Money

7 Trends Which Indicate That Economic Disaster Is Approaching Very Rapidly

August 6, 2023August 6, 2023 by Michael

The economic meltdown that is coming should not be a surprise to anyone. Throughout U.S. history, there have always been signs that a major downturn was coming, and that is precisely what we are witnessing right now. Tax revenues are way down, demand for trucking services is way down, demand for cardboard boxes is way down, the money supply is shrinking at the fastest pace in modern history, and the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has already declined for 15 months in a row. At this point, anyone that cannot see what is coming has got to be willingly blind. The following are 7 trends which indicate that economic disaster is approaching very rapidly…

#1 When economic activity slows down, less tax revenue comes in. Right now, federal government and state government tax revenues are declining precipitously…

US state and local governments just experienced the worst decline in income tax revenues ever recorded.

This was the second steepest year-over-year percentage decline in history, with only the GFC having a worse outcome.

Note that Federal tax receipts are also dropped again, now at recessionary levels and approaching -10% on a YoY basis.

#2 When the economy slows down, trucking companies see less demand for their services. So it is deeply alarming that truck freight volume and spending absolutely plummeted during the second quarter…

Truck freight volume and spending in the second quarter of 2023 declined by the highest levels since the early days of the pandemic, the latest U.S. Bank Freight Payment Index revealed. Spending by shippers dropped 10.9% compared to the second quarter of 2022 while shipment volume dropped 9%, according to a statement from the Minneapolis-based bank.

#3 Employment is supposed to be the “bright spot” for the economy, but the latest employment report shows that the U.S. actually lost 585,000 full-time jobs last month…

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 July the number of full-time jobs plunged by 585,000 to 134.274 million, the biggest monthly drop since record covid crash of 14.7 million jobs!

#4 U.S. employers have already announced more job cuts this year than they did in all of 2022, and the hits just keep on coming…

CVS Health said Monday it is cutting approximately 5,000 jobs to focus more on healthcare services for its customers.

The move, which is supposed to help the company save money, will affect workers primarily in corporate jobs, the Wall Street Journal reported.

#5 Thanks to rapidly rising interest rates, monthly costs for new homebuyers are almost 20 percent higher than they were a year ago. This is absolutely crushing the housing market…

The monthly cost for a potential homebuyer has surged nearly 20% compared with a year ago as prices remain elevated, according to new data.

During the four-week period ending July 30, the monthly mortgage payment for the typical U.S. homebuyer sat at $2,605, 19% higher than the same period a year earlier, according to Redfin.

#6 The fact that delinquency rates for commercial real estate mortgages are skyrocketing is yet another sign that we are in the early stages of the worst commercial real estate crisis in all of U.S. history…

The delinquency rate of commercial real estate mortgages on office properties that had been securitized into Commercial Mortgage-Backed Securities (CMBS) spiked to 5.0% by loan balance in July, up from a delinquency rate of 2.8% in April, having now spiked by 2.2 percentage points in three months, by far the biggest three-month spike in the data going back to 2000, and by 3.4 percentage points so far this year, by far the biggest seven-month spike, according to Trepp, which tracks and analyzes CMBS.

#7 The share of the U.S. population that cannot even afford “a $400 emergency expense” just continues to go up…

“The share of U.S. adults who said they would cover a $400 emergency expense with cash or equivalents dropped by 2 percentage points from the previous quarter to 46%, highlighting how cash-strapped many Americans are despite the recent decrease in headline inflation,” according to the survey developed by Bloomberg and conducted by intelligence company Morning Consult.

But Joe Biden and his defenders continue to insist that everything is just fine.

In fact, Joy Behar is quite certain that “the economy is booming” right now…

Leftist Joy Behar — who reportedly earns $7 million annually as a co-host on “The View” — said on Friday’s program that “the economy is booming” and “people are having an easier time putting bread on the table” in a passionate defense of President Joe Biden.

For those that are making millions of dollars a year, I am sure that everything must seem great.

But for the rest of us, things are tough.

