Money

America’s middle class is being systematically eviscerated.  When the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of dollars into the financial system during the pandemic, most Americans didn’t realize what that would do to them.  That money certainly made the wealthy a whole lot wealthier, but it also dramatically increased the cost of living for the rest of us.  So now inflation has been rising much faster than paychecks have, and the cost of living has become exceedingly oppressive.  In fact, last year we witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade…

The official tally is in and it is brutal: Americans suffered the biggest drop in household income in 2022 in a dozen years.

Real median household income was $74,580 in 2022, a drop of 2.3 percent from the prior year, the Census Bureau said Tuesday.

This is the biggest drop in household income since 2010, when it household income fell 2.6 percent. That means it is worse than the pandemic decline of 2.2 percent. It is the fourth worst year in records going back to 1985.

In 2010, the U.S. economy was just coming out of the horrible recession that we had just experienced in 2008 and 2009.

Those were not fun times.

And the times that we are moving into will not be fun either.

We are being told that “high inflation” is the primary reason why real median household income is falling…

The declines were driven by high inflation. The measure of inflation that is used to calculate real income rose 7.8 percent, the worst inflation since 1981.

1981 was a long time ago.

But at that time, the U.S. economy quickly recovered under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan.

We will not be so fortunate this time around.

Our leaders flooded the system with giant mountains of money, and almost everyone cheered as they were doing it.

But now we are paying the price.

Recently, a “Gen X mom” named Jessica McCabe made headlines all over the world when she posted a video on TikTok in which she expressed how frustrating it is to watch her adult children deeply struggle in this economy…

“I am so tired of feeling helpless as a parent,” McCabe started off the video. She acknowledged that her son was 25 and her daughter was 28 and explained: “I thought by teaching them what I learned, which is you work hard, you get a good job, you’re gonna get the things in life that you need, right? Worked for me, why wouldn’t it work for them?”

Unfortunately for all of us, the rules have changed.

What worked in the 1980s and 1990s simply does not work today.

In her video, she acknowledged that struggle is a part of life, but she also said that it is just so disheartening to see her kids “get further and further down” no matter how hard they try…

She continued: “I see them struggling, and before my generation comes at me, yes, I understand struggling as a part of life. We all struggle, but there’s a difference between struggling and drowning. So we struggled, and it was tough. But you know what, we made it. We knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel with our struggle. It seems like kids today, no matter how much they struggle, they just get further and further down.”

Sadly, this is the reality of life for most Americans today.

More than 60 percent of the nation is currently living paycheck to paycheck, and former Ford CEO Mark Fields just admitted to CNBC that someone needs to make more than $100,000 a year just to be able to afford a new vehicle these days…

The former Ford CEO said that a consumer has to “make over $100,000 to afford a new car.” As a result, the price of vehicles is starting to come down, which is leading to an inventory correction.

“Vehicles are getting older, they need to be replaced.”

Americans are keeping their vehicles longer than ever, and that is because most of us simply cannot afford to replace them.

As I have discussed previously, Americans are increasingly turning to debt to help make ends meet from month to month.

Credit card debt surged dramatically during the second quarter, and this is starting to become an enormous problem…

American households now have an average of $10,170 credit card debt, as record numbers say they are worried about being cut off from access to loans.

Data from the New York Federal Reserve shows nationwide credit card debt swelled by $43 billion in the second quarter of the year – the second largest increase on record.

Of course there is a limit to how much debt that U.S. consumers can take on, and financial institutions are starting to say “no” a lot more often…

Meanwhile a separate survey by the Fed revealed 60 percent of respondents found it more difficult to access credit – the highest level since the data series began in June 2013.

I warned my readers that the flow of credit would start to get tighter and tighter.

And now it is happening.

Right now, so many formerly middle class Americans have been pushed into what I call “the impoverished class”, and many that were formerly poor now find themselves pushed out into the streets.

In fact, according to the Wall Street Journal we have witnessed the largest increase in homelessness ever recorded this year…

The United States has seen the biggest ever spike in homeless people living on the streets – as preliminary figures showed a record 11 percent increase in one year.

There are nearly 600,000 rough sleepers across cities and towns in America, and the jump from 2022 to 2023 so far is the highest since the government started tracking the data in 2007, according to the WSJ.

Places like Oakland and San Francisco in California have become hotbeds for homelessness, as people living on the streets are like ‘drug tourists’ who arrive to have easy access to narcotics.

So please don’t believe anyone that tries to convince you that the economy is doing just fine.

It most certainly is not.

Homeless encampments are popping up like mushrooms all over the nation, and many communities are not pleased about this at all.

For example, just check out what has been happening in Austin, Texas…

Shocking footage has exposed the scene in an Austin park filled with liquor bottles, needles, Narcan and junk ‘as far as the eye can see,’ as a homeless encampment continues to grow.

The videos were of the West Bouldin Creek Greenbelt were posted on Monday by activist Jamie Hammonds, who reports from the Texas capital on the X page @DocumentingATX.

‘Another Greenbelt destroyed here in Austin… nothing but trash and junk as far as you can see… this is absolutely horrible,’ Hammonds said, adding that the encampment was at least the size of a football field, and you could smell it ‘even before you enter the greenbelt.’

As the economy continues to crumble, things are going to get even worse.

And as things get worse, the middle class will continue to shrink.

It is almost as if we are all playing a really bizarre game of musical chairs.

With each passing day, even more spots in the middle class are being removed from the game, and the ranks of “the impoverished class” continue to grow larger and larger.

