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The dramatic events that just occurred in Venezuela have shocked the entire world.  But almost everyone is missing the bigger picture.  A very tense geopolitical game of chess is playing out right in front of our eyes, and the stakes are incredibly high.  The Trump administration would love to push the Chinese and the Russians out of the western hemisphere, and setting up a new western-friendly government in Venezuela would be a huge step in that direction.  Most people do not realize this, but Venezuela actually has more proven oil reserves than anyone else on the entire planet, and that includes Saudi Arabia.  President Trump and his team are gambling that the Chinese and the Russians will stand down and allow them to do whatever they want with Venezuela.  But what if they don’t?  The Chinese and the Russians have both spent decades developing very deep ties with Venezuela, and now they are both absolutely furious.

Over the past two decades, the Russians have sold the Venezuelans approximately 20 billion dollars worth of military equipment, and they just signed a major strategic partnership agreement on May 7th.

The Chinese have lent the Venezuelans approximately 60 billion dollars over the last couple of decades, and China has been purchasing more oil from Venezuela than the rest of the world combined.

An emergency session of the UN Security Council has been called for Monday, and I am sure that the Russians and the Chinese are both going to have plenty to say…

The United Nations Security Council is due to meet on Monday after the US attacked Venezuela and deposed its long-serving autocratic President Nicolas Maduro, a move that UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres views as setting “a dangerous precedent.”

Colombia, backed by Russia and China, requested the meeting of the 15-member council, diplomats say. The UN Security Council has met twice — in October and December — over the escalating tensions between the United States and Venezuela.

Venezuela had essentially become a full-blown economic colony of China, and it took a great deal of time for the Chinese to accomplish that.

So if you look at things from a Chinese point of view, it is easy to understand why they are so upset.

A foreign ministry spokesperson has announced that China “strongly condemns” what the U.S. has just done…

China said it’s “deeply shocked” by the US’s military strikes on Venezuela and its capture of President Nicolas Maduro.

China “strongly condemns the US’s blatant use of force against a sovereign state and action against its president,” a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a statement late Saturday. “Such hegemonic acts of the US seriously violate international law and Venezuela’s sovereignty, and threaten peace and security in Latin America and the Caribbean region. China firmly opposes it.”

And the Chinese are also demanding that Nicolas Maduro and his wife be released immediately…

Beijing’s stinging rebuke expressed “serious concern over their transfer out of the country”.

It claimed the military operation was “in clear violation of international law and the basic norms in international relations and the purposes and principles of the UN Charter”, adding: “China calls on the US to ensure the personal safety of President Maduro and his wife, release them at once, stop toppling the Government of Venezuela, and resolve issues through dialogue and negotiation.”

Of course that isn’t going to happen.

Now that President Trump has Maduro, he is never going to let him go.

What makes all of this even more embarrassing for China is that a Chinese delegation actually met with Maduro just hours before he was grabbed by U.S. forces…

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro received a Chinese government representative at the presidential palace in Caracas on Friday, hours before US President Donald Trump claimed Maduro had been captured following American military strikes.

Maduro met Qiu Xiaoqi, special representative of the Chinese government on Latin American affairs, at the Miraflores Palace.

“I had a pleasant meeting with Qiu Xiaoqi, Special Envoy of President Xi Jinping,” Maduro said on Telegram. “We reaffirmed our commitment to the strategic relationship that is progressing and strengthening in various areas for building a multipolar world of development and peace.”

Can you imagine how we would feel if the roles were reversed?

To the Chinese, Venezuela is not just another country.

It was supposed to provide large amounts of oil for China’s growing economy for decades to come, and the Venezuelans currently owe the Chinese tens of billions of dollars…

Venezuelan oil takes an unconventional route to end-users in China. Transport typically takes more than two months and involves multiple ship-to-ship transfers to mask the origin of the cargo. Close to half of the tankers storing Merey are sitting in waters off China and Southeast Asia, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg.

Meanwhile, public data supports estimates that Beijing lent upwards of $60 billion in oil-backed loans to Venezuela through state-run banks until 2015, reaching a level of diplomatic and financial investment unmatched elsewhere in Latin America and perhaps the world.

By making a move to take control of Venezuela, we have essentially punched the Chinese in the face.

Our relationship with China will never be the same after this.

For years, experts have been talking about a coming war with China, and the U.S. military is actually “working around the clock” to prepare for such a conflict…

Across sleepy and remote islands in the Pacific, U.S. military engineers are working around the clock to revive strategically important airstrips that American troops first built under fire over 70 years ago during World War II.

The reconstruction effort is being led by a designated office within the U.S. Air Force, whose Agile Combat Employment, or ACE, doctrine has identified dozens of airfields that will be used to house and launch fighter jets, aerial refuelling tankers and weapons during a war with China. A trilateral force of the Navy, Marine Corps and Air Force is now converging with a single goal in mind: re-establish a presence on the airfields once used to deliver decisive combat power for the United States during the last great power war.

The Russians are also extremely upset about what has just transpired in Venezuela.

In fact, Russia’s Foreign Ministry says that what we just witnessed “warrants condemnation”…

The US committed an act of armed aggression against Venezuela, which gives rise to deep concern & warrants condemnation.

The pretexts used to justify these actions are untenable.

Russia reaffirms its solidarity with the Venezuelan people.

And Russia’s Foreign Ministry is also calling for the immediate release of “the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife”…

Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Saturday called for the release of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife from U.S. custody after President Donald Trump announced that they were captured during military strikes on the capital city of Caracas.

“We firmly call on the U.S. leadership to reconsider this position and release the lawfully elected president of a sovereign country and his wife,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement, stressing the need to resolve the dramatic confrontation through diplomacy.

In a separate message, the ministry said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone to Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez Gomez, during which he expressed his “solidarity with the Venezuelan people in the face of armed aggression.”

After what we just witnessed, how are the Russians supposed to trust any promises that we are making about Ukraine?

I just don’t see any possible way that there is going to be lasting peace with Russia now.

I think that the “peace plan” that the Ukrainians and the Europeans have been working on will eventually be presented to the Russians, and the Russians will immediately reject it because it is filled with provisions that the Russians could never possibly accept.

Once the Russians have rejected the “peace plan”, we will be told that there is no choice but to escalate the conflict in Ukraine.

Needless to say, that will put us in very dangerous territory.

As for Venezuela, there is a possibility that the U.S. Senate could step in next week and prevent President Trump and his team from taking any further military action…

The Senate will vote next week on a bipartisan war powers resolution to block President Trump from continuing military action against Venezuela — a vote that takes on heightened importance after U.S. forces attacked the South American nation and arrested President Nicolás Maduro early Saturday.

The resolution to block the administration from engaging in further hostilities against Venezuela is privileged, which means Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) cannot stop it from coming to the floor.

The measure is sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) and Sens. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).

It will be very interesting to see how that vote goes.

Several Republicans will need to back that resolution in order for it to pass.

Of course President Trump will be extremely displeased with any Republicans that choose to do so.

But even if this resolution passes, the U.S. has still crossed a line that will never be able to be uncrossed.

We have reached the part of the story that will eventually lead to war with both Russia and China, and that should deeply alarm all 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.

