Money

Homes Are “Unaffordable” In 99 Percent Of U.S. Counties

September 28, 2023September 28, 2023 by Michael

If you are looking to buy a home right now, I feel so sorry for you. The other day when I wrote that “life in America has never been more unaffordable than it is right now”, some people thought that I was exaggerating. But the truth is that I was not exaggerating one bit. The cost of living has risen to extremely painful levels, and this is particularly true when it comes to housing. Since 2019, the median price of a home in the United States has risen by more than $100,000. And thanks to the Federal Reserve, we are now facing dramatically higher interest rates. As a result, housing has become extraordinarily unaffordable. In fact, a new report that was just released determined that homes are currently “unaffordable” in 99 percent of U.S. counties…

The typical American cannot afford to buy a home in a growing number of communities across the nation, according to common lending standards.

That’s the main takeaway from a new report from real estate data provider ATTOM. Researchers examined the median home prices last year for roughly 575 U.S. counties and found that home prices in 99% of those areas are beyond the reach of the average income earner, who makes $71,214 a year, according to ATTOM.

In the entire history of our country, we have never seen anything like this before.

A combination of insanely high home prices and suffocatingly high mortgage rates have literally frozen the housing market.

Until something changes, millions of potential buyers and millions of potential sellers will remain sidelined…

Housing experts point to couple trends driving up housing costs. Mortgage rates have topped 7%, adding hundreds of dollars per month to a potential house payment. At the same time, homeowners who locked in at lower mortgage rates during the pandemic have opted not to sell out of fear of having to buy another property at today’s elevated rates, depleting the supply of homes for sale.

“The only people who are selling right now are people who really need to move because of a life event — divorce, marriage, new baby, new job, etc.,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist of Redfin, told CBS MoneyWatch.

Considering everything that I just shared with you, it should be no surprise that pending home sales in August were 18.7 percent lower than they were a year ago…

Pending home sales plunged in the U.S. last month as high mortgage rates deterred more would-be buyers and sellers from making deals.

The National Association of Realtors’ Pending Home Sales Index tumbled 7.1% to 71.8 in August, a much greater decline than the 0.8% drop analysts polled by Refinitiv expected.

Year over year, pending transactions are down 18.7%, the NAR’s data shows.

According to one analyst, a potential buyer would need an income of more than $125,000 a year in order to qualify for a mortgage on an average U.S. home right now…

The steep drop in pending sales in August, on the heels of reports of slower existing and new home sales at the end of the summer, suggests that the market is cooling, said Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright Multiple Listing Service.

Overall, she said, total home sales this year could be below 4.2 million; that would be the lowest level since 2010.

With mortgage rates near and above 7% for all of August, purchasers’ buying power was crushed, and for many the math for buying a home just did not work.

“At a mortgage rate of 7%, a homebuyer would need an income of over $125,000 to qualify for a loan to purchase a $400,000 home,” said Sturtevant.

So the vast majority of us are just going to have to wait until the market shifts.

Of course housing is not the only thing that has become ridiculously expensive.

According to CNN, the price of a box of Girl Scout cookies is going up to six dollars this year…

Girl Scout cookies are getting more expensive. In some places, at least.

At least one New York State chapter, the Girl Scouts Heart of the Hudson, told troop parents and other members of the community in an email this week that all cookies will be sold for $6 per box this coming cookie season — which takes place from about January to April annually nationwide – up from $5 last year.

“In order to combat rising production and material costs, GSHH will be increasing the price of all cookie packages to $6.00,” the chapter’s interim CEO wrote, adding “we expect our neighboring councils to announce similar increases in the coming weeks and months.”

I remember the days when it was common for people to buy dozens of boxes every year.

But now if you want to do that you will need to sell an organ.

Our standard of living is being steadily eroded, and meanwhile economic conditions continue to slow down all over the country.

Earlier today, I was saddened to learn that Epic Games is laying off workers…

Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, said on Thursday that it will lay off 16% of its staff, around 830 employees, as it attempts to reverse what CEO Tim Sweeney called “unrealistic” spending.

In a letter to employees Thursday, Sweeney said the video game company had been “spending way more money than we earn, investing in the next evolution of Epic.”

“I had long been optimistic that we could power through this transition without layoffs, but in retrospect I see that this was unrealistic,” Sweeney said in the letter, which the company shared publicly.

If even Epic Games is struggling now, what does that say about the overall state of our economy?

I am so concerned about where things are headed in the months ahead.

A major economic downturn is looming, the most chaotic presidential election in our history will happen next year, and we are already witnessing widespread rioting and looting all over the nation.

In fact, looters in Philadelphia just made headlines for a second consecutive night…

Looting has rocked Philadelphia for a second night in a row as brazen thieves ransacked a liquor store.

Shocking footage out of the City of Brotherly Love showed Fine Wine And Good Spirits smashed apart in the latest flash rob mob crime.

The brutes made off with the safe and raided the lottery machine on a night when liquor stores were shut down by the authorities.

For a long time, I have been encouraging my readers to consider relocating if they live in any of our major cities.

But now thanks to a combination of ridiculously high home prices and the highest mortgage rates we have seen in ages, most Americans simply cannot afford to move.