Meanwhile, our banks continue to experience really weird “technical glitches”. For example, in recent days many Wells Fargo customers have been greatly upset about money disappearing from their accounts…

On X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, users complained about their disappearing funds. One bank customer said they saw the news about the problem right as they noticed their deposits weren’t in their account.

“Right before this popped up in the news I saw that my deposits weren’t in my account,” their tweet read. “I was trying to pay bills and none would go through. This is so unacceptable.”

The company responded in a statement to CNN that a “limited amount” of their customers are experiencing the disappearing deposits. They said most of them were “resolved” and that they would fix the problem soon.

This is another example which shows why it is wise to never keep all of your eggs in one basket.

Our financial institutions are far more vulnerable than most people realize, and the cyberattacks that we have seen so far are just a small preview of what is coming.

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t understand any of the things that I have discussed in this article.

Most Americans are simply trusting that our leaders have everything under control, and so they will be bitterly, bitterly disappointed when they finally realize the truth.

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.

Great Evil Is Roaming The Streets Of America

August 3, 2023August 3, 2023 by Michael

America’s societal decline appears to be accelerating. Hordes of predators are roaming our streets, drug addiction has risen to unprecedented levels, and crime is completely out of control. Some of the things that I am about to share with you are deeply disturbing. But we must face what is happening to us as a society, because we are in danger of losing everything. America is literally disappearing right in front of our eyes, and it is being replaced by a horror show.

Sadly, I am not exaggerating one bit.

A 29-year-old man named Negasi Zuberi recently kidnapped a woman in Seattle and took her 450 miles away to his house in southern Oregon…

A Klamath Falls man is in custody after a woman escaped from a makeshift cinder block cell in his garage, the FBI of Portland says.

According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation 29-year-old, Negasi Zuberi (aka Sakima, Justin Hyche and Justin Kouassi), traveled from his home in Klamath Falls to Seattle on July 15. Once in Seattle, Zuberi posed as an undercover police officer and paid the woman for sex.

The victim told police that Zuberi pointed a taser at her, put her in handcuffs and leg irons before putting her in the back of his car.

This literally sounds like a plot from a horror movie.

Once they arrived at his house, Zuberi put her into a “cinderblock cell” that he had already constructed…

“According to the complaint, this woman was kidnapped, chained, sexually assaulted, and locked in a cinderblock cell. Police say, she beat the door with her hands until they were bloody in order to break free. Her quick thinking and will to survive may have saved other women from a similar nightmare,” says Assistant Special Agent in Charge, Stephanie Shark with the FBI Portland Field Office.

The victim was eventually able to break down the door to the cell when Zuberi was away, took a gun from his car and escaped the home. She then was able to flag down a passing driver who called 911.

Obviously Zuberi had all of this well planned out in advance.

And the victim should be so glad that she escaped, because otherwise she probably would have ended up dead after Zuberi was finished with her.

Decades ago, this sort of story would have been front page news for weeks.

So why hasn’t this case gotten more attention from our national news networks?

It is because cases like this have become extremely common in our day and age.

According to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, there are 917,771 registered sex offenders in the United States and its territories.

As I stated earlier, hordes of predators are roaming our streets, and it gets worse with each passing year.

The FBI recently took a break from persecuting conservatives to conduct a two week effort known as “Operation Cross Country”, and they were able to arrest quite a few predators that were involved in child sex trafficking…

Known as “Operation Cross Country,” nearly every FBI field office was involved in the annual two-week operation that led to the arrest of 126 suspects of child sexual exploitation and human trafficking offenses, and 68 suspects of trafficking were identified or arrested.

The bureau and its local partners found 59 minor victims of child sex trafficking and sexual exploitation and another 59 children who had been reported missing.

“Human traffickers prey on the most vulnerable members of our society, and their crimes scar victims — many of them children — for life. The FBI’s commitment to combatting this threat will never waver, and we will continue to send our message that these atrocities will not be tolerated,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a statement.

I suppose that we should be thankful for what the FBI was able to accomplish, but why can’t they be working on this all year long?

And the truth is that they only put an extremely small dent in the overall problem.

Much more work needs to be done.