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.

The stage has been set for a societal meltdown of epic proportions.  When the United States went through the Great Depression of the 1930s, conditions were extremely rough, but our country was able to successfully weather the storm thanks to the relatively high character of the American people.  Unfortunately, several generations later we are simply not made of the same stuff.  Just about every form of evil that you can possibly imagine is absolutely exploding in our society today, and there is chaos in major cities from coast to coast.  If things are this bad now, while economic conditions are still at least somewhat stable, what is going to happen when economic conditions get exceedingly harsh in this country?

Already, crime is totally out of control in communities all over the nation.  According to the Washington Post, homicides are up 29 percent in Washington D.C. so far this year, and robberies are up 67 percent…

The spike in felonies — homicides and robberies are up 29 and 67 percent from the same time period last year, police statistics show — is not the only data that is causing alarm. The number of juveniles arrested for carjacking has increased slightly since last year, with 41 of the 64 charged between the ages of 12 and 15. As of Aug. 31, a total of 81 minors had been shot in the city this year, compared with 66 over the same span last year and 37 in 2021.

While a preponderance of violence occurs where it often has — in poor neighborhoods on D.C.’s eastern edge — statistics show that the geography of crime has become more diffuse, with prosperous areas less immune than before.

Those are definitely very alarming numbers, but Washington D.C. is far from alone.

A crime wave has been steadily percolating all over America, and even young women are eagerly participating in the violence…

The shocking moment three women beat an Asian man with a metal pipe before taking off with his car has been caught on camera.

Danxin Shi, a rideshare driver, is no longer able to work after his vehicle was stolen by the gang about 5:30pm on Tuesday evening in crime-ridden, Dem-led Chicago.

Footage shows the moment the Chinatown resident, who lives West 22nd Place, parking his vehicle and walking along the street when he is struck with a weapon and shoved to the ground – where he is beaten repeatedly.

This makes me so sad.

Young women are not supposed to act like this.

But now we live in a society where all of the old rules have been thrown out.

In this environment, literally anything goes.  Theft is going to cost U.S. retailers more than 100 billion dollars this year alone, and “flash robberies” that are conducted by mobs of young people have become a daily occurrence…

A group of ‘flash rob’ thieves stormed into a Los Angeles Macy’s department store at Northridge Mall on Sunday morning as they filled bags with $20,000 worth of perfume.

Cellphone video of the crime showed several men dressed in dark hoodies and blue medical face masks loading up bags of what appeared to be cologne and perfume merchandise.

Meanwhile, the worst drug crisis in the entire history of the United States just continues to escalate.

Today, the heart of the city of Benjamin Franklin looks like something you would expect to see in a third world country…

Disturbing new video from Philadelphia shows addicts on the street in a trance like state, passed out on the sidewalk in the city’s multiple homeless encampments.

In the Kensington neighborhood, the footage shows fires burning on trash littered sidewalks as groups of people set up camp.

Drug users are seen hunched over with no control of their limbs, while others are sprawled across the garbage covered streets.

Large groups have taken over the sidewalks, turning them into homeless encampments where many people live in their own filth.

But this isn’t just happening in our large metropolitan areas.

According to Zero Hedge, authorities are having to deal with “third-world country stuff” in Casper, Wyoming…

A city in Wyoming has been overwhelmed with a growing number of homeless people, who have damaged a local hotel that would require millions of dollars to fix and left hundreds of pounds of human feces in the downtown area, according to its mayor.

Casper Mayor Bruce Knell, in an interview with local news media Cowboy State Daily published on Aug. 31, said the city’s homeless population had topped about 200 people, creating “a mess” as they roam the city’s parks and streets.

“It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s third-world country stuff happening in Casper, Wyoming,” Mr. Knell said.

“They destroyed everything,” he added. “It’s horrible.”

With each passing day, conditions in this nation get even worse.

So what is going to happen when the economy finally tanks and people start getting really desperate?

You might want to start thinking about that, because very hard times are clearly on the horizon.

When the economy slows down, there is less demand for rail transportation, and at this point total combined U.S. rail traffic has fallen on a year over year basis for three months in a row…

“August was the third straight month in which total year-over-year U.S. rail carloads have fallen,” Association of American Railroads (AAR) Senior Vice President John T. Gray reported on Sept. 6. Total combined U.S. traffic for the first 35 weeks of 2023 was 16,173,208 carloads and intermodal units, a decrease of 4.9% compared to last year.

Even more troubling, credit card delinquencies and auto loan delinquencies have both hit levels that we haven’t seen in more than a decade…

This year, credit card delinquencies have hit 3.8%, while 3.6% have defaulted on their car loans, according to credit agency Equifax.

Both figures are the highest in more than 10 years.

“The increase in delinquencies and defaults is symptomatic of the tough decisions that these households are having to make right now — whether to pay their credit card bills, their rent or buy groceries,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told the Washington Post.

We had a very sharp recession during the first two quarters of 2020, and then we had another relatively mild recession during the first two quarters of 2022.

Now it appears that a new downturn has begun, and it promises to be very painful.

But our population is clearly not prepared to handle what is ahead of us.

When economic conditions get extremely harsh, I expect that we will see a massive national temper tantrum, and it won’t be pretty.

Are you and your family prepared for that?

I hope so, because the months and years in front of us are going to be full of surprises.

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.