Are we on the brink of a worldwide nightmare? Many have described what we are currently experiencing as a “perfect storm”. We have been getting hit with one crisis after another as global events have greatly accelerated in recent months. But now it feels like the next chapter that we are entering is going to take things to an entirely different level.

On New Year’s Eve, something very unexpected happened at our most important landmark in the middle of the country.  You will want to read all the way to the end of this article to see what I am talking about.  This year is already off to a very unusual start, and I fully expect a lot more craziness in the months ahead.  The following are 10 very important trends to watch as we enter 2026…

#1 The Price Of Silver

The price of silver is telling us that there is big trouble under the surface of the global financial system.  Even though there was a dramatic attempt to suppress the price of silver this week, it was still up about 140 percent in 2025.

And the difference between the price of paper silver and the prices that physical silver is going for around the world has become extremely alarming…

Silver at $130 in Japan, $106 in Kuwait, $97 in Korea, and “$71” on Western screens is not a market; it is a confession. The numbers read like a crime scene diagram: in the real world where bars change hands and coins disappear into safes, silver has quietly migrated into triple‑digit pricing, while the supposed “global benchmark” in New York and London is still stuck in a fantasyland of leveraged promises.​

In Tokyo shops and Japanese bullion counters, you are not buying silver in the 70s; you are paying the equivalent of $120–130 an ounce because that is what it costs to replace inventory once you factor in tight wholesale supply, shipping, insurance, currency chaos, and the growing sense that the next shipment might not show up on time, or at all. Kuwait tells the same story in a different language: retail bars priced around $100+ an ounce are not a fat merchant’s greed; they are the market’s answer to a simple question—what will it really take to pry physical metal out of the pipeline in a world where everyone suddenly wants the same scarce asset at the same time.​

#2 The Affordability Crisis

In 2025, I wrote about the affordability crisis in the United States a lot.

Sadly, at this stage approximately two-thirds of the entire U.S. population is struggling to even pay for the basics…

About 7 in 10 Americans polled by CBS News in December said they were struggling to pay for food, housing and health care, underscoring the affordability issues affecting millions of households.

#3 Israel And Iran

This is a big one.

Once Israel and Iran start fighting again, global events will go into overdrive.

Apparently a new round of airstrikes on Iran was discussed during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meeting with President Trump on Monday, and I am convinced that it won’t be too long before those airstrikes actually begin…

On Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, during which the two leaders discussed efforts by Iran to reconstitute its nuclear program following the Israeli and American airstrikes in June, and to expand its ballistic missile arsenal.

During the meeting, Netanyahu shared with Trump details regarding Israel’s planning for a possible follow-up air campaign against Iran, should Tehran continue to refuse to halt its efforts to enrich uranium.

According to a US official and two other American sources, Israel is considering airstrikes in 2026.

#4 The War In Ukraine

Russian forces are steadily moving forward on the eastern and southern fronts in Ukraine, and so the Russians will not be inclined to give the Ukrainians and our European allies what they are demanding…

• Russian President Vladimir Putin inspected a command post of the Russian Armed Forces
• Putin received reports from Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov and the commanders of Russia’s Center and East groupings of forces.
• Russian commanders told Putin that their army has captured the cities of Mirnohrad, Rodynske, and Artemivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, as well as Huliaipole and Steponohirsk in the Zaporizhzhia region.

#5 Europe Preparing For War

Russia has made it very clear that it does not intend to attack any other European countries.

But for some reason, the Europeans are feverishly preparing for war anyway.

In fact, Germany is now requiring all 18-year-old males to complete a compulsory survey about military service…

Germany is stepping up preparations for war – starting with its teenage boys.

From this week, every German male will be legally required to answer questions from the army the moment he turns 18, as part of a sweeping new military service scheme approved amid mounting fears of a major conflict in Europe.

Tens of thousands of teenagers will be sent a compulsory 14-question survey by the Bundeswehr, asking not only how interested they are in joining the military, but how fit they are to fight and how quickly they could be ready for service.

Ignoring the form is not an option. Young men who refuse to complete the questionnaire – or repeatedly ignore follow-up demands from the army – face fines of up to €1,000 (£800), even though ministers insist the scheme falls short of full conscription.

#6 Venezuela

The Trump administration has been bombing drug boats, seizing oil tankers and threatening the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

This could put the U.S. on a collision course with China.

China does not intend to stop buying oil from Venezuela.  If the U.S. starts seizing Chinese oil tankers that approach Venezuela, that could cause a major international incident.  According to Newsweek, there are two Chinese oil tankers that are expected to arrive in Venezuela very soon…

Chinese oil tankers are pressing ahead with Venezuela-linked voyages despite a U.S. blockade and an escalating campaign of tanker seizures.

Two Chinese-flagged VLCCs are operating near Venezuelan waters, with the Thousand Sunny due to arrive in mid-January and the Xing Ye waiting off French Guiana, according to a new report by Lloyd’s List.

Newsweek has reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment.

#7 Taiwan

The Chinese just concluded military exercises that practiced what a full-blown blockade of Taiwan would look like.

At this stage, tensions between China and Taiwan are higher “than at any point in recent years”…

As 2025 ends, tensions between China and Taiwan are higher — and more overt — than at any point in recent years, fueled by expanded U.S. military support for Taipei, increasingly bold warnings from regional allies, and Chinese military drills that look less like symbolism and more like rehearsal.

Beijing has spent the year steadily increasing pressure on Taiwan through large-scale military exercises, air and naval incursions, and pointed political messaging, while Washington and its allies have responded with sharper deterrence signals that China now openly labels as interference.

#8 Pestilences

The bird flu continues to kill millions of birds all over the globe, various strains of mpox continue to circulate, and the pestilence that erupted in 2020 is still making people sick throughout the world.  Meanwhile, some U.S. states are seeing a historic spike in flu cases…

The ‘super flu’ is exploding across the US, with some states seeing more cases than ever before.

The latest CDC data for the week ending December 20 shows positive flu tests are up 53 percent compared to the week prior. Positive tests are up nearly 75 percent from this time last year.

During the week ending December 20, the number of people hospitalized surged 51 percent, and the number already in hospital has nearly doubled compared to the same period last year.

It is just a matter of time before the next great global pandemic arrives, and scientists are warning us that it could come from a multitude of potential directions…

Scientists continue to discover viruses with worrisome characteristics (Chen et al. 2025). Some experts worry about the potential for a leak from pathogen research labs (Palacios, Garcia-Sastre, and Relman 2025), or AI’s ability, in the wrong hands, to help with the creation of a bioweapon (Tjandra 2025). Out in the open, H5N1 avian influenza continues to spread and infect a wide range of animal species—the virus perhaps just a mutation away from becoming a human threat (Lin et al. 2024). Another pathogen, most likely an influenza or another coronavirus is waiting to break out.

#9 Seismic Activity Along The Pacific Ring Of Fire

Seismic activity along the Pacific Ring of Fire increased dramatically in 2025.

And as we enter 2026, the state of California is being shaken by significant earthquakes on an almost daily basis.

In fact, we just witnessed a magnitude 4.9 quake that really shook a lot of people up…

A magnitude 4.9 earthquake was recorded near the town of Susanville in Lassen County on Tuesday, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The quake was centered around nine miles northwest of Susanville at 9:49 p.m. It was downgraded from an initial magnitude of 5.3.