Meanwhile, other forms of crime also continue to rise.

On Sunday evening, hundreds of young people in Chicago went on an extremely alarming looting rampage…

A large group of young people, mostly juveniles, ripped through the South Loop on Sunday evening, looting a convenience store, storming a Dunkin, and fighting as they ran through the streets. It was the second time in days that groups of teens targeted the area along Roosevelt Road.

Chicago police supervisors, in a departure from previous “large group” situations, encouraged cops to lock people up. They did. A total of 40 people, including 37 juveniles were taken into custody during the incident, according to a CPD spokesperson. Officers seized three firearms from the arrestees.

At this point, I don’t understand why anyone would still want to live in the Windy City.

Of course the same could be said for Oakland. According to Newsweek, the city is facing a major crime emergency right now…

Oakland—a liberal stronghold that has a Democratic mayor, state senator and U.S. congresswoman—recorded a 52 percent increase in motor vehicle theft in the year to July 30.

The OPD data, provided to Newsweek by the Oakland Police Officers’ Association, also includes a 44 percent rise in robberies involving a knife and a 22 percent increase for robberies of any kind.

Barry Donelan, president of the Oakland Police Officers’ Association, told Newsweek: “The public safety situation in Oakland, fueled by rising crime and a revolving door justice system, is exacerbated by too few cops struggling to keep up with the surge in criminal activity and increased calls for help from our residents.”

All over America, theft has become an enormous problem.

It is being projected that theft will cost U.S. retailers more than 100 billion dollars in 2023, and many are responding by literally “locking up items”…

Running errands isn’t as easy as it used to be. Businesses have been reducing operating hours, locking up items and threatening to shutter stores completely.

The reason for many of these shifts, according to retailers? A spike in theft.

Companies like Target, Walmart, Dollar General and Home Depot have been sounding the alarm on retail theft in recent months. Missing inventory was talked about more during this previous quarter’s earnings call than any quarter on record, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

But apparently our politicians have decided that the chaos in our streets is not yet bad enough, because they continue to leave our borders wide open and they continue to bring in vast hordes of new migrants.

In New York City, there are so many new migrants that authorities have literally run out of places to put them…

Sobering video shows dozens of migrants sleeping on cardboard outside the iconic Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan on Monday morning — as the makeshift processing center for asylum seekers hit capacity this weekend.

The slumbering newly arrived migrants could be seen filling the sidewalks surrounding the historic hotel at 45th Street and Vanderbilt Avenue, stretching from the hotel door up East 47th Street.

The group slept shoulder-to-shoulder across three full blocks while waiting to be processed at the site, which also houses migrant families, as NYPD officers monitored the situation.

Of course more new migrants continue to arrive with each passing day.

In a desperate attempt to address this crisis, city leaders are actually thinking about turning Central Park and Prospect Park into giant migrant camps…

The Depression-era shantytowns known as Hoovervilles, are about to make a triumphal return smack in the middle of New York’s Central Park.

Amid a relentless influx of illegal immigrants that has exposed liberal NIMBY hypocrisy in the quote-unquote Sanctuary City that is New York, Bloomberg reports that officials are considering housing migrants in Manhattan’s Central Park and Brooklyn’s Prospect Park as part of a plan to find new sites for some of the more than 95,000 asylum seekers who have arrived in the past 15 months.

We already have millions of deeply impoverished people that are extremely angry, and now we are bringing lots more in.

This isn’t going to end well.

During the years ahead, there is going to be widespread violence and civil unrest in this country.

But this didn’t have to happen.

If our leaders had made different decisions, we would have gotten different results.

Unfortunately, our leaders just continue to make self-destructive decision after self-destructive decision, and we are all going to pay a very great price for their unwise policies.

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.

“Go Woke, Go Broke” Is A Reality, And Here Are The Receipts…

August 2, 2023 by Michael

A pattern has emerged that is undeniable. Companies that choose to “go woke” are going broke. In fact, this is even happening to some of the largest and most famous corporations in the entire country. There is a certain portion of the population that absolutely hates having “woke” propaganda shoved down their throats and the throats of their children, and in 2023 we are seeing economic boycotts on a scale that we have never seen before. This is a good thing, because the only way these companies are going to willingly change their behavior is if they see that pushing a radical social agenda dramatically affects the bottom line.