Why are so many historic natural disasters suddenly hitting us one after another?  For a moment, I would like for you to think about what we have seen over just the past several weeks.  The wildfires on Maui were the deadliest in the entire history of the United States.  Then Hilary absolutely pummeled southern California, Idalia caused immense damage along the Gulf Coast of Florida, and now Hurricane Lee is threatening the east coast.  If it actually hits a major population center in the Northeast, we could see immense devastation.  Meanwhile, large earthquakes are striking without warning all over the globe.  On Friday night at 11:11 local time, a highly destructive magnitude 6.8 earthquake hit Morocco…

On Friday, around 11:11 p.m. local time, a magnitude 6.8 earthquake exploded through the High Atlas mountains in Morocco, not far from the populous city of Marrakesh. People as far away as Spain and Portugal felt a strange vibration ripple beneath their feet. But millions in Morocco felt the planet shake and splinter, jolt and disintegrate, before thousands of the most unfortunate were greeted by tectonic rage. At least 2,100 people are dead, and that number is expected to rise. According to the Euro-Mediterranean Seismological Center, an NGO, several aftershocks convulsed through the area earlier today.

This was a really big one.

It was clearly felt by countless people in both Spain and Portugal.

The final death toll will not be known for quite a while, but it is rising with each passing hour.

According to the USGS, this was the biggest earthquake that Morocco has experienced in more than 100 years…

The US Geological Survey said the quake had a preliminary magnitude of 6.8 when it hit at 11:11 p.m. (2211 GMT), with shaking that lasted several seconds. The US agency reported that a magnitude-4.9 aftershock hit 19 minutes later and that the earthquake was the largest to hit Morocco in more than 100 years.

The epicenter of Friday’s tremor was high in the Atlas Mountains, about 40 miles south of Marrakech. It was also near Toubkal, the highest peak in North Africa, and Oukaimeden, a popular Moroccan ski resort.

In the city of Marrakesh, tall buildings violently crumbled to the ground as the ground shook with great force…

When something like this happens, your life can be turned upside down in a single moment.

Can you imagine what it must be like to lose your home and your family without any warning whatsoever?…

In mere moments, entire neighborhoods vanish. Entire families are exterminated. Some may be entombed under the ruins of the place in which they grew up or raised their children or reunited with old friends. Survivors of the cataclysmic back-to-back earthquakes in Turkey and Syria this February have told reporters what happens next:. People trapped in the rubble wait in purgatory, wondering which of their loved ones may still be breathing; many perish inside these hollows of concrete, mud, silt, metal, and brick. And those who aren’t physically trapped, who just happened to be far from any susceptible buildings, are still caught in a desperate dread, questioning the reality that seemed immovable just a moment ago. What just happened? Do I still have a home? Is my daughter okay? Is my dog still alive? Where is my wife? I just saw her; we just spoke; she was right there.

The survivors in this region of Morocco need our prayers.

This is a country that has not seen a tragedy like this in any of our lifetimes, and the royal family has just declared “three days of national mourning”…

Morocco’s royal family declared three days of national mourning after the deadly earthquake.

‘Three days of national mourning have been decided, with flags to fly at half-mast on all public buildings,’ said a statement published by the official MAP news agency after King Mohamed VI chaired a meeting to discuss the disaster.

Of course this was not the only major quake that we have seen in the past few days.

On Friday, a magnitude 5.0 earthquake hit northern California…

A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was recorded in Northern California Friday morning. The quake was recorded at 10:24 a.m. about 7.5 miles west-southwest of the community of Fall River Mills in Shasta County,

at a depth of over nine miles, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The area is about 50 miles northeast of Redding, and about 290 miles north of Sacramento.

According to the USGS Felt Report, close to two hundred people had reported feeling shaking in the first half hour after the quake, with the majority of the reports coming from Shasta County, and a few reports from as far away as Chico and some communities in Oregon close to Medford.

As I keep reminding my readers, it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” hits the state.

Also on Friday, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake struck Mexico…

A magnitude-5.6 earthquake occurred near the coast of Jalisco State at around 09:53 Sept. 8. The epicenter was about 9 km (6 miles) northwest of Emiliano Zapata. The tremor occurred at a depth of about 35 km (22 miles), and moderate shaking was probably felt in the immediate vicinity of the epicenter, with lighter shaking likely felt in other parts of Jalisco and Colima states.

Interestingly, this earthquake came just two days after the Mexican Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide…

Reports over the last year suggest some abortion-hoppers are also looking beyond US borders. They’ve been seeking out help in Mexico since as early as July last year. Now, Mexico is set to become an even more attractive destination.

This week, the Mexican supreme court decriminalized decriminalized abortion across the country. The apex court was unequivocal in saying that “the legal system that penalizes abortion in the federal penal code is unconstitutional given it violates the human rights of women and people with the ability to gestate.”

Then on Saturday, a magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit off the coast of Palu, Indonesia, and a magnitude 6.6 earthquake struck not too far from New Zealand.

Meanwhile, massive storms continue to rage all over the planet.

This year, for the very first time ever recorded, “storms have reached top-tier Category 5 strength in every tropical ocean basin in the same year”.

And now here comes Hurricane Lee.

Lee made headlines all over the globe on Thursday when it suddenly strengthened from a Category 1 storm to a Category 5 storm…

Hurricane Lee is set to send huge rip tides across the East Coast as soon as this weekend, even as meteorologists are still unsure if the eye of the storm will make landfall.

Severe surges could generate waves up to 10 feet tall crashing into the eastern seaboard on Sunday, risking flash flooding and structural damage.