Unfortunately, most people will be forced to remain where they are as the events of the next few years shake this nation to the core.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned) When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends. Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible. I have also started a brand new Substack newsletter, and I encourage you to subscribe so that you won’t miss any of my articles. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is definitely a great help. 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, I strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

10 Numbers Which Prove That The U.S. Economy Has Hit A Major Pivot Point

September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 by Michael

During the summer, many of the experts repeatedly assured us that the U.S. economy would be able to avoid a recession, but now reality is setting in. Credit conditions continue to tighten, home sales are falling, credit card losses are exploding, stores are closing all over the country, and the number of bankruptcies is rising to very alarming levels. Meanwhile, the cost of living continues to become more and more suffocating. If you have a gut feeling that very hard times are on the horizon, you are definitely not alone. As you will see below, a staggering 71 percent of all Americans currently believe that America is on the wrong track, and our economy is one of the biggest reasons why they feel this way. The following are 10 numbers which prove that the U.S. economy has hit a major pivot point…

#1 Consumer confidence was down more than expected this month…

The confidence of American consumers slipped this month, particularly about the future, as expectations persist that interest rates will remain elevated for an extended period.

The Conference Board, a business research group, said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell to 103 in September from 108.7 in August. Analysts were expecting a smaller decrease, to a reading of 105.

#2 The Conference Board’s index that measures future expectations has actually dropped below a level that historically signals “a recession within a year”…

Most troubling was the decline in the index measuring future expectations, which tumbled to 73.7 in September from 83.3 in August. Readings below 80 for future expectations historically signal a recession within a year.

#3 With mortgage rates at suffocating levels, sales of new homes in the U.S. fell 8.7 percent last month…

New home sales dropped in August from the month before, as mortgage rates topped 7% and rose to the highest levels in more than 20 years.

Sales of newly constructed homes fell 8.7% in August to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 675,000 from a revised rate of 739,000 in July, according to a joint report from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau.

#4 A record high percentage of U.S. consumers are indicating that credit conditions are getting tighter…

American consumers are worried about access to credit amid persistently higher interest rates and tighter standards at banks, according to a New York Federal Reserve survey released Monday.

Respondents indicating that the ability to get loans, credit cards and mortgages is harder now than it was a year ago rose to nearly 60%, the highest level in a data series that goes back to June 2013. The results were part of the New York Fed’s Survey of Consumer Expectations for August.

#5 Credit card losses are increasing at the fastest pace in 30 years…

Credit card companies are racking up losses at the fastest pace in almost 30 years, outside of the Great Financial Crisis, according to Goldman Sachs.

Credit card losses bottomed in September 2021, and while initial increases were likely reversals from stimulus, they have been rapidly rising since the first quarter of 2022. Since that time, it’s an increasing rate of losses only seen in recent history during the recession of 2008.

It is far from over, the firm predicts.

#6 At this point, things are getting so bad that even the Federal Reserve is laying off about 300 workers…

At a time when mainstream economists and FOMC policymakers are betting the farm on a “soft landing” for the US economy, an unexpectedly hard signal was just issued by none other than the Fed itself: for the first time in over a decade, the US central bank announced it would cut about 300 people from its payroll this year, a rare reduction in headcount for an organization that has grown steadily since 2010 – after all, it takes if not a village (with its own police force), then certainly thousands of workers to come up with catastrophically wrong economic forecasts and to keep the money printer primed and ready to pump out a few trillion at a moment’s notice.The nu

#7 The number of bankruptcy cases in the United States has increased on a year over year basis for 13 months in a row…

Data released Tuesday showed that Americans filed more than 39,000 bankruptcy cases in Aug. 2023, an 18 percent increase from the same time last year.

The data released by Unusual Whales details how, along with personal bankruptcy filings, there were more than 41,600 new bankruptcy cases recorded in August, including for businesses. This marks the thirteenth consecutive month that bankruptcy filings have shown a year-over-year increase under the Biden administration’s embarrassing and dangerous economic policies.

#8 Goldman Sachs is warning that America’s strategic oil reserve has hit a 40 year low…

America’s emergency oil stockpile has plunged to 40-year lows. The shrinking Strategic Petroleum Reserve is limiting Washington’s ability to shield consumers from the fallout of Saudi Arabia’s aggressive supply cuts, according to Goldman Sachs.

“At this point, US energy policy has fewer bullets left. It has less levers left in its policy toolkit,” Daan Struyven, head of oil research at Goldman Sachs, told CNN in a phone interview.

That’s one reason Goldman Sachs expects oil prices to stay high, averaging $100 a barrel this time next year. Triple-digit oil would boost already-high prices at the pump, worsening inflation and potentially influencing the 2024 race for the White House.

#9 It is being projected that the price of oil could eventually reach 150 dollars a barrel. Needless to say, such a development would radically change our economic outlook…

That’s Doug Lawler, chief executive of Continental Resources, the shale-drilling giant controlled by billionaire Harold Hamm, telling Bloomberg News on Monday that crude prices are set to remain elevated and could press to the $120- to $150-a-barrel range without new production.

#10 A new NBC News poll has found that 71 percent of Americans believe that the country is on the wrong track…

The 71% of Americans in our latest NBC News poll saying the country is headed in the wrong direction is the eighth time in the last nine NBC News surveys dating back to Oct. 2021 when the wrong track has been above 70%.

And the one exception was in Sept. 2022, when it was 68%.

We have never before seen this level of sustained pessimism in the 30-year-plus history of the poll.

For more than a year, there has been speculation about when the next wave of our economic crisis would arrive.

Well, it appears that it is here.

The months ahead promise to be very challenging, and the long-term outlook is even worse.

2024 is certainly shaping up to be quite a year.

Economic conditions will be deteriorating just as we head into the most tumultuous election season that we have ever witnessed.

Stay safe out there, because things will soon start getting really crazy in this country.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Life In America Has Never Been More Unaffordable Than It Is Right Now

September 26, 2023September 26, 2023 by Michael

Our standard of living is being systematically destroyed, but for a lot of years many Americans didn’t fully understand what was taking place because it was happening so slowly. But now we have reached a stage where the purchasing power of our money is collapsing and the cost of living has become exceedingly painful. Thanks to our rapidly rising cost of living, the middle class is becoming “the impoverished class”, and the poor are increasingly being pushed out into the streets. If we do not find a way to turn these trends around, it won’t be too long before we have tremendous societal turmoil on our hands.