Bud Light is a perfect example. On April 1st, Dylan Mulvaney sent shockwaves all over the Internet by promoting Bud Light on social media…

On April 1, Mulvaney posted two pictures on social media.

In one picture, she held a can of Bud Light with her picture on it, and in another picture, she sat in a bubble bath with Bud Light cans around her.

At first a lot of people thought that this was a joke.

After all, it seemed extremely unlikely that a company like Bud Light would actually hire Dylan Mulvaney to promote the brand.

But that is precisely what happened, and the backlash was furious.

To this day, millions of conservatives are refusing to purchase Bud Light, and sales have fallen “by more than 25%”…

After four months of hiring freezes and layoffs — with some beer truck drivers getting heckled and harassed even as Bud Light sales have dropped by more than 25% — Anheuser-Busch wholesalers have accepted that they have lost a chunk of their customers for good — and need to focus on a new crop of drinkers.

“Consumers have made a choice,” said an executive at a Texas-based beer distributor who did not want to be identified. “They have left [Bud Light] and that’s how it’s going to be. I don’t envision a big percentage of them coming back.”

Target is another example.

It turns out that millions of conservative parents were absolutely disgusted by the sick clothing and accessories that the retailer was promoting to their children, and so many of them simply stopped shopping there.

As a result, sales results for the second quarter were extremely dismal…

The second quarter just wrapped up for the 2024 fiscal year, meaning it’s time to dive in and see who crushed it … and who got crushed.

Target, as you can probably guess by now, falls into the latter category.

“Target was our worst performer in the quarter, primarily driven by customers and public reaction to in-store promotions for the month of June,” Smead Capital Management wrote in a letter to investors this week.

Over the past year, shares of Target are down more than 20 percent, and the outlook for the future is not good at all.

Netflix is another company that has learned that it does not pay to go woke.

After coming out with a very twisted slate of “woke” programming over the past couple of years, the streaming giant has begun to hemorrhage subscribers.

In fact, the company lost nearly a million subscribers during the second quarter alone…

The carnage at Netflix keeps getting worse. On Tuesday, the far left-wing streamer revealed that it lost close to 1 million subscribers in the second quarter — the largest quarterly loss of customers in the company’s history.

I fully expect the “carnage” at Netflix to continue, but there is one company that has all of the other examples that I have shared with you so far beat by a mile.

Once upon a time, parents all over America trusted Disney to produce family-friendly content for their children.

As a result, Disney became one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.

But then Disney went “woke”, and results started to turn sour.

Here in 2023, Disney movie after Disney movie has absolutely flopped at the box office, and it is being projected that the company’s film losses so far this year could be around a billion dollars…

Disney have faced a summer of box office disasters bringing the studio’s total losses to almost $1 billion. This includes Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny being set to go down as one of the biggest flops in Hollywood history.

Unfortunately, even after everything that we have already witnessed, some companies out there continue to insist on pushing “woke” propaganda.

Earlier today, Costa Coffee was making national headlines for all the wrong reasons…

Anti-LGBTQ social media users are threatening to boycott the world’s second-largest coffee chain after a photo of one of its mobile cafe vans, which bore an illustration of a transgender person, began to circulate online Monday.

The hashtag #BoycottCostaCoffee garnered traction after outspoken critics took issue with the illustration, which shows a trans person with scars from a double mastectomy, also known as top surgery. Others tweeted in support of the illustration, saying it brought visibility to trans people. It was not immediately clear when the illustration was first displayed or how many cafe vans it was printed on.

This certainly isn’t going to help them sell coffee.

So why are they doing it?

Our country is so divided today, and CEOs know that getting involved in politics will likely alienate a substantial portion of the consumer base.

But some CEOs just continue to make self-destructive decisions anyway.

Needless to say, it isn’t just companies that are going “woke” and paying a price for it.