#10 The Greatest Global Food Crisis In Modern History

We are in the midst of the greatest global food crisis in modern history.

But don’t just take my word for it.

The following comes from the official website of the UN’s World Food program…

Yes. Right now, there is a global food crisis – the largest one in modern history. Since the United Nations World Food Program’s (WFP) creation in 1963, never has hunger reached such devastating highs. From the eruption of new conflicts and the escalating impacts of the climate crisis to soaring food and fuel costs, millions of people are being driven closer to starvation each day.

Nearly 350 million people around the world are experiencing the most extreme forms of hunger right now. Of those, nearly 49 million people are on the brink of famine. Behind these massive statistics are individual children, women and men suffering from the dire effects of such severe hunger. Malnourished mothers give birth to malnourished babies, passing hunger from one generation to the next. Children’s physical and cognitive growth is stunted. Farmers are unable to grow enough food to provide for their families and communities. Entire towns are forced to leave their homes in search of food.

We really are living in apocalyptic times.

Sadly, many in the western world don’t seem to understand this since we don’t have war or famine on our own soil.

But for those that are watching carefully, it is exceedingly clear that we have arrived at a truly unique chapter in human history.

So many incredibly strange things are occurring all around us.

On New Year’s Eve, a green meteor dramatically flew past the most important landmark in the center of the United States…

A shimmering meteor was spotted cutting across the sky over the famed Gateway Arch in Missouri hours before revelers rushed to a New Year’s Eve celebration at the monument’s base.

“HEY LOOK, it’s… A meteor saying hi to the Gateway Arch on New Year’s Eve!” The St. Louis Gateway Arch’s X account wrote in a post shared with the breathtaking video.

In the six-second clip, a small white speck appears over one end of the arch. It grows into a green blaze that pulses once before disappearing back into the dark obscurity provided by the predawn sky — right as it reaches the arch’s peak.

The viral video was captured on an Earth Cam situated at Malcolm Martin Memorial Park in east St. Louis. The camera is angled directly towards the city’s skyline all day, every day.

That is something that you don’t see every day.

Of course so many weird things have been happening in the heavens over the last couple of years, and most of the population simply doesn’t care.

Most of us have an unbreakable addiction to entertainment at this point, and getting people to focus on anything other than entertainment is becoming exceedingly difficult.

Most people are just going to continue to stare at their screens as the world falls apart all around them, and that is extremely unfortunate.

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.

They aren’t even trying to pretend to hide what they are doing.  Everyone knows that the meteoric rise in the price of silver in 2025 has put an immense amount of stress on certain financial institutions.  Of course nobody is publicly confirming how much damage has been done, but it must be pretty severe if CME Group is taking such extreme measures to force the price of silver down.  For the second time in less than a week, CME Group has abruptly raised margin requirements on precious metals futures…

Gold and silver prices lost ground on Wednesday as investors booked profits after a historic annual rally and exchange operator CME Group hiked the margins on precious metal futures for the second time in the space of a week.

They probably thought that it was best to pull a stunt like this during the holidays while less people are paying attention.

A statement was released by CME Group which said that this latest move to hike margin requirements was done “to ensure adequate collateral coverage”…

CME Group, one of the world’s largest trading floors for commodities, said Tuesday that margins for gold, silver, platinum and palladium would increase again after the close of business Wednesday.

It said in a statement that the decision was made “as per the normal review of market volatility to ensure adequate collateral coverage.”

Give me a break.

We all know why this was done.

What we are witnessing is literally a conspiracy to force the price of silver down.

They knew that when they suddenly increased margin requirements, it would create a squeeze and force precious metals prices lower…

One reason behind recent declines in silver, including the stark fall on Wednesday, is changes to trading rules implemented by exchange operator CME Group, which hosts widely traded silver futures contracts.

Traders operating in CME’s derivatives market must put down cash to support their trades, with the exact amount or margin required varying. Amid volatile trading, the CME raised margin requirements effective Monday for precious metals including silver, and announced that margin requirements would rise again after Wednesday.

If traders cannot put up more cash, their positions are often forcibly closed, or sold, typically at unfavorable prices. This can cause a wave of selling that pushes prices down further, taking some of the shine out of silver—for now.

I am so disgusted by this.

The first margin hike didn’t get the results that they wanted, and so they did it again.

Shame on them.

We are supposed to be at least pretending that we have some semblance of a free market system left.

But even after this desperate attempt to stop the bleeding, the price of silver is still up more than 140 percent in 2025…

Even after sharp declines on Wednesday, silver prices have gained more than 140% this year and remain relatively close to all-time highs above $82 reached on Sunday.

And most analysts are still projecting that the price of silver will continue to rise in 2026 because the fundamentals for silver are exceedingly favorable…

Yet there are also fundamentals behind silver’s remarkable rally this year.

The precious metal, like gold—up almost two-thirds in 2025 to record levels—is considered a store of value and a hedge against the dollar, which weakened this year amid falling U.S. interest rates.

Silver also benefits from industrial demand typical of the current moment, including uses in solar panels, electric vehicles, and data centers powering artificial intelligence.

If the AI boom were to burst, that could change the outlook for silver.

But right now the AI revolution is steaming ahead.

And the U.S. dollar is probably going to continue to get even weaker in 2026.

In 2025, the U.S. dollar index has fallen by nearly 10 percent…

The dollar continues to face a challenging backdrop in 2026 following this year’s sharp depreciation, Charles Stanley’s Abbas Owainati says in a note. The dollar’s fall this year reflects concerns over long-term fiscal sustainability, an erosion of the currency’s safe haven status amid unpredictable policy, increased currency hedging by non-U.S. investors and changes in capital flows. The dollar could stay under pressure next year as the Federal Reserve is expected to cut interest rates further, he says. A weaker dollar could support emerging markets equities by easing external debt burdens, improving capital flows and boosting local currency returns, he says. The DXY dollar index trades flat at 98.008. It has fallen nearly 10% in the year to date.

The Trump administration doesn’t mind that the dollar has been getting weaker because it makes our exports more appealing to the rest of the world.

But when the U.S. dollar gets weaker, our purchasing power goes down.

A weaker dollar is one of the primary reasons why we find ourselves in an affordability crisis that never seems to end.

So if the U.S. dollar continues to lose value next year that will not be good news for millions of deeply struggling American households, but it will be great news for silver investors.

In addition, Martin Armstrong says that there are a number of geopolitical factors that will help move the price of silver higher during the months ahead…

When it comes to metal, Armstrong says, “People who know war and crisis are coming are buying metals. . .. We have creative destruction. You have AI coming in and you have unemployment rising and you have GDP rising. . .. You have shortages in commodities on top of this. . .. Then you have geopolitical nonsense. Anthony Blinken (Secretary of State in the Biden Administration) put sanctions on Russia. Look at the metals. What did it do? It cut off the supply of gold, silver and platinum coming out of Russia. Now, you have China putting in a ban on exporting silver as of January 1, 2026. This is rather important. China controls about 60% of the supply of silver. . .. This is one of the reasons why silver jumped up dramatically. This is a perfect storm. On top of all this, NATO is there only for war. That is it. . .. Socrates is still saying Europe will lose badly in a war with Russia.”