Earlier today, I came across an article about a woman that found a receipt from Burger King that was dated August 10, 1986.

At that time you could buy a Whopper for just $1.54.

Today, that same Whopper will cost you $6.79…

A woman has been left stunned after discovering a retro Burger King receipt from the 1980s which reveals the staggering price increases that the fast food chain has implemented over the past four decades.

US-based Liza took to social media to share the receipt after her mother found it in a box in the garage while remodeling her home.

The faded paper from the fast food chain dates back to August 10, 1986, and lists three Whopper burgers purchased for $4.62 – which works out at $1.54 each.

A single Whopper burger currently costs $6.79 in today’s money – over four times the price listed on the vintage receipt.

In other words, if you had $6.79 back then, you could buy four whoppers and you would still have money left over.

This is what inflation does.

It destroys our purchasing power.

Another woman named Melanie that makes 34 dollars an hour is so stressed financially that she literally tries to make one loaf of rye bread last her for the entire week…

“What I’ve started doing is I buy a loaf of rye bread, and I work really hard to keep that one loaf of rye bread lasting me the whole week. And I eat peanut butter, so I’ll eat peanut butter toast whenever I’m hungry.”

In the old days, if you were making 34 dollars an hour you were living the high life.

But now most people making 34 dollars an hour are just barely scraping by from month to month.

Of course it isn’t just food that has become absurdly expensive.

At this point, homes in the U.S. have never been more unaffordable than they are right now.

The following was recently posted on Twitter by The Kobeissi Letter…

Inflation adjusted home prices are now 85% above their average dating back to 1900.

Even after accounting for inflation, home prices have never been more expensive than they are now.

In fact, inflation adjusted home prices are now 20% above their 2008 peak, the previous all time high.

The median home now sells for an alarming 530% of the median annual income.

Meanwhile, the median house payment is now a record 49% of median PRE-TAX income.

Affordability has never been worse.

We have never seen anything like this in the entire history of our country.

Since the beginning of 2019, the median price of a home in the U.S. has risen by more than a hundred thousand dollars…

In fact, comparing present prices to levels before the virus panic, St. Louis Fed numbers show a median priced U.S. home rose from $313,000 in the beginning of 2019 to $416,000 today.

Rental prices have gone completely nuts as well.

As I discussed last week, the median asking rent in the United States is now over $2,000 a month.

Over the past couple of years we have seen unprecedented rent hikes, and vast numbers of renters have been getting the boot.

In fact, we are seeing a tsunami of evictions in the Los Angeles area right now…

With COVID-era protections gone, the number of renters facing eviction in Los Angeles continues to climb by the thousands each month.

From February through the end of August, approximately 50,000 eviction notices were filed by landlords in the city, according to figures released on Monday by the L.A. Controller’s Office.

A spokesperson said 96% of them involve non-payment of rent, and landlords were owed $186.5 million collectively.

So where will all these people go?

If they are young enough, perhaps they can live with their parents.

But many will not have that option.

Up to this point in 2023, homelessness in the United States has been rising at the fastest pace ever recorded, and a lot more Americans will find themselves without a home between now and the end of the year.

Meanwhile, those that are still scraping by will find it harder and harder to make ends meet.

The average rate of interest on our credit card balances has risen from about 16 percent in February 2022 to more than 22 percent today.

As a result, an increasing number of Americans find themselves unable to keep up with their payments, and it is being reported that credit card losses are rising at the quickest rate since the last financial crisis…

Credit card companies are racking up losses at the fastest pace in almost 30 years, outside of the Great Financial Crisis, according to Goldman Sachs.

Credit card losses bottomed in September 2021, and while initial increases were likely reversals from stimulus, they have been rapidly rising since the first quarter of 2022. Since that time, it’s an increasing rate of losses only seen in recent history during the recession of 2008.

It is far from over, the firm predicts.

More Americans are going bankrupt as well.

In fact, the number of bankruptcy cases in August 2023 was 18 percent higher than it was in August 2022.

Millions upon millions of Americans have been turning to debt in order to keep up with the cost of living, but as economic conditions deteriorate financial institutions are starting to get much tighter with their money.

So we are moving into a time when U.S. consumers will find it much more difficult to take on new debt…

Nearly 60% of the respondents in a New York Fed consumer expectations survey said it’s harder to get credit cards, mortgages and other loans than it was a year ago. It was the highest level since the New York Fed started the data series back in 2013.

Another Fed survey of loan officers reveals their fears aren’t unfounded. Banks reported that lending standards tightened across all consumer loan categories and all categories of residential real estate (RRE) loans. Meanwhile, the number of banks reporting tighter standards for credit cards rose by 36%.

Banks have also significantly tightened standards for business loans.

This is a recipe for disaster.

That is definitely true.

Without a doubt, this is certainly a recipe for disaster.

But there is no going back now.

In fact, the rising price of oil is going to cause enormous inflationary pressures throughout our entire economic system in the months ahead.

On Tuesday, a senior market analyst at OANDA warned that it appears that “nothing is going to get in the way of this oil price rally”…

“It looks like nothing is going to get in the way of this oil price rally,” said Edward Moya, senior market analyst at OANDA, in emailed comments on Tuesday. “Energy traders know a bullish trend when they see one and it will take a lot more than a strong dollar, softer Russian ban, and weakening demand, to disrupt this rally.”

When the price of oil reaches 100 dollars a barrel, that will be painful, but we can handle that.

