Money

The Child Poverty Rate In The United States Has More Than Doubled

September 14, 2023September 14, 2023 by Michael

If you take an honest look at the numbers, the obvious conclusion is that the U.S. economy is rapidly going in the wrong direction. Delinquency rates are soaring, sales of previously-owned homes have declined by more than 32 percent over the past two years, inflation is starting to rise at a frightening pace again, large companies all over America are laying off workers, and we just witnessed the largest decline in real median household income in more than a decade. Sadly, it is often the most vulnerable members of our society that get hit the hardest when economic times get rough. According to the Census Bureau, the child poverty rate in the United States more than doubled from 2021 to 2022…

The U.S. poverty rate according to the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) was 12.4% in 2022, a rise of 4.6 percentage points from 2021. The poverty rate for children more than doubled year over year, from 5.2% to 12.4% — a record increase.

There is no way to spin that number to make it look good.

So why did this happen?

The Census Bureau is blaming inflation and the end of emergency programs that were instituted during the early days of the pandemic…

Inflation was a factor, but Census Bureau officials said the spike could largely be attributed to the expiration of pandemic programs: There were no stimulus payments last year, and the enhanced child tax credits expired in 2021.

Those stimulus checks were nice while they lasted, but they also helped to fuel the horrifying inflation that we are experiencing today.

Inflation seemed to cool off a bit for a few months, but now it is starting to accelerate again.

According to the Labor Department, we just witnessed the largest monthly increase in the consumer price index so far this year…

The Labor Department said Wednesday that the consumer price index, a broad measure of the price for everyday goods including gasoline, groceries and rents, rose 0.6% in August from the previous month, in line with estimates. It marked the steepest monthly increase this year, underscoring the challenge of taming high inflation.

If prices were to rise 0.6 percent every month, the official rate of inflation would be over 7 percent for the entire year.

Of course if inflation was still measured the way that it was back in 1980, we would still be well into double digit territory right now.

Over the past several years, inflation has been rising much faster than our paychecks have, and this has had an absolutely devastating impact on the middle class.

Millions of U.S. households are being pushed to a financial breaking point, and as a result delinquencies are spiking. The following was recently posted on Twitter by the Kobeissi Letter…

Auto loan delinquency rates are now at their highest levels since 2008.

Since the Fed started raising rates in March 2022, auto loan delinquency rates have nearly doubled.

For Q2 2023, the auto loan delinquency rate in the US jumped to 7.3%.

This is up from 6.9% in Q1 2023 and above pre-pandemic levels.

Moody’s said that auto loan delinquencies will hit 10% in 2024.

Consumers are feeling the pain of higher rates.

Credit card delinquencies are also surging.

In fact, credit card delinquencies haven’t been this high in over a decade.

We really are at a major economic tipping point, and things are going to get even worse as more Americans lose their jobs.

The “largest groundfish company on the East Coast” has just gone belly up, and all of their workers will now be searching for new jobs…

THE largest groundfish company on the East Coast has filed for bankruptcy leaving employees without a job as it shutters all of its locations.

Blue Harvest Fisheries filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy on Friday, meaning it will most likely have to close and liquidate all of its company assets.

“They weren’t just underwater. It looks like they had long since drowned,” a lawyer who reviewed the company’s court records told the New Bedford Light.

Meanwhile, it is being reported that FedEx will be conducting more layoffs…

Memphis-based FedEx announced Thursday that it would reduce positions in its IT and Finance departments.

FedEx did not disclose the exact number of layoffs or the locations of the positions, but said it was a “small percentage of IT and Finance positions.” The company employs about 30,000 in the greater Memphis area.

And Google just announced that it will be “cutting hundreds of jobs in its global recruiting organization”…

Google is cutting hundreds of jobs in its global recruiting organization as part of a broader pullback in hiring over the next several quarters, CNBC has confirmed.