Armstrong sees a bull market for gold, silver and other metals for years ahead. One big reason is shortages in the metals. Armstrong says, “I don’t see these shortages going away. The bull market is more likely to go into 2032. It will be volatile, and then you’ve got war coming. Once you get into war, prices are going to go up even more. It’s all a mess. This is a perfect storm.”

Yes, we certainly are facing “a perfect storm”, and I am entirely convinced that the year in front of us is going to be absolutely nuts.

In the short-term, there will be plenty of opportunities for savvy investors to capitalize on all of the global chaos that we are witnessing.

Some people will make a lot of money, and of course others will lose a lot of money.

But in the end, the entire system is going to come crashing down all around 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.

I have been digging into the fraud scandal in Minnesota, and what I have learned has absolutely floored me.  It isn’t just millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars that we are talking about in this case.  The fraudsters have literally stolen billions of taxpayer dollars, and they have been spending it on luxury vehicles, expensive homes and all sorts of other things.  This is something that has been going on for many years, and finally something is being done to stop it.

We owe Nick Shirley a tremendous amount of gratitude, because his investigative video is the reason why so many people are talking about the Minnesota fraud scandal this week…

As Homeland Security agents were in Minnesota conducting what DHS Secretary Kristi Noem called a “massive investigation on childcare and other rampant fraud” on Monday, many of their targets came not from tips from the FBI, but from a video posted on social media over the weekend.

The video, posted by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley, alleged nearly a dozen day care centers in Minnesota that are receiving public funds are not actually providing any service. As of Monday, the video had been viewed more than 1 million times, according to YouTube’s metrics, and was seen by tens of millions more on X.

“While we have questions about some of the methods used in the video, we do take the concerns that the video raises about fraud very seriously,” said Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families commissioner Tikki Brown.

If you have not watched his video yet, I would very much encourage you to do so.

Why can’t our law enforcement agencies operate like this?

Shirley says that he was able to uncover 110 million dollars in fraud in just a single day…

We uncovered over $110,000,000 in ONE day. Like it and share it around like wildfire! Its time to hold these corrupt politicians and fraudsters accountable

We ALL work way too hard and pay too much in taxes for this to be happening, the fraud must be stopped.

This is one of the reasons why citizen journalists such as Nick Shirley and myself work tirelessly to expose the truth.

Because in so many cases our government officials will never take action until people start demanding it.

Apparently those that live in the vicinity of the “Quality Learing Center” in Minneapolis never see any kids around.

But now that this scandal is blowing wide open, suddenly there were quite a few kids at the facility on Monday…

The Quality “Learing” Center Minneapolis, a purported day care flagged in a viral video designed to expose fraud, may have been bustling with kids Monday, but it is typically such a ghost town that it appeared closed, a local told The Post.

The resident called the kiddie scene at the site Monday — a few days after explosive footage called it out and suggested it was part of widespread state fraud — “highly unusual.

“We’ve never seen kids go in there until today. That parking lot is empty all the time, and I was under the impression that place is permanently closed,” the person said.

Sadly, the fraud at daycare centers in Minnesota has apparently been going on for a very long time.

In fact, surveillance footage at one daycare center in 2015 shows parents signing in their kids “so providers could bill the state for full days of care for children who didn’t actually attend”…

Shocking unearthed video from a 2018 state fraud case shows Minnesota parents dropping their children off at a day care center and then leaving with the kids moments later — as authorities probe a rampant billion-dollar fraud scheme in Minneapolis.

In the surveillance footage, dated 2015 and obtained by Fox 9, parents are seen signing their kids into the facility so providers could bill the state for full days of care for children who didn’t actually attend.

On some days, no families would even show up at all, but the day cares would still claim reimbursements from the government, the outlet reported at the time.

Needless to say, this sort of thing is not just going on in Minnesota.

Hopefully this scandal will cause the federal government to take a very close look at taxpayer-funded programs all over the nation.

Earlier in December, CBS News reported that hundreds of millions of dollars was being stolen through a nonprofit entity in Minnesota known as “Feeding Our Future”…

Earlier this month, CBS News detailed how a group of convicted fraudsters allegedly spent some of the millions of taxpayer dollars stolen by people associated with a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future, which was meant to help feed vulnerable children during the pandemic.

Investigators say fraudulent payouts to the Feeding Our Future program alone were estimated at $250 million, making it the nation’s costliest COVID-era aid scam.

Walz, a Democrat, previously agreed with an estimate from First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson that fraud across all programs, including the Feeding Our Future scheme, which is not a DHS-administered program, could total $1 billion.

Vast amounts of money that was supposed to go toward feeding needy children ended up in the pockets of fraudsters instead.

And apparently they spent that money on vehicles, homes and other luxuries…

Luxury cars, private villas and overseas wire transfers: CBS News obtained dozens of files and photos that reveal how Minnesota fraudsters blew through hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars as part of one of the biggest COVID-era fraud schemes.

The files document a spending spree in which defendants, many of Somali descent, took taxpayer money meant to feed hungry children and used it to buy cars, property and jewelry. Videos show them popping champagne at an opulent Maldives resort. In a text message, one defendant boasts: “You are gonna be the richest 25 year old InshaAllah [God willing].”

Remember, this was just one nonprofit entity.

Fraud has been discovered at countless others as well.

Overall, prosecutors are telling us that the total amount of fraud that they have uncovered in Minnesota now comes to a grand total of 9 billion dollars…

Monday’s DHS visits come amid what prosecutors allege is a $9 billion COVID-era fraud scandal in Minnesota. Gov. Tim Walz and other state officials have disputed that figure and defended their handling of the crisis.

There are 14 specific Medicaid-funded programs in Minnesota currently under federal investigation, although child care isn’t one of them.

9 billion dollars in just one state!

Just think about that.

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that 98 individuals involved in the fraud in Minnesota have been arrested so far…

@NickShirleyyy’s work has helped show Americans the scale of fraud in Tim Walz’s Minnesota.

@TheJusticeDept has been investigating this for months. So far, we have charged 98 individuals – 85 of Somali descent – and more than 60 have been found guilty in court.

We have more prosecutions coming…BUCKLE UP, LAWMAKERS!

But what about all of the other states?

An investigative journalist has discovered that rampant daycare fraud is also happening in Ohio.

And apparently fraudsters in Ohio are raking in massive amounts of cash by engaging in a widespread “home health” scam…

Ohio attorney Mehek Cooke CONFIRMS MASSIVE fraud in Ohio, another hotbed for Somalis

They run fake “home health” and bill $250,000 PER YEAR, per FAMILY, when no work is actually being done

She says it also happens in PENNSYLVANIA

“Audit America. Audit Ohio now. And I’m pushing for that in every single state!”

“The state will, as long as the doctor has approved it, continue to pay you. It could be for 10 hours, 12 hours, up to 24 when it’s critical care.”

“So you could sit at home without caring for an elderly parent who really doesn’t need it, make about $75,000 to $90,000 a year. Now you add two parents, that’s $180,000. Now you add your in-laws $250,000.”

We all knew that the level of fraud in the system was off the charts.

Now we are finally starting to get some of the details.

