wells are down as much as 265 feet. On current trajectories, the water there will be gone in 20–30 years.

If we stay on our current path, farmers that depend on the Ogallala Aquifer will be faced with some very tough choices…

If large areas become effectively dry, farmers could be forced to switch from irrigated crops to less water intensive farming—or abandon production altogether.

Something must be done.

In Kansas, a plan to restrict water use has sparked a tremendous amount of controversy…

Southwest Kansas might take a big step toward water conservation in ways previously thought to be impossible.

Groundwater Management District 3, headquartered in Garden City, is looking for feedback from local farmers on its plan to use less water for crop irrigation in the region. A discussion on proposed water cuts recently attracted farmers from counties across the southwest part of the state, who filled a small community building.

Trevor Ahring, civil engineer for the district, told the sea of Kansas State University baseball caps and flannel shirts the details of the plan — all with the objective of easing the strain on the Ogallala Aquifer, which stretches from South Dakota to Texas.

Conserving water would make the Ogallala Aquifer last longer, but it would hurt agricultural production now.

One Kansas farmer is warning that even a small reduction in the amount of water used will make a huge difference in the number of bushels of corn that are produced at harvest time…

Roger Holmes, a long-time farmer in the area, said water cuts based on previous use won’t be fair to farmers who have been using water cautiously for years. And it puts those farmers at a disadvantage financially, he said.

“One inch of water produces about 15 bushel of corn. If you have three inches less than your neighbor, your average is going to be 50 bushel less per acre than that farmer across the road,” Holmes said.

Irrigated corn pays big. The loss of just 50 bushels could cost farmers up to $200 per acre. Most farmers in the room echoed Holmes’ concerns.

He is right.

Any short-term sacrifices will really hurt our farmers.

That is particularly true this year, because the first three months of 2026 were the driest first three months of a year in U.S. history, and now a “Godzilla El Niño” is coming.

During the months ahead, farmers in the heartland will need to irrigate their crops more than ever before.

But if we keep draining the water from our underground aquifers, eventually there will be nothing left.

Meanwhile, ranchers in the middle of the country are facing a new crisis that could potentially have a dramatic impact on beef prices.

On Friday, I wrote about the fact that a New World screwworm case had been confirmed in the state of Texas.

Now a second case has been confirmed, and USDA officials are starting to become extremely concerned…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed a second New World screwworm (NWS) case in a one-month-old calf in Zavala County, Texas, roughly 5.6 miles from the first confirmed detection.

For now, both cases remain inside what the USDA calls an “established movement control zone and enhanced sterile insect dispersal area.” This suggests the outbreak is still contained within the USDA’s active response perimeter. Nearby suspect cattle tests have been negative so far, limiting signs of broader spread at this point.

USDA confirmed the second NWS case late Friday. The agency reported the first case on Thursday (read the report)

Our food supply is being hit by threats from so many directions right now.

And this is happening at a time when global supplies of food are just getting tighter and tighter.

All of the long-term trends are taking us in one direction, and it doesn’t take a genius to see where all of this is eventually heading.

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