“We unfortunately need to make a significant reduction to the size of the recruiting organization,” Brian Ong, Google’s recruiting vice president, told employees in a Wednesday video meeting, a recording of which was obtained by CNBC.

If you have a good job that you value, try to hold on to it for as long as you can.

Because the environment that we are heading into will be very harsh.

At this point, even JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is not sounding very optimistic about our economic future…

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told a financial conference in New York on Monday that people who assume that the U.S. economy will continue to boom for years on the back of consumer strength are making “a huge mistake.”

Mr. Dimon made the remarks at the Barclays Global Financial Services Conference on Sept. 11, at which he warned of a number of risks to the economy, including the Ukraine war, monetary tightening by the Federal Reserve, and increasing reliance on government spending.

“To say the consumer is strong today, meaning you are going to have a booming environment for years, is a huge mistake,” he said.

Normally, Dimon is a raging optimist.

But the numbers have gotten so bad that even he can see that big trouble is rapidly approaching.

Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this stage, and now a tremendous amount of pain is ahead of us.

Unfortunately, the colossal mistakes that we have made will hurt our children severely.

The child poverty rate has already more than doubled, and it will continue to go even higher as the U.S. economy steadily crumbles right in front of our eyes.

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 U.S. Is Setting All Sorts Of Crazy New All-Time Records This Year

September 13, 2023September 13, 2023 by Michael

You have got to admit that 2023 has been a really wild year. Donald Trump has been indicted four times (an all-time record for those that have served in the White House), our proxy war with Russia seems to get even more intense with each passing month, economic turmoil has been a constant theme, and it seems like we have had a major natural disaster somewhere in this country almost every week. In fact, with more than three months to go, we have already set a brand new all-time record for the most billion dollar disasters in a single calendar year…

From storms to wildfires, it’s already been a record catastrophic year for weather and climate disasters across the nation, and we’ve still got nearly four months to go.

As of Monday, the U.S. has endured a whopping 23 separate weather and climate disasters that have each led to at least $1 billion in damage, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday.

That breaks the record of 22 set in 2020.

Some people think that I am exaggerating when I write about the nightmarish disasters that are pummeling our planet one after another.

But I am not exaggerating at all.

I am just reporting the facts.

And now we may have another billion dollar disaster to add to the list, because it appears that Hurricane Lee may hit the state of Maine…

Latest projections appear to show that the growing Hurricane Lee is bearing down on Maine and could impact the New England-area in the very early hours of Sunday.

As of Wednesday, the storm has triggered a tropical storm watch in Bermuda, and is now less than 500 miles from the island nation, bringing with it winds of 155 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

The storm continues to grow as it moves out of the Caribbean, with its Category 3 winds being felt up to 125 miles from its center and Tropical Storm winds being felt up to 240 miles away, that’s expected to increase to 300 miles by the weekend.

Switching gears, car insurance premiums have risen to a brand new all-time record high, and over the past year the rate of increase has been the fastest since 1976…

Across the United States, the cost of car insurance is up 19% compared to a year ago, according to August’s Consumer Price Index report released on Wednesday. That’s the biggest annual increase since 1976.

But in Florida, where extreme weather episodes are increasingly more prevalent and destructive, the cost is hitting even harder. That’s because insurance companies have to cover more claims as a result of these events, leaving them with higher losses. To compensate, they’re raising rates — or, in some cases, pulling out of states that are prone to extreme weather — according to Insurify, an insurance comparison website.

As I discussed yesterday, the cost of living has become incredibly oppressive.

But they want us to believe that inflation is under control.

No, it is not.

Americans are increasingly turning to debt just to make it from month to month, and this has pushed total credit card debt and total household debt to new record levels…

By some measures, Americans have never been more in the red.

In the second quarter of 2023, total credit card debt surpassed $1 trillion for the first time ever, which helped bring total household debt to $17.06 trillion, also a fresh record, according to the New York Federal Reserve.

Of course our national debt is constantly setting new records.