According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, over 5 billion dollars in federal rental assistance was sent to ineligible recipients last year alone…

A new report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development has found that more than $5 billion in federal rental assistance during fiscal year 2024 went to potentially ineligible recipients, including nearly 30,000 deceased individuals and thousands of non-citizens, according to MSN and the NY Post.

The audit, conducted by HUD’s Office of the Chief Financial Officer, reviewed nearly $50 billion in housing aid and identified $5.8 billion — about 11% — as “questionable.” More than 200,000 tenants were flagged, including 29,715 listed as deceased, 9,472 non-citizens, and 165,393 households receiving payments above local eligibility limits, particularly in large metro areas such as New Orleans. Officials said suspicious payments appeared nationwide, with heavy concentrations in New York, California and Washington, DC.

“A massive abuse of taxpayer dollars not only occurred under President Biden’s watch, but was effectively incentivized by his administration’s failure to implement strong financial controls resulting in billions worth of potential improper payments,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said. “HUD will continue investigating the shocking results and will take appropriate action to hold bad actors accountable.”

U.S. taxpayers are being ripped off over and over again.

It is truly a national disgrace.

If we make enough of a stink about it, and if enough people start going to prison, hopefully we will start to see real change.

Enough is enough.

We are 38 trillion dollars in debt, and we simply cannot afford to keep sending billions of dollars to the hordes of lawless predators that are eagerly taking advantage of the rest 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.

2025 has truly been a historic year. No matter which side of the fence that you are on, nobody can deny that we have witnessed seismic political changes over the last 12 months. Meanwhile, the AI revolution is transforming our lives in ways that we don’t even understand. But despite all of our advanced technology, we can’t stop the endless barrage of natural disasters that has been pummeling us in 2025, and hunger continues to spread all over the globe. Of course war has been a major theme from the very beginning of the year to the very end of the year. Humanity has been facing one major crisis after another, and people are steadily getting angrier and more frustrated.

Our world is changing at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking.  If you always wanted to live in “interesting” times, you have certainly gotten your wish.  The following are 30 numbers from 2025 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 As 1999 began, a Gallup survey found that 70 percent of Americans were satisfied with how things were going in the United States.  As 2025 ends, only 24 percent of Americans are satisfied with how things are going in the United States.

#2 In 1980, the fact that the U.S. national debt had reached a trillion dollars was a really big deal.  But now our national debt has surpassed the 38 trillion dollar mark and there is seemingly no end in sight.

#3 Globally, the total amount of debt in the world has reached an almost unbelievable total of 337 trillion dollars.

#4 In 2025, more than half of all of the nations on the entire planet were either directly involved in military conflict or were funding it.

#5 At the start of 2025, you could purchase an ounce of silver for about 30 dollars.  As 2025 ends, an ounce of silver will cost you more than 70 dollars.

#6 Crypto investors lost about $800,000,000,000 during the month of November alone.

#7 After all this time, the Department of Justice is claiming that they have just “discovered” a million more Epstein documents.

#8 In 2025, researchers in the United States and South Korea developed a version of the bird flu that has a 100 percent death rate in mammals.

#9 According to the latest National Customer Rage Survey, 77 percent of U.S. consumers say that they have had a product or service problem within the last 12 months.  That is a brand new all-time record high.

#10 Earlier this year, we witnessed 494 earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or greater within a 30 day period.  That was about 4 times as many earthquakes of magnitude 5.0 or greater than we normally experience in a typical month.

#11 Globally, natural disasters caused a total of $120,000,000,000 in economic damage in 2025.

#12 The number of Americans that are dealing with food insecurity has almost doubled since 2021.

#13 The United Nations is warning that nearly 10 percent of the entire population of the globe is now going to bed hungry each night.

#14 Approximately 1.2 million foreign students are currently attending colleges and universities in the United States.  How many U.S. students have been denied admission in order to make room for those students at our best schools?

#15 In 2019, you could get a cheeseburger at McDonald’s for a dollar.  Today, the average price of a cheeseburger at McDonald’s is $3.15.

#16 Since 2019, the annual income needed to afford a median-priced home in rural U.S. counties has more than doubled.

#17 According to a survey that was conducted by PNC Bank, 67 percent of U.S. workers are now living paycheck to paycheck.

#18 Investopedia has determined that it now takes approximately 5 million dollars to live the American Dream over the course of a lifetime.

#19 One study discovered 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.

#20 One recent survey found that 70 percent of U.S. adults are currently taking at least one pharmaceutical drug, and nearly a quarter of U.S. adults are currently taking at least four pharmaceutical drugs.

#21 According to the CDC, an American now dies by suicide every 11 minutes.

#22 Approximately 20 percent of high school students in the United States have had a relationship with an AI chatbot.

#23 One recent survey found that almost two-thirds of all church leaders that prepare sermons “use AI tools in their sermon writing process”.

#24 Well over 50 percent of the global population lives in a nation where Christians are being violently persecuted.

#25 U.S. farmers are facing the worst economic downturn that they have experienced in at least 50 years.

#26 The size of the U.S. cattle herd has dropped to the lowest level in about 75 years.

#27 According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. employers have announced a grand total of almost 1.2 million job cuts in 2025.

#28 The McKinsey Global Institute is warning that approximately 40 percent of all U.S. workers could potentially be replaced by AI.

#29 In more than 50 percent of the nations on the entire planet, the total fertility rate is now below replacement level.

#30 A recent YouGov survey discovered that nearly half of the U.S. population believes that a nuclear war is likely within the next 10 years.

The pace of global events has accelerated significantly over the past year.

It really does feel like we are building up to some sort of a crescendo.

We are living at a time of a “perfect storm”, and we just keep getting hammered by one crisis after another.

As a result, much of the population has become numb to it all.

Never before in human history have we been subjected to such an emotional overload.

When you are being pulled in so many directions emotionally, it can be really easy to give in to the temptation to go numb.

But I would encourage my readers not to do that.

It is when times are the darkest that light is needed the most.

As things get even darker in 2026, choose to be a light to those around you.

All of human history has been building up to this time, and we get to be here for it.

There is nowhere else that I would rather be than right here, and there is no other time that I would have rather lived than right now.

Don’t let all of the chaos that is going on all around us get you down.

You were born for such a time as this, and now is the time to become everything that you were created to be.

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.

If you are having a really difficult time keeping up with the rapidly rising cost of living, you are certainly not alone.  This year, “affordability” was a buzzword that was constantly on the lips of politicians, economists and talking heads on television.  As you will see below, Americans are being slammed by rising prices from a multitude of directions.  Meanwhile, “layoffs” has been another buzzword that has been widely used in 2025.  Thanks to the rise of AI and our steadily deteriorating economy, we have seen far more mass layoffs this year than we did last year.  Unfortunately, one survey has found that executives are gearing up for an even larger round in 2026.

This is what happens when you flood the system with money and you go into unprecedented amounts of debt.

Eventually a day of reckoning arrives.

Ever since the Great Recession, our leaders have been pursuing highly inflationary policies, and now the American people “are yelling about affordability”…

Affordability has been a source of household frustration and a key focus of political discourse in recent months, as prices for everyday goods and services continue to rise.

“People are yelling about affordability,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University. “I think it’s very obviously become a political flash point,” she said.

It wasn’t a foregone conclusion that things would turn out this way.

If we had made different choices, we would have gotten different results.