The storm system alarmed forecasters after it escalated from a Category 1 to Category 5 hurricane overnight Thursday, as its wind speeds soared from 80mph to over 160mph in a matter of hours.

Can you imagine what such a storm would do to New York City or Boston if a direct hit happened?

Let us hope that such a scenario can be avoided.

But as I have been relentlessly warning, we are entering a period of great instability when our planet will be hit by one major disaster after another.

What we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg, and so I would encourage all of you to brace yourselves for the tumultuous months and years that are ahead.

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.

Higher interest rates are absolutely strangling the real estate industry, and there is no relief in sight.  The sudden shift from a very low interest rate environment to a much higher interest rate environment has paralyzed sales.  As I have discussed previously, very few homeowners that are currently locked into a mortgage at a low interest rate want to sell, because buying a home to replace the one that they are selling would mean taking on a mortgage at a much higher rate of interest.  And millions of potential home buyers have been chased out of the market because of the exceedingly high mortgage payments that they would be facing if they pulled the trigger on a purchase right now.  So sales of previously-owned homes have dropped by more than 32 percent over the past two years.  In other words, about a third of the entire previously-owned home market has already been wiped out.

When home sales crash, everybody that works in the real estate industry suffers.

And it turns out that home purchases by investors are falling at an even faster rate.  Wall Street Silver posted the following to Twitter earlier this week…

I was stunned when I first saw that, but I also knew that I had to confirm if this was true or not.

And I discovered that it is true…

45%

That’s how much investor purchases of homes have fallen since last year, as of the second quarter, according to data from Redfin, as homebuying looks less profitable than during the pandemic housing boom.

Investors, just like private buyers, think it’s a bad time to buy a home.

We have got a major crisis on our hands, and it is not going to go away any time soon.

Things are even worse on the commercial real estate side.

The Wall Street Journal just published an article entitled “Real-Estate Doom Loop Threatens America’s Banks”, and that headline does not exaggerate the current state of affairs at all.

Commercial real estate prices are plummeting all over the nation, and our banks have trillions of dollars of exposure…

The WSJ analysis put total bank exposure to commercial real estate at $3.6 trillion, which it estimates is 20 percent of their deposits. Holdings of CMBS and loans to nonbank lenders accounted for $623 billion of that total at the end of last year.

In the past decade, regional banks went to town on commercial loans, never expecting how quickly the tide would turn against them. Today, losses on loans are leading banks to cut back on lending, furthering the drop in property prices and more lender losses — in other words, a doom loop.

Banks are already pulling back. Debt origination fell by 52 percent for the second quarter year-over-year, according to Newmark; lending volume among banks fell by 48 percent. M&T Bank said it would reduce commercial lending as nearly 1 in 5 of its loans to office landlords was in trouble.

So many of our financial institutions are going to be in very serious trouble because of this.

If the Federal Reserve were to push interest rates all the way to the floor immediately, that would help.

But instead, Fed officials continue to insist that rates are going to go even higher, and that is going to escalate this crisis into a full-blown real estate apocalypse.

And higher rates will also do an incredible amount of damage throughout the rest of the economy as well.  This is a point that the Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary made very well during a recent interview with Fox Business…

In a recent interview on Fox Business, Kevin O’Leary, the “Shark Tank” investor slammed so-called “Bidenomics” for leaving small businesses behind. He warned that chaos is about to kick off for the “little guy”, which are the 33.2 million small businesses in America, due to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive rate hikes.

“They’re struggling because the Fed has raised rates up to 5.5% in a matter of months,” O’Leary said. “You’re going to hear a lot of people crying about this in the next few months because they can’t borrow anything anymore and they can’t run their businesses.”

He is right.

Small and mid-size businesses all over America are really struggling right now.

Economic activity is slowing down all around us, and they are starting to lay off workers.

In fact, in just the past two months the U.S. has lost a whopping 670,000 full-time jobs…

Well, one look at this month’s adjustment and it’s literally a shocker: you will not hear anyone from the Biden admin or associated economist cheerleaders mention this, but the BLS reported that in August the number of full-time jobs dropped again, sliding by 85K to 134.2 million, and followed the whopping 585K plunge in July which brings the two-month total drop in full-time jobs to a whopping 670K, the biggest 2-month plunge since the covid lockdowns in early 2020 when 12.5 million full-time jobs were lost in one month!

When the official numbers that the government gives us start looking this bad, you know that the hour is late.

And the job cuts just keep on coming.  On Wednesday, we learned that Roku will be conducting a third round of layoffs…

Video streaming company Roku shares spiked Wednesday after it announced plans to lay off more than 300 people, or about 10% of its workforce, and pull certain content from its streaming platform to ease operating expenses.

This is the third round of layoffs from Roku in recent months after the company let go of about 400 employees total between November and March. The company had roughly 3,600 full-time employees across 14 countries at the end of last year, according to its annual report.

I actually really like Roku, and so I hope they can turn things around.

But the reality of the matter is that everyone is going to have to deal with the very hard times that are now upon us.

Hordes of middle class Americans are being pushed into poverty, and hordes of impoverished Americans are being forced into the streets.

So far this year, we have actually seen “the biggest ever spike in homeless people living on the streets”…

The United States has seen the biggest ever spike in homeless people living on the streets – as preliminary figures showed a record 11 percent increase in one year.

There are nearly 600,000 rough sleepers across cities and towns in America, and the jump from 2022 to 2023 so far is the highest since the government started tracking the data in 2007, according to the WSJ.