Entire states have chosen to embrace “woke” ideology, and this is one of the reasons why so many people and businesses have been migrating from blue states to red states…

With a single tweet, Chamath Palihapitiya, the CEO of Social Capital, recently became the provocative main character of the day on Twitter (now rebranding to X).

Palihapitiya sent out a screenshot of a Bloomberg article based on how six southern states had contributed more to U.S. gross domestic product than the northeast corridor of Washington-New York-Boston for the first time in history.

But it was his accompanying caption that sparked hot debate: “Go woke, go broke,” he said, implying that the ongoing culture war and economic policies of northeastern states had facilitated the migration of wealth and economic power to the South.

Of course the largest “woke” institution of all is the federal government.

And it deeply grieves me to write that.

The Republic that our founders established is unrecognizable today, and thanks to our deeply liberal spending policies we are now 32 trillion dollars in debt.

On Tuesday, Fitch announced that it had decided to officially downgrade U.S. debt from AAA to AA+…

President Biden’s administration is placing the blame for the U.S.’ drop in credit rating on former President Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 riots.

Fitch announced Tuesday it has officially downgraded the U.S.’ long-term foreign-currency issuer default rating to “AA+” from “AAA,” saying the downgrade “reflects the expected fiscal deterioration” and the nation’s heavy debt burden.

This is a really big deal, especially if the downgrade turns out to be permanent.

Our entire society is on a deeply self-destructive path, and we desperately need to wake up from all of this “woke” nonsense.

Will that happen?

Let us hope so, because the clock is ticking…

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 Why U.S. Economic Activity Seems So “Slow” This Summer

August 1, 2023 by Michael

Do things seem “slow” to you this summer? If so, you are definitely not alone. In recent weeks, my wife and I have heard from so many people that are saying that activity at their businesses or organizations has been really slow lately. In other words, less money has been coming in than usual. This has caused a lot of confusion, because when these people turn on their televisions they are told that the U.S. economy is doing just fine. Of course that is not actually true, but these media reports are still causing a tremendous amount of confusion. A lot of people out there are just very frustrated because things are so slow for their businesses or organizations right now while the overall economy is supposedly buzzing along at a really good pace.

So what is really going on?

Well, it is absolutely imperative to understand what the Federal Reserve has been doing.

After pumping an unprecedented amount of money into the system during the pandemic, in recent months Fed officials have actually been making efforts to reduce the size of the money supply because they have been so scared of inflation.

As a result, M2 has been declining at the fastest pace in modern history.

When the money supply contracts, there is going to be less economic activity.

So this is one of the biggest reasons why things have been so “slow” for businesses and organizations all over America this summer.

And if the money supply continues to shrink, a recession will be inevitable. At this point, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has already fallen for 15 months in a row…

An index designed to track turns in U.S. business cycles fell for the 15th straight month in June, dragged down by a weakening consumer outlook and increased unemployment claims, marking the longest streak of decreases since the lead-up to the 2007-2009 recession.

The Conference Board on Thursday said its Leading Economic Index, a measure that anticipates future economic activity, declined by 0.7% in June to 106.1 following a revised decrease of 0.6% in May. The decline was slightly greater than the median expectation among economists in a Reuters poll for a 0.6% decrease.

The last time we saw a streak like this, we experienced the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

And many would argue that we have already entered a new economic downturn. Employers have been conducting mass layoffs all over the country, and the number of job openings in the United States just fell to the lowest level in more than two years.

Another sign that the economy has now fallen into hard times is the fact that sales of cardboard boxes are absolutely plummeting. The following comes from an excellent article by Michael Maharrey…

And here’s another off-the-beaten-path metric that is screaming recession — a big plunge in the sale of cardboard boxes.

Earlier this month, Packaging Corp. of America reported that cardboard box sales fell 9.8% in the second quarter. That ranks as one of the biggest slumps on record when you combine it with the 12.7% drop in Q1. According to a report by FreightWaves Research, the combined six-month decline ranks as the biggest plunge since early 2009.

Now, you might wonder, ‘What do cardboard box sales have to do with the economy?’