But we can’t go back and change the past now.  At this point, things are so bad that “affordability” has become the number one concern for U.S. voters…

A University of Michigan poll published in December shows that high prices remain a pain point for consumers. About 46% blame high prices for poor personal finances — among the highest shares since the series started in the late 1970s.

Consumers’ views of their current financial situation in December “collapsed” into negative territory for the first time since July 2022, the month after pandemic-era inflation had peaked, according to a poll published Tuesday by the Conference Board.

Overall, 65% of U.S. households say the cost of living has gotten worse or much worse in the past year, according to a recent Politico poll.

Healthcare costs have risen particularly rapidly.

One 62-year-old man that was recently interviewed by Business Insider openly admitted that he cannot afford to get sick, but he can’t afford to be healthy either…

David Deal’s 2026 outlook is what he describes as a “whack-a-mole of worry.” While he’s 62 and presumably approaching retirement, 65 is “just a number” for him, not a milestone marker for throwing in the towel on his career like his parents’ generation. The thing that really has him wound up, though, is healthcare, which he calls a “DEFCON 1” situation. Deal, a marketing consultant who lives in the Chicago suburbs, and his wife pay for their own insurance, and their premiums are going up by 25% next year. He’s worried one slip on the ice this winter could mean financial disaster. A family member’s recent two-hour trip to the ER cost them thousands of dollars, even with insurance, and the episode has him spooked.

“For me, it’s the double-whammy of skyrocketing premiums and also the skyrocketing costs of actually getting care,” he says. “We are literally at a point where we can’t afford to be sick, and we can’t afford to be healthy.”

He emphasizes that he means a collective “we” — he knows he’s far from alone in his predicament.

Health insurance premiums are set to rise even higher in 2026, and many Americans are cancelling their policies as a result.

When you don’t have health insurance, you just pray that you don’t get sick.

If you do get sick, it can be a financial disaster.

Meanwhile, one recent survey discovered that 75 percent of Americans have “reduced spending in other areas” just so that they can afford to pay for their groceries…

But whatever their preferences, many shoppers still fretted about how to pay for their groceries. More than 2 in 3 respondents (67.6%) said that they’re struggling to pay grocery bills because of inflation and rising food prices, according to a survey by Swiftly, which provides digital and media solutions for brick-and-mortar supermarkets.

More than 3 out of 4 (75.2%) responded that they’ve reduced spending in other areas to afford groceries, and in a follow-up question selected what areas they’ve cut spending in the most to pay grocery bills, with entertainment spending the most likely to be cut, followed by spending on travel, clothing, and going out to eat or drink.

Government bureaucrats keep telling us that food prices are not going up very quickly.

But everyone can see that they are wrong.

And going out to eat has become a luxury that most of the population simply cannot afford on a regular basis.  As a result, restaurants are closing down at a staggering pace…

New data shows that 2025 was a record year for restaurant closures in the District.

The Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington (RAMW) reports 92 restaurants closed their doors this year, compared to 73 closures in 2024 and 48 in 2022.

Purchasing a new vehicle has also become a luxury that most of the population simply cannot afford any longer.

Since the early days of the pandemic, the average price of a new vehicle has gone from less than $38,000 to more than $50,000…

Americans are shelling out record car payments — and now some are signing up for loans stretching nearly a decade to get a new set of wheels.

The average monthly payment for a new car hit about $760 in November, according to industry-research firm J.D. Power, after the typical new-vehicle price surged past the $50,000 mark this fall — up from less than $38,000 in early 2020.

With sticker shock everywhere, buyers are leaning hard on longer financing to keep payments from exploding — even if that means paying far more interest over time.

Some dealers are now stretching out vehicle payments for 100 months so that people can actually afford them.

To me, that is absolutely insane.

But this is the economic system that we live in now.

It is designed to get us into as much debt as possible, and at this stage U.S. households are a whopping 18.6 trillion dollars in debt…

The Federal Reserve signaled a higher bar for 2026 interest rate cuts at its December meeting, potentially snatching away a much-needed reprieve for millions of Americans saddled with debt.

Household debt ballooned to a record $18.6 trillion during the third quarter of 2025, and the central bank is expected to lower its benchmark rate just once or twice next year to soften borrowing costs.

Americans have never been more overextended than they are right now.

It was another record year for credit card debt during the holiday season, but vast numbers of our fellow citizens are still paying off credit card debt from Christmas 2024.

Getting deep into debt in this very challenging economic environment is very foolish, because most people do not have jobs that are secure.

In fact, job security is now the number two concern for U.S. voters…

Job security rose to workers’ second-most pressing concern this year, after covering their monthly expenses, according to a new survey by Mercer.

While “covering monthly expenses” had been the leading concern for the past three annual surveys, fears around job loss jumped from seventh place in 2023 to second place in 2025, where it was tied with being able to retire and work-life balance. Mercer did not conduct this survey in 2024.

Throughout this year, I have documented so many of the mass layoffs that have been occurring all over the nation.

For example, Tyson Foods has announced that a beef processing facility in Lexington, Nebraska will be shut down permanently next month, and that means that approximately 3,200 workers will be losing their jobs.

A reporter that visited Lexington discovered that fear of what those layoffs would mean had gripped the entire area…

On a frigid day after Mass at St. Ann’s Catholic Church in rural Nebraska, worshipers shuffled into the basement and sat on folding chairs, their faces barely masking the fear gripping their town.

There are only about 11,000 people living in Lexington, and so these layoffs have the potential to turn it into a ghost town…

“Suddenly they tell us that there’s no more work. Your world closes in on you,” Alejandra Gutierrez said

She and the others work at Tyson Foods’ beef plant and are among the 3,200 people who will lose their jobs when Lexington’s biggest employer closes the plant next month after more than two decades of operation.

Hundreds of families may be forced to pack up and leave the town of 11,000, heading east to Omaha or Iowa, or south to the meatpacking towns of Kansas or beyond, causing spinoff layoffs in Lexington’s restaurants, barbershops, grocers, convenience stores and taco trucks.

There are so many other examples that I could share with you.

In Michigan, the closure of a facility in Detroit will mean that more than a thousand General Motors employees will be out of work starting on January 5th…

According to WARN Act notices filed in November, 1,140 General Motors employees will be let go from the company’s Factory Zero site in Detroit, Michigan on January 5.

In a filing with the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, General Motors said the cuts would be permanent, affect several roles, and stemmed from adjustments related to the slower-than-expected adoption of electric vehicles.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

According to one recent survey, over one-third of all large companies intend to slash their payrolls during the months ahead…

In November, executive search firm Spencer Stuart asked 90 chief marketing officers how aggressively they plan to use AI to shrink payrolls, the Wall Street Journal reported.

More than one in three executives said that they expect to hand out pink slips in the next 12 to 24 months as they deploy more computer agents.

The trend is even worse among bigger companies.

Nearly half the executives at firms worth more than $20 billion said they’re planning significant job cuts.

If this survey is accurate, we could see millions of layoffs over the next couple of years.

Just think about that.

We were warned that this was going to happen.

Now it is playing out right in front of our eyes.