Places like Oakland and San Francisco in California have become hotbeds for homelessness, as people living on the streets are like ‘drug tourists’ who arrive to have easy access to narcotics.

But this isn’t supposed to be happening.

The Biden administration told us over and over again that “Bidenomics” was working.

Of course the truth is that we have now entered the very early chapters of a full-blown economic nightmare.

Things are going to get a whole lot worse for the real estate industry.

And things are going to get a whole lot worse for the economy as a whole.

So I hope that you have been getting prepared for what is ahead, because most Americans are going to get completely blind-sided by what is coming.

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.

Scientists all over the world continue to “play God”, and we are all going to have to live with the consequences.  Every single day, incredibly bizarre experiments are being conducted in secret laboratories all over the planet.  I have frequently warned my readers about the very deadly diseases that are being developed in such laboratories, but other types of extremely sick experiments are happening as well.  For example, it is being reported that one team of researchers has now been able to create a human “entity” that does not have a mother or a father.  In fact, it was created “without using sperm, an egg or a womb”…

Scientists report they have grown the early stages of a human embryo-like entity without using sperm, an egg or a womb.

The ’embryo model’ even releases hormones that triggered a positive pregnancy test.

This is like something out of a science fiction novel.

Why in the world would they even consider doing something like this?

They are telling us that using such “entities” will make medical research easier, and frankly that makes me want to vomit.

There is no way that doing this sort of thing should be legal.

But it is.

This team of researchers was able to create a human “entity” without a mother or a father by starting with naive stem cells…

Instead of a sperm and egg, the starting material was naive stem cells which were reprogrammed to gain the potential to become any type of tissue in the body.

According to the BBC, chemicals were used to encourage these stem cells to develop into four unique cell types that are involved in the earliest stages of human embryo development…

• epiblast cells, which become the embryo proper (or foetus)
• trophoblast cells, which become the placenta
• hypoblast cells, which become the supportive yolk sac
• extraembryonic mesoderm cells

Those cell types were then “mixed in a precise ratio”, and what happened next is extremely alarming…

A total of 120 of these cells were mixed in a precise ratio – and then, the scientists step back and watch.

About 1% of the mixture began the journey of spontaneously assembling themselves into a structure that resembles, but is not identical to, a human embryo.

Professor Jacob Hanna of the Weizmann Institute is the leader of the team that conducted this research, and he claims that the “entity” which was produced “is really a textbook image of a human day-14 embryo”…

‘This is really a textbook image of a human day-14 embryo, [which] hasn’t been done before,’ said Professor Hanna.

If such an entity can survive to that stage, could it go all the way and actually become a full-blown baby?

Now that this breakthrough has been achieved, it is just a matter of time before someone tries to do that.

And just imagine the implications if this eventually starts happening on a widespread basis.

Babies could literally be grown on a massive scale all over the globe.

Instead of having children the natural way, parents could just order a baby that meets certain specifications.

And any babies that came out with “defects” would inevitably be discarded.

Alternatively, it is easy to imagine entire armies being “grown” by tyrannical rulers just like we have seen in certain science fiction movies.

Would such “entities” be truly human?

Would they even have souls?

There is so much that we don’t know, and hopefully this sort of work will be banned so that we will never find out.

Unfortunately, there is very little holding the scientific community back at this point.

Most of the general population has no idea what is going on in these secret labs, and most of our politicians don’t seem to care.

And so “science” will continue to advance all over the globe with very little resistance at all.

In addition to experiments that are creating new life, researchers are also searching for ways to cheat death.

In recent years, swapping blood with the young has become a very hot trend among America’s billionaires.  Here is just one example…

Until recently, Bryan Johnson was paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to infuse one litre of his teenage son’s youthful plasma into his own ageing blood stream every month. “I’ve never paid more attention to what he’s eating … because that was going into my body,” the 46-year-old American tech entrepreneur says on new podcast The Immortals. He also pumped his own plasma into his 70-year-old father’s body to help improve his declining physical and cognitive health: “It was one of the most meaningful moments in his entire life. And it was the same for me.” Johnson continues to pay $2m a year for a research team to investigate how we can live longer – and he is certainly not the only rich guy in Silicon Valley dedicated to the search for eternal life.

Guys like Johnson have more money than they will ever need.

But they know that their days are limited.

So in a desperate attempt to “buy more time”, they are literally injecting the blood of young people into their own veins.

This is another thing that shouldn’t be done.

And it is probably dangerous.

But nobody is going to stop them.

In fact, the pace of scientific change will continue to march forward at an exponential rate.

Given enough time, our world would be transformed into something stranger than anything that Hollywood has ever dreamed up.

But our scientists won’t have enough time to do that, because the truth is that time is running out for our society.

Our self-destructive tendencies will soon absolutely overwhelm us, and no amount of “research” will be able to turn things around at that point.

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.

Can you imagine what tourists must think when they come to this country?  They spend a lot of money to fly all the way over here, and they are hoping to have amazing experiences that they will always remember.  But instead, they quickly realize that the cities that they have come to see are rapidly degenerating.  Today, our major cities are filthy, they are teeming with predators, and violent crime is completely out of control.  Let me give you an example of what I am talking about.  New York City is the financial capital of the world, and millions of tourists still visit each year.  But now the Big Apple has such an enormous rat problem “that rat tourism is fast becoming a boom industry”…

As the city grapples with a major rat problem – sightings doubled last year, prompting the mayor to advertise for a “somewhat bloodthirsty” head rat-catcher in December – the rodent issue is, according to some, New York’s latest must-experience trend.