But the chief executive of Continental Resources is projecting that the price of oil could eventually reach 150 dollars a barrel…

That’s Doug Lawler, chief executive of Continental Resources, the shale-drilling giant controlled by billionaire Harold Hamm, telling Bloomberg News on Monday that crude prices are set to remain elevated and could press to the $120- to $150-a-barrel range without new production.

More price pressure is coming, he said, unless policies are put in place to encourage more output.

If the price of oil reaches 150 dollars a barrel and stays there, it will be an unmitigated disaster for our economy, and the cost of just about everything will jump substantially.

That is because just about everything that we buy and sell has to be transported.

We need cheap energy in order to have a high standard of living, but unfortunately the era of cheap energy is coming to an abrupt ending, and that means that none of our lives will ever be the same again.

I kept warning my readers that a lot of the long-term trends that I have been writing about would catch up with us eventually, and now that time has arrived.

So enjoy the current economic conditions while you still can, because they will soon go from bad to worse.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Almost Half Of All Young Adults In The United States Are Living With Their Parents

September 21, 2023September 21, 2023 by Michael

When are we going to wake up and admit that our system is failing? If close to half of our young adults find themselves needing to live with their parents, we have a major crisis on our hands. Yes, there are some young people that are simply lazy and don’t want to work hard enough. I definitely understand that. But most young adults in America today don’t actually want to live with their parents. Given the opportunity, they would love to have their own homes. Unfortunately, home prices have risen to absolutely absurd levels and housing in America is now more unaffordable than it has ever been before.

I feel so badly for the millions upon millions of young people that are struggling so much right now.

We encourage them to pile up giant mountains of student loan debt without ever considering the consequences, and then once they get out into the real world they quickly discover that the cost of living has become extremely suffocating.

As a result, vast numbers of young adults are finding that it is necessary to move back in with their parents…

Nearly half of all young adults are living with their parents — and they’re not ashamed to say it.

Moving out and living on your own is often seen as a marker of adulthood. But dealt an onerous set of cards — including pandemic lockdowns, decades-high inflation, soaring student debt levels and a shaky job market — young people today are increasingly staying put. What’s more, it’s no longer seen as a sign of individual failure.

Needless to say, this is not a good thing for our society.

The last time that such a high percentage of young adults were living with their parents was during the aftermath of the Great Depression…

These days, about 23 million, or 45%, of all Americans ages 18 to 29 are living with family, roughly the same level as the 1940s, a time when women were more likely to remain at home until marriage and men too were lingering on family farms in the aftermath of the Great Depression.

So why is this happening?

One of the primary reasons why this is happening is because high interest rates have pushed housing costs to insane levels.

This week, the average rate on a 30 year fixed mortgage reached 7.19 percent…

US mortgage rates remained flat this week, hovering over 7%, where they’ve been for six consecutive weeks as inflation pressures persist.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 7.19% in the week ending September 21, a tick up from 7.18% the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac released Thursday. A year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate was 6.29%.

“Mortgage rates continue to linger above 7% as the Federal Reserve paused their interest rate hikes,” Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist, said. “Given these high rates, housing demand is cooling off and now homebuilders are feeling the effect,” he said. “Builder sentiment declined for the first time in several months and construction levels have dipped to a three-year low, which could have an impact on the already low housing supply,” Khater added.

And this isn’t even going to be the peak.

In fact, NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun is warning that “in the short run, it’s possible that mortgage rates may go up to 8%.”

8 percent?

Are you kidding me?

Even now, mortgage payments have escalated to absolutely crazy heights. Earlier this week, the following example was posted on Twitter by Amy Nixon…

This home sold in 2021 for $685,000

Buyer’s monthly payment? $3526

Buyer’s monthly payment today? $8402

“But wages went up!”

“But people have cash now!”

NO—THIS IS COMPLETE INSANITY

STOP PRETENDING IT IS NOT

She is right.

This is nuts.

Only a very small percentage of the population can afford such monthly payments, and so millions of potential buyers are being sidelined.

And millions of potential sellers are being sidelined as well, because most of them would need to purchase another home if the current home they are living in was sold.

So the vast majority of us are trapped in our homes right now.

Most of us simply cannot afford to move because the mortgage payments would be way too high.

Obviously, this is one of the main things that is greatly depressing home sales right now.

Sales of previously owned homes declined again in August.

If you can believe it, they were actually down a whopping 15.3 percent from the already depressed level that we witnessed in August 2022.

If you want to thank someone, thank the officials at the Federal Reserve, because they created this mess.

Overall, Fannie Mae is projecting that this will be the worst year for home sales since 2011…

US home sales are headed for the biggest slowdown since 2011, according to Fannie Mae.

The government-sponsored mortgage finance company forecasted total home sales to slump to just 4.8 million this year, marking the slowest sales environment since 2011. That figure will only improve slightly in 2024, with total home sales expected to hit 4.9 million, Fannie Mae economists said.

If our young adults cannot afford to purchase homes, at least they can afford to rent places to live, right?

Wrong.

In recent years, rents have skyrocketed all over the country.

At this point, the national median asking rent in the U.S. is over $2,000 a month…

Landlords are continuing to ask near record-high rents amid a tight housing market, but tenants in some parts of the country are still finding deals, according to a new study from Redfin.

The asking rent in August was $2,052, up slightly (0.7%) from just a month earlier when the asking rent was $2,038.

When I was a young adult, I remember renting an apartment for $300 a month.

And I thought that was expensive.

Unfortunately, I don’t see much help for our young people on the horizon.

The Federal Reserve does not plan to cut interest rates any time soon.

And it will be quite some time before housing prices decline enough to be considered “affordable”.