At this point it exceeds 32 trillion dollars, and we are being warned that interest payments on that debt will reach a staggering 1.4 trillion dollars a year by 2032…

The rapid increase in interest rates over the past year could cause some collateral damage to the U.S. government’s finances, because as interest rates rise, so will the federal government’s borrowing costs on its $32.68 trillion in debt.

Interest payments on the national debt are projected to be the fastest-growing part of the federal budget over the next three decades, according to the latest estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Thanks to a combination of high inflation, rising interest rates and unrelenting growth in the national debt, interest payments are expected to triple from nearly $475 billion in fiscal year 2022 to a stunning $1.4 trillion in 2032.

Our politicians in Washington are doing such a great job, aren’t they?

But even though our federal government is spending so much money, the national homelessness crisis just continues to get even worse.

As I mentioned yesterday, so far this year we have seen the biggest jump in homelessness ever recorded…

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.

Meanwhile, the level of violence just continues to go up.

Just check out these new numbers that were just released by the federal government…

The number of school shootings in the U.S. just hit a record high.

Again.

There were 188 shootings with casualties at public and private elementary schools during the 2021-22 school year, according to new federal data. About two-thirds of them caused injuries. Fifty-seven led to deaths.

It’s the second year in a row that the number of shootings with casualties hit an all-time peak in American schools.

Abortion numbers are also setting new records all over the nation.

In fact, some states that border other states that have implemented restrictions on abortion have actually seen the number of abortions double or even triple…

New Mexico, which borders Oklahoma, and Wyoming, which borders three other states, saw the biggest percentage increases, with more than three times as many abortions provided in the first half of 2023 compared to 2020.

Kansas and South Carolina also saw their number of abortions double in that time.

We should all be deeply saddened by what has happened to this country.

In this current environment, literally anything goes, and that is especially true for our politicians.

This week, we learned that a prominent Democratic candidate for the Virginia legislature has been performing sex acts with her husband on the Internet for money…

The Washington Post reported Monday that it had viewed videos in which Gibson urged viewers to pay her and her husband with “tips” for performing certain sexual acts.

Gibson — who offered no new public statements on Tuesday — is in a high-profile contest with Republican David Owen in House District 57, which is based in western Henrico and includes part of Goochland County.

Once upon a time, this would have instantly disqualified someone from ever running for office.

But some Democrats are already stepping up to defend her…

But state Sen. L. Louise Lucas, a leading Democratic lawmaker in Virginia, quickly came to her defense, calling on voters to “make this the biggest fundraising day of (Gibson’s) campaign.” Many women voters retweeted Lucas with a link to donate to Gibson’s campaign.

“Anybody who looks at this knows it’s a hit job,” said Amanda Linton, a 45-year-old defense contractor who donated $25 to Gibson’s campaign after reading about the videos. Linton said she plans to donate another $100 to Gibson’s campaign even though she can’t vote for her because she lives outside her district.

Are you kidding me?

This is how far we have fallen.

If she stays in the race, there is a good chance that she could win.

America has become rotten to the core, and if we stay on this path things will not end well for us.

But even though many of us have been sounding the alarm for years, most Americans still do not want to listen.

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.

The Middle Class Is Increasingly Becoming “The Impoverished Class”, And The Poor Are Increasingly Being Pushed Into The Streets

September 12, 2023September 12, 2023 by Michael

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.

We Have A Real Life Nightmare On Our Hands

September 11, 2023September 11, 2023 by Michael

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.

Wake Up! Highly Destructive Natural Disasters Are Suddenly Striking Areas All Over The Earth

September 10, 2023September 10, 2023 by Michael

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.

Welcome To The Real Estate Industry Apocalypse

September 7, 2023 by Michael

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.

Scientists Have Created A Human “Entity” That Has No Mother Or Father

September 6, 2023September 6, 2023 by Michael

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.

This Is How Bad Things Have Become In America…

September 5, 2023 by Michael

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.

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