As visitors to New York demand rat action, some of the city’s tour guides have started to add stops at notoriously infested sites, the New York Post reported this week.

It means that rat tourism is fast becoming a boom industry.

One study concluded that there are about 3 million rats in New York City today.

And with each passing day, the population grows even larger.

The east coast may have rats, but if you want to really have an experience with the crime wave that is sweeping across America the best place to do that is the west coast.

Some tourists from Malta recently found that out the hard way.  When they visited a beach in the San Francisco area, they had all of their possessions stolen from their vehicles within just 10 minutes…

Numerous groups of tourists visiting a beach in San Francisco had all their belongings stolen from their cars, including their passports, while at the ocean for just minutes.

On their second day in San Francisco, a group of tourists from Malta contemplated cutting their trip short and returning to Europe after the brazen smash and grab that occurred in broad daylight within a mere 10-minute window.

Another group from Europe was able to top that.

They had all of their possessions stolen from their vehicle within just 5 minutes…

At the same beach, another European family enjoying a day by the ocean fell prey to a car break-in.

Shocking footage captured by Matty Lopez on Instagram and shared by journalist Arisley T. Pacheco, who documents robbery victims, revealed their car’s trunk vandalized, with shattered glass scattered across the ground.

The man recording the video questions the tourists, ‘So what happened – you went to the beach for five minutes?’ Their response is disheartening: ‘They took everything we had – passports, cameras, phones, iPads, laptops, luggage – everything.’

Whether we like it or not, this is our country now.

Once upon a time, Beverly Hills was world famous for the luxury retailers that lined Wilshire Boulevard.

But now many of those iconic retailers have shut down permanently due to rising crime…

A new video documenting the growing number of high-profile stores in Beverly Hills that have closed recently, places renewed emphasis on the crisis facing the retail sector in most major cities.

The video, posted by an account called cody90210, shows some 11 popular Beverly Hills retail stops now entirely shuttered, including the iconic former Barneys location, Brooks Brothers, All Saints, and the high-end women’s fashion boutique Escada. Both Escada and Barneys filed for bankruptcy in recent years.

The closed shops, which also include convenience retailers like Rite Aid and Chipotle, and even popular workout class option SoulCycle, have shuttered their doors on Wilshire Boulevard, leaving the area bereft of its former appeal. Their sad decline marks a departure from the area’s lengthy heyday, which even saw band Weezer pen a song with the lyrics ‘Beverly Hills, that’s where I want to be.’

I don’t know why anyone would want to live in southern California at this point.

Earlier today, I came across a story about a street vendor in south Los Angeles that was viciously assaulted by a group of thugs in broad daylight “in front of his 8-year-old special needs daughter”…

A group of masked males brutally attacked a street vendor in front of his 8-year-old special needs daughter and stole all his money in south Los Angeles over the weekend, KTLA-TV reported.

These criminals have no respect for anyone or anything.

They just want to take what you have.

Of course this isn’t just a west coast phenomenon.  In Washington D.C., carjackings are up more than 100 percent so far this year…

Washington D.C. has witnessed a staggering 670 reported carjackings in 2023 so far, representing 100 percent+ increase in the offense across the U.S. Capitol compared to the same period last year. The city’s Democrat-dominated city council, however, remains on vacation until September 15 and has shown no signs of trying to return early to solve the matter. In 2018, there were 140 carjackings, jumping to 360 by 2020, with total of 485 in 2022. The city has also seen a 113 percent increase in carjackings involving a firearm compared to 2022. A total of 513 incidents involved a gun, representing 77 percent of all D.C. carjackings. Only 157 incidents did not involve a firearm.

Things are even worse in Baltimore.

One young mother in the city that recently spoke to FOX45 News is deeply frustrated because she can’t seem to find a way to keep her 14-year-old daughter from stealing cars…

As another school year begins, a Baltimore mom isn’t scheduling after-school activities for her 14-year-old daughter; instead, she’s scheduling court appearances and trying to figure out what – if anything – will get her daughter to stop stealing cars and follow the rules of her home detention.

Rae spoke with FOX45 News about her 14-year-old daughter on the condition of not using her last name or showing her face on camera. In return, Rae spoke candidly about her daughter’s behavior, experience with police, and the Department of Juvenile Services.

Apparently this 14-year-old girl is really good at stealing vehicles, and authorities refuse to keep her locked up because she is not an adult.

Hopefully she will find a way to turn her life around.

But the reality of the matter is that there are millions of others just like her.

Our cities are being overwhelmed by hordes of young people that are totally out of control, and meanwhile police departments are shrinking.

In fact, some small towns have eliminated their police departments entirely because it has become so difficult to find people that are willing to serve in this environment…

America is in the midst of a police officer shortage that many in law enforcement blame on the two-fold morale hit of 2020 — the coronavirus pandemic and criticism of police that boiled over with the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. From Minnesota to Maine, Ohio to Texas, small towns unable to fill jobs are eliminating their police departments and turning over police work to their county sheriff, a neighboring town or state police.

What is going to happen if the number of police continues to shrink but the number of criminals continues to rise?

I think that we all know the answer to that question.

Great chaos is coming to this country, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

Our society has been trending the wrong way for a long time, and now we have reached a major tipping point.

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.