So if you are a parent, please be patient with any young adults that you currently have living at home.

Factors outside of their control have made housing more unaffordable than it has ever been before, and economic conditions are going to continue to get harsher all around us.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

This Is The Worst Global Food Crisis In Modern History, And It Is About To Go To An Entirely New Level

September 20, 2023September 20, 2023 by Michael

Hundreds of millions of people are desperately hungry all over the world, and by the time you are done reading this article more children will starve to death. Earlier this year, CNN actually admitted that we are in the midst of “the worst food crisis in modern history”, but because the mainstream media rarely features images of the tremendous suffering on the other side of the globe most Americans don’t even know that it is happening. Here in the western world, the primary way that the global food crisis is manifesting is through significantly higher prices at the grocery store. Those higher prices are certainly painful, but we can deal with that. But when you don’t have enough food to feed your family on a consistent basis, that really is a nightmare scenario. According to the official UN website, 735 million people were in a “state of chronic hunger” last year…

By 2022, approximately 735 million people – or 9.2% of the world’s population – found themselves in a state of chronic hunger – a staggering rise compared to 2019. This data underscores the severity of the situation, revealing a growing crisis.

In addition, an estimated 2.4 billion people faced moderate to severe food insecurity in 2022. This classification signifies their lack of access to sufficient nourishment. This number escalated by an alarming 391 million people compared to 2019.

The persistent surge in hunger and food insecurity, fueled by a complex interplay of factors, demands immediate attention and coordinated global efforts to alleviate this critical humanitarian challenge.

We have never seen numbers like this before.

And the final numbers for 2023 will inevitably be even higher, because crops are failing all over the planet.

For example, this has been a catastrophic year for rice crops in India…

Satish Kumar sits in front of his submerged rice paddy in India’s Haryana state, looking despairingly at his ruined crops.

“I’ve suffered a tremendous loss,” said the third generation farmer, who relies solely on growing the grain to feed his young family. “I will not be able to grow anything until November.”

The newly planted saplings have been underwater since July after torrential rain battered northern India, with landslides and flash floods sweeping through the region.

The government of India responded to this crisis by banning the export of non-basmati white rice, but this has created a massive problem for the dozens of countries that rely on rice exports from India…

Last month, India, which is the world’s largest exporter of rice, announced a ban on exporting non-basmati white rice in a bid to calm rising prices at home and ensure food security. India then followed with more restrictions on its rice exports, including a 20% duty on exports of parboiled rice.

The move has triggered fears of global food inflation, hurt the livelihoods of some farmers and prompted several rice-dependent countries to seek urgent exemptions from the ban.

More than three billion people worldwide rely on rice as a staple food and India contributed to about 40% of global rice exports.

Please read that last sentence again.

Without rice exports from India, the number of people that starve in poor countries in Africa and the Middle East will soar.

Some impoverished nations are literally begging India to start exporting non-basmati white rice again, but so far the government of India is not budging.

So the price of rice has been surging all over the world, and supplies are getting tighter and tighter.

Let me ask you a question.

What would you do if your child was wasting away from malnutrition right in front of your eyes?

In Somalia, that is actually happening to half of all children under the age of five…

In Somalia, families are currently facing a catastrophic food crisis. This is the result of a severe and prolonged drought and decades of conflict that have destroyed crop production and made it almost impossible for herders to find food for their animals.

Unfortunately, the most vulnerable are children, with 50% of children under five in the country experiencing acute malnutrition.

Here in the western world, our children are not starving.

So we should be thankful for that.

But the lines at our food banks are getting longer. Here is an example from the state of Ohio…

Kam McKenzie, SNAP outreach manager for the food bank, said the Liberty Street pantry is seeing 940 more families per month since the end of February, when COVID-era SNAP benefits were halted.

“So now we’re averaging maybe a little over 300 families a day coming into our Liberty Street pantry to shop for groceries,” said McKenzie.

Based on the amount of food given out by Freestore, she estimated the demand on the pantry is up 27% compared to June of 2022.

And we are experiencing problems with our crops too.

In the middle of the country, seemingly endless drought conditions have greatly affected corn crops this year…

Lack of rain has hit crops hard: In Missouri, for example, 40% of the state’s corn crop was classified as poor or very poor, according to the drought monitor. Iowa, the nation’s top corn producer, is in the midst of its worst drought in a decade with about 80% of the state in some measure of drought.

Prolonged drought has even reached the banks of Lake Superior: Parts of Wisconsin have the most severe drought designation for the first time since the 1999 inception of the U.S. Drought Monitor, said Dennis Todey, director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Midwest Climate Hub.

“It’s the severity of the drought and the length of the drought that are causing some confounding issues right now,” he said.

Unfortunately, we are still only in the very early stages of this new global food crisis.

Multiple long-term trends will combine to make it impossible for us to feed everyone on the planet in the years ahead.

Our politicians know this, but they are being very quiet about our rapidly growing food crisis because they don’t want to alarm the general population.

But there will be no escape. Hundreds of millions will not have enough food to eat tonight, and it won’t be too long before the number of people that are facing chronic hunger exceeds a billion.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

They Are Openly Admitting That We Are On The Brink Of “The Final War”

September 19, 2023 by Michael

Most Americans have absolutely no idea how close we are to the unthinkable. Even though leaders all over the globe have developed a really bad case of war fever, the vast majority of us here in the United States are entirely convinced that everything will be okay somehow. Most of us believe the talking heads on television when they assure us that our politicians have everything under control and that it is extremely unlikely that a nuclear conflict will happen. But on the other side of the globe they see things very differently. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told the United Nations that the world is being pushed to the brink of the “final war“…

The chilling remarks by the Ukrainian president were aimed at countries that have been ambivalent about who’s side they’re on since the conflict began in February 2022 and nations that were with him in the beginning but have pulled back on their support.