And survey after survey is indicating that the American people are quite gloomy about where economic conditions are heading next…

Americans are ending 2025 significantly more pessimistic about the direction of their financial situations than they were at the start of the year, according to the University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment gauge from early December. Its reading on personal finance expectations is 12% below where it was at the beginning of the year. A November consumer survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York similarly found that people are increasingly gloomy about their current and future finances, and their expectations for increased medical care costs are at their highest levels since January 2014.

If you understand what is happening, that will help you to make better decisions.

When conditions get tough, those that are wise tighten things up.

Sadly, most of the population continues to party as if tomorrow will never come, but no matter how hard one may try it is impossible to stop the inexorable march of time.

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.

This year silver has been on the greatest bull run that we have ever seen.  It is up an astounding 166 percent since January 1st, and so those that purchased it long ago and stuck with it are really loving life right now.  When the price of silver reached the 50 dollar mark earlier this year, I thought that it would be some time before it hit the 60 dollar mark.  But of course the truth is that it didn’t take long at all.  Once the price of silver reached 60 dollars, I thought that it might hit 70 dollars some time in early 2026.  If you check the latest numbers, you will see that we have easily blown past that threshold, and the price of silver has already surpassed 80 dollars in Shanghai.  I know that I have been using the word “crazy” a lot lately, but without a doubt what we are witnessing at this moment is truly “crazy”.

So why is this happening?

In a previous article, I discussed factors such as the AI boom, strong industrial demand, new technologies and a spike in demand for physical silver in Asia.

But let’s step back for a moment and take a look at the bigger picture.

To me, it is not a coincidence that the price of silver is exploding at the exact same time that we are reaching the terminal phase of the largest global debt super cycle in history…

Global debt has climbed to an all-time high of $337.7 trillion by the end of the second quarter of 2025, according to the latest Global Debt Monitor from the Institute of International Finance (IIF). The first half of 2025 alone saw an increase of over $21 trillion, largely driven by accommodative financial conditions, a softer US dollar, and continued government borrowing.

This jump is comparable to the COVID-era debt explosion in 2020, when governments and corporations worldwide dramatically ramped up spending to tackle the pandemic.

This is the first time in world history that all of the major powers are facing a nightmarish debt crisis simultaneously.

As this 337.7 trillion dollar debt bubble bursts, it is going to be so important to have your money somewhere safe.

So it makes all the sense in the world that there is so much demand for silver right now.

Long-term bond yields have been surging all over the globe, and this is even happening in nations that were once considered to be “safe havens” such as Japan and Germany…

Long-term yields are rising sharply across many countries, including in Germany and Japan, which in the past used to be safe havens. That puts huge pressure on fiscally distressed countries like Italy and France and incentivizes short-termism. If the EU wants to become a geopolitical player, it can’t allow high-debt countries to dictate foreign policy. This has to stop.

Meanwhile, fiat currencies are rapidly losing value, and that has particularly been true for the U.S. dollar…

The U.S. dollar was on the back foot on Wednesday and set for its biggest yearly fall since 2017, possibly with more to come, as investors wagered the Federal Reserve would have room to cut rates further next year even as most of its peers look finished with easing.

Tuesday’s solid U.S. GDP reading failed to move the dial on the rate outlook, leaving investors pricing in roughly two more Fed cuts in 2026.

This has been a horrible year for the U.S. dollar.

That is one of the reasons why the purchasing power of your money doesn’t stretch as far as it once did.

For the year, the U.S. dollar index is down about 10 percent…

Against a basket of currencies, the dollar index fell to a 2-1/2-month low of 97.767. It was on track to lose 9.8% for the year, which would mark its steepest annual drop since 2017. Any further weakness in the last week of the year would take its fall to its greatest since 2003.

Please keep in mind that the other currencies that the U.S. dollar is being measured against are rapidly losing value as well.

It is just that the U.S. dollar is losing value even faster.

One of the reasons why the U.S. dollar is losing value so rapidly is because global central banks are becoming less dependent on it…

The share of USD-denominated assets held by other central banks dropped to 56.9% of total foreign exchange reserves in Q3, the lowest since 1994, from 57.1% in Q2 and 58.5% in Q1, according to the IMF’s new data on Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves.

USD-denominated foreign exchange reserves include US Treasury securities, US mortgage-backed securities (MBS), US agency securities, US corporate bonds, and other USD-denominated assets held by central banks other than the Fed.

This is not good news at all.

Because as Wolf Richter has aptly pointed out, having the reserve currency of the world has been a massive advantage for us…

Foreign central banks buying USD-denominated assets, such as Treasury securities, helps push up prices and push down yields of those assets. Being the dominant reserve currency had the effect of helping the US borrow more cheaply to fund its huge twin deficits – the trade deficit and the budget deficit – and thereby has enabled the US to run those huge twin deficits for decades. At some point, this continued decline as a reserve currency, as it reduces demand for USD debt, would make the trade deficit and the budget deficit more difficult to sustain.

People have been talking about the death of the U.S. dollar for a long time.

The U.S. dollar is certainly not dead yet, but the fact that it is in the process of dying should deeply alarm us.

The entire global financial system is shifting, and right now there is a global race to accumulate precious metals.  This is particularly true for silver…

Silver has been designated critical by the United States. Russia has increased accumulation. India has discouraged selling while encouraging the use of silver as collateral. The Middle East is preparing silver-linked tokenized instruments. Demand is rising across jurisdictions.

At the same time, there have been some things going on behind the scenes that have caused the price of silver to go parabolic over the last couple of months…

Here’s the next dot: over the last two months, there has been a massive inflow of silver from Latin America into the United States. Not into China. Into the U.S.

Who is one clearinghouse? JPMorgan.

On Black Friday, JPMorgan effectively pulled silver off the market. That removal of available supply triggered a forced response elsewhere. Someone in China who was structurally short silver had to cover, and cover aggressively. That wasn’t a trade. That was a scramble.

I don’t see how the price of silver can keep going up at this rate.

At some point it will stabilize.

But of course silver is not the only precious metal that is in great demand right now.

On Friday, the price of platinum and the price of palladium both went absolutely haywire…

Elsewhere, spot platinum rose 8.7% to $2,411.46 per ounce, having earlier hit a record high of $2,448.25, ⁠while palladium climbed nearly 10% to $1,850.76.

For those that have invested in precious metals, what we are witnessing at this moment is such good news.

Conversely, unprecedented volatility in the prices of precious metals is a major red flag for the global financial system.

Bond yields are going nuts, cryptocurrencies have already crashed, and global stock markets are flashing huge warning signs.

Many are anticipating a great deal of financial chaos in 2026, and at this stage it is hard to argue that they are wrong.

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.

So many seniors that were once so full of life are now just shadows of their former selves.  It can be really easy to assume that they are “just getting old” and that nothing unusual is happening to them.  But the truth is that in so many cases the reason why America’s seniors are shutting down is because they are simply being overmedicated.  Our entire medical system has been designed to push pills, and so when our seniors seek medical help that is usually the solution that they are offered.  As you will see below, the proportion of our seniors that are on at least 8 pharmaceutical drugs is truly alarming.  Of course those that consume pharmaceutical drug cocktails on a daily basis for an extended period of time are quite likely to experience very serious consequences.

Most people don’t realize that modern terms such as “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical” originally come from the Greek word “pharmakeia”…

The word “pharmacy” has a fascinating origin story that’s as complex as the practice itself.