Joe Biden just can’t quit fibbing.  On Labor Day, he traveled to Philadelphia where he delivered a speech touting the success of “Bidenomics”.  Who does he think he is fooling?  The American people aren’t buying that nonsense.  They know that prices are out of control at the grocery store.  They know that the cost of living has been rising much faster than their paychecks have been.  They know that high interest rates have made it much harder to buy a home.  And they can see that lots of people are starting to lose their jobs.  The truth is that Joe Biden’s time in the White House has been an economic nightmare, and it appears that conditions are likely to get even worse before he is scheduled to leave.

According to a Wall Street Journal poll that was just released, 59 percent of U.S. voters do not approve of how Biden is handling the economy, and voters are particularly concerned about where inflation is headed…

The Wall Street Journal poll, conducted from Aug. 24 to Aug. 30, found that 59% of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. Nearly 3 in 4 voters say that inflation “is headed in the wrong direction,” the outlet reported.

Voters overwhelmingly think Biden, who is 80 years old, is too old to run for reelection and only 39% of voters had a favorable view of the president.

I wrote about rapidly rising food prices yesterday, and if you have been to the grocery store lately you know how painful they have become.

Earlier in the summer, Republicans in the U.S. Senate released some figures about inflation during the Biden administration that are quite alarming…

Senate Republican leadership released a report in July showing inflation has soared by 16.6% since Biden took office. Grocery prices have increased by 20%, the report said, citing Bureau of Labor Statistics data, while energy prices have increased 38%.

Of course those numbers only tell part of the story.

If inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would still be well into double digit territory.

The cost of living has been soaring, and our standard of living has been steadily going down.

As a result, over 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck at this point, and debt levels are rising to unprecedented levels.

Because consumers have so little disposable income these days, retailers all over the nation are experiencing difficulty.

In fact, UBS is projecting that 50,000 stores could close in the United States by the end of 2027…

Analysts at investment bank UBS are forecasting that some 50,000 U.S. stores are likely to close by the end of 2027, because of expected cutbacks in consumer spending, tighter credit and the continued shift to ecommerce.

Store closings could accelerate to 70,000 to 90,000 if retail sales turn out to be weaker than expected, according to UBS.

Actually, I think that losing 50,000 stores is a wildly optimistic scenario.

Hopefully I am wrong about that.

The housing market has also been going haywire.

According to Fortune, the month of August “will become the worst month for housing affordability this century”…

On Monday, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 7.48%, marking the highest level since the year 2000. Even prior to this recent surge in mortgage rates, housing affordability, as monitored by the Atlanta Fed, had already deteriorated beyond the levels seen at the housing bubble’s peak in 2006. Once this latest mortgage rate surge is factored in, August 2023 will become the worst month for housing affordability this century.

Wow.

Thanks Joe Biden.

Home prices are going to have to come down, and in some areas they have already fallen quite a bit…

Homeowners are sitting on a negative equity timebomb after losing $108.4 billion on their property values this year, experts say.

The average borrower saw their home equity plummet by $5,400 in the first quarter of 2023 compared to last year – with households in Washington, California and Utah worst affected.

Do you remember the housing crash of 2008 and 2009?

Well, now the next housing crash is here, and it isn’t going to be fun.

For a while there, Joe Biden and his minions could at least boast about the employment market.

But now large companies all over America are laying off workers, and it is being reported that a staggering 1.223 million native-born Americans lost their jobs during the months of July and August…

Staggering figures have revealed that over 1.2 million US-born workers lost their jobs last month while the foreign-born workforce increased by nearly 700,000 – as migrants continue to flood across the border under the Biden administration.

Data from US Bureau of Labor Statistics show that between July and August, there was a staggering decrease of 1.223 million native-born people in the workforce – which is a low not beaten since the jobs crash when Covid hit in April 2020.

The numbers that I have shared with you are nothing to brag about.

But Joe Biden is going to keep trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people anyway.

Unfortunately for Biden, it has become quite clear that most Americans have lost faith in him.  According to the same Wall Street Journal poll that I mentioned above, 73 percent of U.S. voters now believe that Biden “is too old to run for president”…

For Biden, one of his biggest challenges is age. The Wall Street Journal poll found that about 73% of voters think Biden is too old to run for president while only 47% think Trump is too old. Thirty-six percent of voters think that Biden is mentally up for the job while 46% of voters think Trump is mentally capable of being president.

We have never seen numbers like this for any other president.

It is obvious that Biden is in a very advanced state of decline, and this is happening during one of the most critical periods in our history.

Sadly, Biden fully intends to run again.

And the Democrats will get behind him, because at this point no other candidate is posing a serious threat to Biden.

So it appears that a rematch between Joe Biden and Donald Trump is coming in 2024, and that promises to be quite a chaotic affair.

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.

How far would you go to feed your family?  Hopefully that is a question that you will not have to answer any time soon, but right now we are seeing millions upon millions of people become more desperate as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate and food costs soar.  At this point, most Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month, and in poorer countries on the other side of the world there are people that are literally starving to death.  As I have detailed previously, the UN has reported that 2.4 billion people did not have enough food to eat last year, and 900 million of them were facing severe food insecurity.  Sadly, those numbers will inevitably be even higher for 2023.  A global rice crisis has erupted, and the collapse of the Black Sea grain deal has greatly restricted the flow of agricultural goods from that part of the globe.  Food costs are spiking all over the planet, and that is really bad news for all of us.

For those of us that live in the United States, the good news is that nobody is starving at this stage.

But food prices have become extremely oppressive, and economic conditions are quickly moving in the wrong direction.

670,000 full-time jobs have been lost in just the past two months, and on Friday we witnessed the worst unadjusted payrolls report for the month of August since the Great Recession.