Russia’s invasion of his country is pushing the world to the “final war,” the Ukrainian president told world leaders attending the annual gathering in New York.

For once, I actually agree with Zelenskyy.

We are literally on the verge of an apocalyptic global conflict in which billions of people could die, and so we need to find a way out while we still can.

But during his speech, Zelenskyy made it abundantly clear that he has absolutely no intention of ever negotiating with Vladimir Putin…

Without providing any details, Zelenskyy hinted at the United Nations at an alleged effort by some individuals to broker a secret peace deal with Putin.

Zelenskky warned anyone who would trust Putin, to recall the fate of Russian mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, who was assumed dead last month after challenging Putin’s leadership.

“I am aware of some attempts to make some shady dealings behind the scenes. Evil cannot be trusted. Ask Prigozhin if one bets on Putin’s promises,” he said.

The Russians also believe that we are rapidly approaching a point of no return.

On Sunday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov publicly stated that the U.S. is conducting a “war” against Russia…

Washington’s massive campaign to support Ukraine with arms amounts to a war against Russia, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said, adding that the US has long groomed Kiev for this very purpose.

In a comment to Russian reporter Pavel Zarubin released on Sunday, Lavrov suggested that rumors about Washington possibly giving the green light to the delivery of Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS), which have a range of up to 300km, were aimed at “shaping public opinion.”

According to the minister, these deliberations would not change the fact that “for many years Ukraine has been groomed to fight with its hands and bodies in order to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.” Lavrov accused the US of controlling the hostilities between Kiev and Moscow.

Most Americans would not say that we are at war with Russia at this moment.

But over in Russia they view things very differently.

There is constant talk on Russian television about how the U.S. and Russia are now locked in an existential conflict which will only have one eventual winner.

Needless to say, the Russians do not plan on losing.

Joe Biden also spoke in front of the United Nations on Tuesday, and during that speech he once again reaffirmed U.S. support for the war in Ukraine.

And it is being reported that he plans to ask Congress for a $24 billion aid package to help bolster the Ukrainian military.

But we have already given them billions upon billions upon billions of dollars.

Where has all that money gone?

That is a question that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is now asking…

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy demanded ‘accountability’ on U.S. aid to Ukraine and vowed to question President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington, amid heightening tensions among Republicans over funding the country’s defense.

‘Is Zelenskyy elected to Congress? Is he our president? I don’t think I have to commit anything and I think I have questions for him,’ McCarthy said Tuesday, in just the latest remarks exhibiting skepticism about billions in U.S. military and other support.

‘Where’s the accountability on the money we’ve already spent? What is the plan for victory? I think that’s what the American public wants to know,’ he said, ABC News reported.

A lot of Americans refuse to believe that this conflict will ever spill outside the borders of Ukraine.

But the truth is that it already has. In fact, CNN is reporting that the Ukrainians just conducted drone strikes “against a Wagner-backed militia near Sudan’s capital”…

Ukrainian special services were likely behind a series of drone strikes and a ground operation directed against a Wagner-backed militia near Sudan’s capital, a CNN investigation has found, raising the prospect that the fallout from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has spread far from the frontlines.

Speaking to CNN, a Ukrainian military source described the operation as the work of a “non-Sudanese military.” Pressed on whether Kyiv was behind the attacks, the source would only say that “Ukrainian special services were likely responsible.”

Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has begun a large-scale offensive against Armenia…

Azerbaijan carried out strikes on the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region on Tuesday as it announced the launch of an “anti-terror” operation, a move that threatens to trigger another war in the region.

The country’s Defense Ministry said it was using “high-precision weapons” to “incapacitate” Armenian-backed forces and target Armenian military positions in a push to force out “formations of Armenia’s armed forces.”

Footage purportedly filmed in Stepanakert, the capital of Karabakh, which is called Khankendi by Azerbaijan, captured the sounds of loud shelling and artillery fire.

Have you noticed that the Biden administration has not condemned this aggression by Azerbaijan?

That is because the Biden administration has almost certainly blessed it.

If fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia flares up, it will divert much-needed Russian military resources away from the Ukrainian front.

We definitely live at a time of wars and rumors of wars.

And we continue to hear more rumors that China is rapidly preparing for a military conflict with the United States. Just check out what Gordon Chang told Fox Business on Monday…

Gatestone Institute senior fellow and China expert Gordon Chang has issued a dire warning about the possibility of a nuclear exchange with China as tensions remain inflated on the world stage and the U.S. prepares for war.

“We’re much closer to a nuclear exchange than Americans think,” Chang said on Fox Business‘s “Mornings with Maria” Monday. “China is preparing to go to war… China is surveying the United States for nuclear weapons strikes, so we’ve got to realize the gravity of this. The problems inside the Chinese regime right now indicate that Xi Jinping in the rocket force, which controls almost all of China’s nuclear weapons, he’s now installing officers who will obey his orders to push the button when he gives it.”

Gordon Chang is right.

War with China is coming.

The moment that China invades Taiwan, the U.S. and China will be at war.

The Chinese know this, but it is not stopping them from preparing for such a conflict.

In recent days, the Chinese have continued to probe the island’s defenses by sending waves of warplanes into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone…

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence has issued a strong plea to Beijing to cease its continuous military provocations after the detection of more than 100 Chinese warplanes in close proximity to the island within a 24-hour period spanning Sunday to Monday, CNN reported.

In a statement, the ministry expressed grave concern over the substantial number of warplanes, which it said posed “severe challenges to the Taiwan Strait and regional safety.”According to a flight map provided by the ministry, 40 of the 103 Chinese warplanes breached the median line on the Taiwan Strait and entered Taiwan’s self-declared air defence identification zone (ADIZ), as reported by CNN.