Stop and think about it. Stuff gets shipped in boxes. Everything from raw materials to final products arriving at your door is packaged in boxes. If there is less stuff produced and sold, an economy will need fewer boxes. So, cardboard box sales serve as a pretty good indicator of real economic activity — production, buying, and selling.

He is right.

These numbers are absolutely screaming that a recession is dead ahead.

And it isn’t just the U.S. economy that is struggling.

According to Zero Hedge, the latest numbers show that manufacturing activity is now in contraction mode all over the planet…

It’s been a rough morning for Global Manufacturing PMIs – China, Turkey, Italy, France, Germany (shitshow), Eurozone, UK, Canada, and Brazil all printed below 50 (contracting).

Wow.

That is not good news at all.

In Europe, the production of goods is falling at a rate that is truly frightening…

Goods production in the #eurozone fell at the sharpest pace since the global financial crisis in July (except for pandemic-hit months), contributing to the fastest drop in factory gate prices since Sep 2009.

So what is the bottom line?

The bottom line is that big economic trouble is coming.

I hope that you have been getting ready for such a scenario.

As I close this article, I want to share an excerpt from a recent Wall Street Journal article that described what has happened to a prominent shopping mall in Connecticut that was once extremely busy…

Crystal Mall’s parking lots used to be so crowded that parents would line up to drop off their teenagers near one of the entrances rather than search for a spot.

Now, the vast stretches of cracked pavement surrounding this 1980s-era regional mall on Connecticut’s coast have more weeds than cars. Valued by an appraiser at $153 million as recently as 2012, Crystal Mall sold in June for just over $9.5 million in a foreclosure auction.

“To look at it now, it’s disheartening,” said Waterford’s top elected leader, First Selectman Rob Brule, who grew up in this working-class town and described the mall as the social centerpiece of his youth.

The U.S. economy is just like that mall.

Once upon a time, the U.S. economy was the greatest economic machine that the world had ever seen.

But now our foundations are cracking and weeds are growing all over the place.

And it is definitely “disheartening” to watch what is happening, because what is ahead is going to be far worse than what we are experiencing right now.

After the “Great Recession”, our leaders should have attempted to fix the fundamental problems that we were facing.

Instead, they just patched our economic and financial systems together and created an even larger bubble.

Now that bubble is bursting, and that is going to cause an extraordinary amount of pain for most Americans.

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 Beat Goes On: Another Bank Has Collapsed, Another Trucking Company Has Collapsed, And U.S. Consumers Are Tapped Out

July 31, 2023 by Michael

Should we be surprised that we are witnessing so many failures all around us? After all, the mainstream media claims that the U.S. economy is doing just great. Of course the truth is that the economy is not in good shape at all. Those in positions of power have been desperately trying to prop up the system, but it continues to steadily fall apart. Earlier this year, we witnessed the second largest bank failure in U.S. history, the third largest bank failure in U.S. history, and the fourth largest bank failure in U.S. history. The Federal Reserve implemented extreme measures in an attempt to keep more banks from failing, but now another one has failed. On Friday, Heartland Tri-State Bank collapsed and the FDIC took control and arranged a sale…

Heartland Tri-State Bank of Elkhart, Kansas, failed on Friday, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation taking control.

The FDIC agreed to assume all the deposits of Heartland Tri-State Bank to protect customers, entering a purchase and assumption agreement with Dream First Bank of Syracuse, Kansas.

That means the four branches of Heartland Tri-State Bank will reopen as branches of Dream First Bank on Monday.

This is the pattern that has emerged.

When a bank fails, the government is going to arrange for it to be absorbed by a bigger bank if possible.

Over time, this will lead to an unprecedented wave of consolidation in the banking industry.

The trucking industry has also fallen on very hard times.

Already this year we have seen a number of trucking company failures including Flagship Transport in Florida and FreightWorks Transport in North Carolina.

Now Yellow Corp. has gone belly up, and every single one of their 30,000 workers will be searching for new jobs…

Yellow Corp., a 99-year-old trucking company that was once a dominant player in its field, halted operations Sunday and will lay off all 30,000 of its workers.