Yes, things really are that bad.

One recent survey discovered that 61 percent of Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, but I expect this number to go even higher in the months ahead…

Inflation, mortgage rates over 7% and credit card APR’s north of 20% have pushed all income brackets into living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new survey from Lending Club Bank.

“In July 2023, 61% of U.S. consumers live paycheck to paycheck, unchanged from June 2023, but 2 percentage points higher than July 2022. Generally, more consumers of all income brackets reported living paycheck to paycheck in July 2023 than last year,” Alia Dudum, a money expert at LendingClub told FOX Business.

Things are particularly dire for low income workers.  That same survey discovered that a whopping 78 percent of those that earn less than $50,000 a year are living paycheck to paycheck at this point…

Lower-income workers have been the hardest hit by higher prices, particularly for food and other necessities, since those expenses account for a bigger share of the budget, studies show.

Now, 78% of consumers earning less than $50,000 a year and 65% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 were living paycheck to paycheck in July, both up from a year ago, LendingClub found. Of those earning $100,000 or more, only 44% reported living paycheck to paycheck.

As I discussed last week, U.S. households that are feeling financial strain are increasingly turning to debt to make ends meet, and this has pushed debt levels to unprecedented heights…

Total household debt climbed to a new high in the second quarter of 2023, reaching $17.06 trillion, with credit card debt exceeding $1 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As interest rates stay high, costs continue to rise for expenses like housing and cars, and student loan payments resume, the amount of debt may rise, according to economists who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The amount of debt outstanding, and in particular the surpassing of the $1 trillion mark, is significant and worrisome,” Peter Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF. “It owes to a combination of several factors. The initial response to the pandemic, which prominently included the Fed setting policy (interest) rates at essentially zero for several years, made the amount of credit and the price of taking on debt extraordinarily cheap.”

As economic conditions get worse, people are becoming more desperate.

This is helping to fuel a crime wave all over the nation, and retailers are being forced to implement extreme measures.

According to the Wahington Post, a Giant Food store in Washington D.C. is actually going to be taking all Tide, Colgate and Advil products off the shelves completely because theft has become such a problem…

In the coming weeks, a Giant Food market in D.C. will clear its beauty and health aisles of all national labels. No more Tide, Colgate or Advil, only store brands. Shoppers also will have to present their receipts to an employee before exiting the store.

It’s the regional supermarket chain’s most overt gambit against the rampant theft that’s plaguing retailers of all sizes. It’s also a potential last-ditch effort to avoid shutting down the unprofitable store on Alabama Avenue — the only major grocer east of the Anacostia River in Ward 8.

An executive for the chain told the Washington Post that the company has “no other choice” and she noted that other stores in the area have done similar things…

“We have no other choice,” Diane Hicks, senior vice president of operations said Thursday during a walk-through with officials from the D.C. mayor’s office, the Metropolitan police and fire departments, and Chamber of Commerce. She added that other nearby stores have locked up all their product on those aisles or removed them altogether. “I’ve been leaving it out for our customers and unfortunately it just forces all the crime to come to us.”

This is where our entire society is heading.

It is just a matter of time before we see armed guards stationed in grocery stores and on food trucks all over America.

Desperate people do desperate things, and right now we are seeing things happen that are absolutely nuts.

Just a few days ago, an extremely shocking incident that happened in broad daylight at a Home Depot store in California made headlines all over the nation…

Brazen thieves were caught on camera casually walking out with $9,000 worth of goods from separate California stores as lawlessness in the state governed by Gavin Newsom continues.

A group of masked thieves stormed into a Home Depot store in Signal Hill on August 27 and stole $5,000 worth of power tools in full view of shocked staff and customers.

The seven men loaded two shopping carts with expensive goods and carried as much as possible in their arms before walking out.

These sorts of robberies have become so common that I couldn’t possibly cover them all.

We really are starting to become a “Mad Max” society.

Of course the truth is that the entire world is moving in that direction.  Global supplies of food are getting tighter and tighter, and the recent spike in rice prices has created a tremendous amount of concern…

Countries worldwide are scrambling to secure rice after a partial ban on exports by India cut global supplies by roughly a fifth. Global food security is already under threat since Russia halted an agreement allowing Ukraine to export wheat and the El Nino weather phenomenon hampers rice production.

Now, rice prices are soaring, and it’s putting the most vulnerable people in some of the poorest nations at risk. Vietnam’s rice export prices, for instance, have reached a 15-year high. Even before India’s restrictions, countries already were frantically buying rice in anticipation of scarcity later when the El Nino hit, creating a supply crunch and spiking prices.

Civil unrest has already started to erupt in various parts of Africa, but if current trends continue things will get a whole lot worse around the globe in 2024.

Are you prepared for what is ahead?

Right now, a lot of people are apparently asking that question.  In fact, according to Zero Hedge the number of Americans searching for the term “live off grid” on the Internet has hit the highest level in years…

What’s piqued our interest is the sudden panic by some Americans searching ‘live off grid’ on the internet, hitting the highest level in five years. The driving force behind finding a rural piece of land for dirt cheap, buying or building a tiny home, installing solar panels, and sourcing your own food and water might have to do with the worst inflation storm in a generation while Democrat cities implode under the weight of soaring violent crime.

I have been relentlessly warning my readers that “Mad Max” conditions are coming for years.

Anyone that took an honest look at the long-term trends should have been able to see that.

Global leaders have been making absolutely disastrous decisions for a very long time, and now we are all going to reap the consequences.

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.