When this war begins, most Americans will be completely shocked.

But nobody will be able to say that we weren’t warned.

Interestingly, one man recently asked Alexa about the upcoming presidential election, and he was told by Alexa that the 2024 election in the United States will be canceled because we will be at war with Russia and China at that time.

@daryllawsonlive Alexa who will win the 2024 election? Alexa says the 2024 election will not take place #Alexa #2024Election #war #Russia #China #USA #Trump #daryllawsonlive #daryllawson ♬ original sound – DarylLawsonLive

Personally, I don’t think that events will move quite that quickly.

I could be wrong, but I do believe that there will be a presidential election in 2024.

However, there should be no doubt that a war with Russia and a war with China are both very much on the horizon.

If our leaders had any sense at all, they would be trying to find a way out of this mess while it is still possible.

Unfortunately, our leaders appear to have gone completely mad, and so we continue to speed toward a date with the unthinkable.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

When People Can’t Take Care Of Themselves They Start To Go Nuts

September 18, 2023September 18, 2023 by Michael

The rapidly growing chasm that exists between the ultra-wealthy and all the rest of us is not good for our society. In recent years, our leaders flooded the system with enormous mountains of money, and all of that money greatly enriched those at the very top of the economic food chain. Unfortunately, all of that money also created a tremendous amount of inflation which has been crushing the standard of living for millions upon millions of hard working Americans. We just witnessed the largest decline in real median household income since 2010, the child poverty rate in the U.S. has more than doubled, and this year homelessness is rising in our nation at the fastest pace ever recorded. So many Americans are deeply suffering right now, and we need to remember that they are real people with real emotions.

It can be absolutely soul crushing to work as hard as you possibly can but still find yourself falling farther and farther behind.

And when people come to the conclusion that they simply cannot take care of themselves no matter what they do, many of them will start to go completely nuts.

Without a doubt, economic desperation is one of the factors that is fueling the massive crime wave that I have been documenting in my articles in recent months.

Theft is going to cost U.S. retailers over 100 billion dollars in 2023, and stores are being permanently shut down in our core urban areas at a staggering pace.

In fact, so many grocery stores have been shut down in Chicago that Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to create his own socialist grocery stores to replace them…

Chicago’s Democrat mayor wants to create city-run grocery stores to promote ‘equitable’ access to food after half of the city’s Walmart and Whole Foods stores closed.

Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a partnership with the Economic Security Project to open municipally-owned grocery stores in Chicago in a bid to tackle many of the city’s so-called ‘food deserts.’

That is crazy.

But that is how far the city of Chicago has fallen.

Sadly, crime is about to go to a whole new level in Chicago, because a new law that eliminates cash bail in the state of Illinois is about to go into effect…

An Illinois law eliminating cash bail state wide is set to go into effect on Monday, officials have revealed.

According to NBC 5 Chicago, this comes two months after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the “Pretrial Fairness Act,” which is part of the larger “SAFE-T Act,” was constitutional.

If you currently live in the state of Illinois, you may want to start considering other options.

But it isn’t just Illinois that is out of control.

All over the country, millions of our young people have come to the conclusion that the system is rigged against them.

So they figure that if the system is fundamentally unfair, why should they try to abide by the rules?

Many of our young people are now openly lawless, and in such an environment literally no one is safe…

A female gas station cashier in Washington state had no time to react amid an onslaught of punches and kicks to the face and head during a violent robbery.

Leah Johnston was attacked by six suspects, some thought to be just teenagers, while working at Friendly Normandy Market in Normandy Park on September 15.

The gang piled cigarettes and candy into their arms and stripped the register of cash before escaping.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning.

The cost of living is going to continue to rise faster than our paychecks, and that means that the level of desperation will continue to increase.

In Canada, food prices have already become so crazy that the government is actually threatening to take legal action against grocery stores…

The Canadian government is taking aim at grocery stores, warning them of “big consequences” if they fail to provide “relief for Canadians” by stabilizing food prices by October 9. This comes amid rising inflation in the country and as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party trails badly in the polls.

Speaking at the Liberals’ national caucus retreat in London, Ontario on Thursday, Trudeau said he expects “to hear from them [the largest grocery chains] by Thanksgiving on what their plan is to stabilize prices,” adding that “if their plan doesn’t provide real relief for the middle class and people working hard to join it, then we will take further action, and we are not ruling anything out, including tax measures.”

But the truth is that the grocery stores are not being particularly greedy.

It is our leaders that have created this inflation crisis, and it is not going to go away any time soon.

In fact, it is about to get even worse because the price of oil is starting to spike…

After languishing a multi-year lows until the end of June in the low/mid-70s range after Biden drained over 270 million barrels from the SPR to a near record low in hopes of pushing the price of gasoline lower and achieving short-term political goals…

… oil has since surged by more than $20, or 32% since the low of $71.57 on June 28, its fastest ascent since the start of 2022, a rally that was sparked by Saudi Arabia’s decision to voluntarily cut an additional 1 million bpd of production in addition to the reductions agreed by the OPEC+ group…

… thereby intentionally creating a production deficit of over 3 million barrels per day.

As such the price is likely to keep rising well into the 100s, as we first predicted two weeks ago, and as Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said today on BBG TV.

Virtually everything we buy has to be transported in some way, and so the price of oil factors into just about everything.

So it should deeply alarm all of us that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the Los Angeles area has almost reached six dollars…

Southern California drivers are feeling the squeeze of high gas prices yet again.

On Monday morning, the price of a regular gallon of gas averaged about $5.92 in the Los Angeles area, according to AAA.