It comes from the Greek word “pharmakeia”, which referred to “the practice of the druggist”. But here is the twist: “phármakon”, the root of the term, was a double-edged sword – it meant a plant or herb that could be used for either healing or harmful purposes, blurring the line between medicine and poison.

No society in the entire history of the planet has taken “pharmakeia” to the extremes that we have.

We are the most drugged nation that the world has ever seen, and this is particularly true for our seniors.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed an 83-year-old woman named Barbara Schmidt that has “filled prescriptions for more than a dozen different drugs in the past year”…

For years, Barbara Schmidt’s family feared an illness was behind a pattern of terrifying falls that repeatedly landed the 83-year-old great-grandmother in surgery with broken bones. Instead, Schmidt’s frequent tumbles might have been tied to something else: medications intended to make her better.

Schmidt, who lives with her husband of 65 years in Lewes, Del., filled prescriptions for more than a dozen different drugs in the past year, according to pharmacy and medical records.

After taking so many medications in such a short period of time, it really is a miracle that she is still alive today.

But she is far from alone.

The Wall Street Journal discovered that one out of every six seniors that is enrolled in Medicare’s drug benefit has been prescribed at least 8 different pharmaceutical drugs…

That isn’t unusual for America’s seniors, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicare data. One in six of the 46 million seniors enrolled in Medicare’s drug benefit, which pays for most drugs taken by older Americans, were prescribed eight or more medications.

Millions upon millions of our seniors are literally being drugged into oblivion.

One of the problems is that seniors often visit multiple physicians, and that can result in a lot of confusion…

Pharmacists who work with seniors say doctors might not be aware of their patients’ full medication list. Patients don’t always mention what their other doctors have prescribed when a history is taken, and specialists might not have access to a shared medical record.

The Journal analysis found that, among seniors taking eight or more drugs, it was common for the prescriptions to come from a large number of doctors.

Of course it isn’t just seniors that are being overmedicated.

One recent survey found that 70 percent of U.S. adults are currently taking at least one pharmaceutical drug, and nearly a quarter of U.S. adults are currently taking at least four pharmaceutical drugs…

Recent CivicScience poll results reveal the picture of maintenance prescription drug use in the U.S. has shifted dramatically. The number of U.S. adults who report taking at least one prescription medication per day is now 70%, a 14 percentage-point increase from 2019 data.

Additionally, the percentage of people taking four or more prescription medications daily in the US has increased by six percentage points, from 18% to 24%. An increasing number of prescriptions equals less and less wiggle room in budgets already tightened due to inflationary prices.

It is an insanely profitable industry, and that is why we constantly see ads for pharmaceutical drugs on television.

They desperately want more “customers”, and seniors are the easiest target.

According to the official CDC website, 89 percent of Americans that are 65 years or older are currently taking at least one pharmaceutical drug…

Among adults aged ≥65 years, men (89.0%) and women (89.3%) were equally likely to take prescription medication. Prescription medication use increased with age, from 48.4% for those aged 18–44 years to 89.2% for those aged ≥65 years, and this pattern of increasing use with age was observed for both men and women.

We take more pharmaceutical drugs than anyone else in the world.

So why is our life expectancy below average compared to other industrialized nations?

I think that is a really important question.

When our seniors go to see their doctors, they are often not properly informed about the potential side effects of the drugs that they are being prescribed.

Let me give you an example.

Zoloft is the number one antidepressant in the United States, but most of those that are taking it do not realize that it has an extremely long list of side effects.

But don’t just take my word for it.  The following comes from the official Zoloft website…

ZOLOFT may cause serious side effects. Call your healthcare provider right away if you have any of the following symptoms, or call 911 if there is an emergency.

1. Suicidal thoughts or actions:

ZOLOFT and other antidepressant medicines may increase suicidal thoughts or actions in some people 24 years of age and younger, especially within the first few months of treatment or when the dose is changed.

Depression or other serious mental illnesses are the most important causes of suicidal thoughts or actions.

Watch for these changes and call your healthcare provider right away if you notice new or sudden changes in mood, behavior, actions, thoughts, or feelings, especially if severe.

Pay particular attention to such changes when ZOLOFT is started or when the dose is changed.

Keep all follow-up visits with your healthcare provider and call between visits if you are worried about symptoms.

2. Call a doctor right away if you or a person you know who is taking ZOLOFT has any of the following symptoms, especially if they are new, worse, or worry you:

-thoughts about suicide or dying
-attempts to commit suicide
-new or worse depression
-new or worse anxiety
-feeling very agitated or restless
-panic attacks
-trouble sleeping (insomnia)
-new or worse irritability
-acting aggressive, being angry, or violent
-acting on dangerous impulses
-an extreme increase in activity and talking (mania)
-other unusual changes in behavior or mood

3. Serotonin Syndrome. This condition can be life-threatening and symptoms may include:

-agitation, hallucinations, coma, or other changes in mental status
-racing heartbeat, high or low blood pressure
-coordination problems or muscle twitching (overactive reflexes)
-nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea
-sweating or fever
-muscle rigidity

4. Increased chance of bleeding: ZOLOFT and other antidepressant medicines may increase your risk of bleeding or bruising, especially if you take the blood thinner warfarin (COUMADIN®, JANTOVEN®), a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAIDs, like ibuprofen or naproxen), or aspirin.

5. Manic episodes. Symptoms may include:

-greatly increased energy
-racing thoughts
-unusually grand ideas
-severe trouble sleeping
-reckless behavior
-excessive happiness or irritability
-talking more or faster than usual

6. Seizures or convulsions.

7. Glaucoma (angle-closure glaucoma). ZOLOFT may cause a certain type of eye problem called angle-closure glaucoma. Call your healthcare provider if you have eye pain, changes in your vision, or swelling or redness in or around the eye. Only some people are at risk for these problems. You may want to undergo an eye examination to see if you are at risk and receive preventative treatment if you are.

8. Changes in appetite or weight.

9. Low salt (sodium) levels in the blood. Elderly people may be at greater risk for this. Symptoms may include headache, weakness or feeling unsteady, confusion, problems concentrating or thinking, or memory problems.

10. Sexual problems (dysfunction). Taking selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), including ZOLOFT, may cause sexual problems.

There are many other drugs that literally list “death” as one of the potential side effects.

And earlier this year it was being reported that adverse reactions to pharmaceutical drugs have now become the third leading cause of death in the United States…

In 2021, the American Society of Pharmacovigilance (ASP) launched the Fourth Cause Campaign to raise awareness that adverse drug events (ADEs) were the fourth leading cause of death in the United States. Today, new data confirm a troubling and unacceptable reality—ADEs have now surged to become the third leading cause of death. An internal analysis conducted by ASP projects that adverse drug events now account for over 250,000 deaths annually, surpassing stroke and respiratory disease, making it the third leading cause of death in the United States.

What we are witnessing is truly a national tragedy.

But the big news networks aren’t going to talk much about it, because the pharmaceutical companies are their biggest advertisers.

And our politicians are unlikely to push for major reform, because the pharmaceutical companies pour vast amounts of money into their campaigns.

Money is power, and the pharmaceutical industry is absolutely swimming in cash.

If you are waiting for major change to happen, you may find yourself waiting for quite a while.

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.