That’s a 5-cent increase from the day before and nearly 40 cents more than a week ago.

What we are witnessing now are things that we have been anticipating for a very long time.

We really are in the very early stages of a major economic meltdown.

As the U.S. economy crumbles all around us, millions of people are going to become very desperate, and very desperate people do very desperate things.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

This Extremely Important Indicator Is Absolutely Screaming That A Recession Is Coming

September 17, 2023September 17, 2023 by Michael

A lot of the talking heads on television seem to think that the threat of a recession has passed. So exactly why have these talking heads come to such a ridiculous conclusion? Well, they figure that if a recession hasn’t started by now we are probably in relatively good shape. In other words, they are speculating instead of conducting a hard analysis of the numbers. And the numbers are clearly telling us that economic conditions are rapidly getting worse. Of course the U.S. economy has been on shaky ground for quite some time. We had a recession in 2020, we had another recession in 2022 (although the Biden administration refused to officially acknowledge it), and now it appears that we are entering yet another one. In fact, if the Biden administration was giving us honest numbers, they would show that we are already in a recession right now. But it won’t be too long before things will be so bad that even the numbers given to us by the Biden administration will clearly show that we have entered a new recession.

It is just a matter of time.

There is one extremely important indicator that has been absolutely screaming that a recession is coming.

10-year bond yields have now been below 3-month bond yields for 212 trading days in a row, and such an inversion has “telegraphed the last eight recessions”…

But for 212 straight trading days, no matter what the indicators have said, the Treasury market has delivered what is widely understood as a starkly different message: The economy is veering toward a contraction, since 10-year yields have held below 3-month ones.

Such an inversion telegraphed the last eight recessions. And on Thursday, the market surpassed the 1980 record to hold that way for the longest consecutive daily stretch since Bloomberg’s records begin in 1962.

Does anyone out there actually believe that this indicator will be wrong this time around?

Of course it won’t be wrong.

But there have been times when the inversion has happened quite a bit before the recession arrived…

Moreover, the yield curve sometimes inverts long before a contraction. In July 2006, the 10-year yield started holding consistently below the 3-month rate, but the downturn didn’t start until December 2007.

It appears that something similar is happening now.

A very painful storm is going to hit our economy.

It is just going to take some time to fully play out.

Other numbers are telling us the exact same thing.

For example, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has experienced a losing streak that we haven’t seen since just before the Great Recession…

Many mainstay economic indicators measure the past. So-called leading indicators reflect what likely lies ahead. The Conference Board’s U.S. Leading Economic Index for July marked its 16th consecutive drop and its longest losing streak since the run-up to the Great Recession in 2007 and 2008.

Of course most Americans don’t need to be told that rough times are coming, because they can clearly see what is already happening when they walk the streets of their local communities.

As I discussed last week, vast numbers of middle class Americans are being pushed into poverty, and vast numbers of impoverished Americans are being pushed into the streets.

Earlier today, I came across an article about the horrifying homelessness crisis that the Las Vegas strip is now dealing with…

The iconic Las Vegas strip has seen a surge in homeless people sleeping on the sidewalks and in makeshift tents as the city grapples with an affordable housing crisis.

New images taken by DailyMail.com show people curled up in the sidewalk and outside store fronts – with some keeping their minimal belongings in trolleys and encampments.

Sadly, city after city all over the nation is dealing with similar conditions.

One of the reasons why homelessness is spiking is because housing has never been more unaffordable than it is right now.

CNBC recently interviewed one woman in California that is paying $1,600 a month to live in a tiny home that is “smaller than the average parking space”…

Sung Yoo pays $1,600 per month to live in a 140-square-foot tiny home in Santa Monica, CA. She says the experience has helped her save money and become more mindful. Her tiny home, designed by architects at Minarc Design, is located about an eight-minute drive from the beach and smaller than the average parking space.

This is the future that the elite envision for us.

They want to herd all of us into “mega-cities” and have us live in tiny compartments like rats.

The woman that lives in this tiny home is not exactly poor. In fact, she was previously paying $4,500 a month for her apartment in New York…

Sung moved into her tiny house following a major transition in her life. Living in the tiny home has helped her realign with her values, get grounded and become more intentional in her life. Previous to living in her tiny home, Sung lived in New York City for over 18 years where she paid $4,500 a month for her apartment.

$4,500 may sound like a lot of money to you, but the truth is that such rents are typical in New York City today.

In fact, the median rent in Manhattan has now reached $4,370 a month…

The median rent in Manhattan in August was $4,370 a month, unchanged from the record high in July, according to data from brokerage firm Douglas Elliman and the appraisal and research firm Miller Samuel. Average rents also held their record, at $5,552 a month.

Needless to say, the cost of living has become extremely oppressive in many other ways as well.

At this point, the price of groceries has risen to absolutely absurd levels.

I present: $100 of groceries. pic.twitter.com/S5SZFNv7n8

— Ryan Florence (@ryanflorence) September 12, 2023

The rate of inflation had moderated for a few months, but now it is starting to accelerate once again.

A big reason for that is the fact that the price of oil has been going up…

Oil prices climbed to their highest level of the year this week, extending a rally that has put a return to $100 a barrel sharply into focus.

Indeed, some analysts believe crude prices could hit this milestone before year-end.

Unfortunately, I fully expect the price of oil to continue to increase.

In turn, this will cause everything else to rise in price, and our standard of living will get even lower.

And this is happening at a time when economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating all around us.

The months ahead are not going to be fun for most Americans, and the long-term outlook is even worse.

I would encourage you to do whatever you need to do to prepare for hard economic times, because all of the major indicators are all pointing in the same direction.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

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