The unionized company has been in a battle with the Teamsters union, which represents about 22,000 drivers and dock workers at the company. Just a week ago the union canceled a threatened strike that had been prompted by the company failing to contribute to its pension and health insurance plans. The union granted the company an extra month to make the required payments.

But by midweek last week, the company had stopped picking up freight from its customers and was making deliveries only of freight already in its system, according to both the union and Satish Jindel, a trucking industry consultant.

This is a sad day for a lot of Americans, because many of us fondly remember seeing their trucks going down the highway.

And it turns out that this is also a sad day for taxpayers, because Yellow owed the federal government a tremendous amount of money…

As of late March, Yellow had an outstanding debt of about $1.5 billion. Of that, $729.2 million was owed to the federal government.

In 2020, under the Trump administration, the Treasury Department granted the company a $700 million pandemic-era loan on national security grounds. Last month, a congressional probe concluded that the Treasury and Defense Departments “made missteps” in this decision — and noted that Yellow’s “precarious financial position at the time of the loan, and continued struggles, expose taxpayers to a significant risk of loss.”

Bailouts can delay the inevitable, but ultimately whatever good they may do is just temporary.

Manufacturing is another industry that is feeling a tremendous amount of stress right now.

When Joe Biden first entered the White House, the manufacturing industry was still experiencing a stimulus-related “boom”, but the ISM Purchasing Managers Index has been falling precipitously over the past couple of years…

The truth is, US manufacturing has been in dramatic decline since Biden took office. The PMI index (ISM Purchasing Managers Index) has been in free fall since March of 2021, dropping to levels not seen since the covid lockdowns of 2020. As a point of reference, a PMI above 50 indicates growth in manufacturing. A PMI below 50 indicates contraction. Under Biden, the PMI has dropped from a high of 64 down to a current low of 46. If we set aside the covid lockdowns, that’s the lowest level for the PMI since the 2008 credit crash.

All of these industries could have hope if U.S. consumers were in good financial shape, but that is not the case at all.

In June, 61 percent of U.S. adults were living paycheck to paycheck, and those on the lower end of the income scale were particularly struggling…

Roughly three-quarters of consumers earning less than $50,000 annually and 65% of those earning between $50,000 and $100,000 were living paycheck to paycheck in June, based on LendingClub’s numbers.

If you are making $50,000 or less per year in America today, it is not easy to pay the bills.

This is something that I have covered in many previous articles.

In a desperate attempt to make ends meet, Americans are increasingly turning to credit cards, and in many cases that means paying more than 20 percent interest on balances from month to month…

Still, more than half of all U.S. consumers struggle to afford their day-to-day lifestyle, which is forcing some to rely more on credit cards or dip into savings, making them financially vulnerable.

“Budgets are still very stretched and, for a lot of households, credit cards are filling the gap,” said Greg McBride, Bankrate’s chief financial analyst.

“People aren’t financing purchases at 20% because they have other options,” he added. “They’re doing that because it’s their only option.”

If you can possibly avoid it, don’t get caught in that trap.

Because once you get deep into credit card debt, you can be stuck there for years.

And that is exactly what the credit card companies want.

Unfortunately, things will soon get even rougher for U.S. consumers, because much harder economic times are dead ahead.

Our leaders have flooded the system with trillions upon trillions of dollars in recent years, and they were able to delay the inevitable for a while.

But now the cracks in our economic foundation have become undeniable, and it is just a matter of time until the entire edifice comes crashing down all around us.

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

10 Signs That The Mainstream Media Is Not Telling You The Truth About The Economy

July 30, 2023July 30, 2023 by Michael

If you believe the corporate media, the U.S. economy is doing absolutely great as we start to roll through the second half of 2023. Even though inflation is out of control, the commercial real estate market is in free fall, corporate bankruptcies are surging, and large businesses all over America are conducting mass layoffs, we are being told that everything is just peachy. For example, the following comes from a recent NPR article entitled “What recession? It’s a summer of splurging, profits and girl power”…

The numbers are in and things look surprisingly rosy for the U.S. economy:

The Federal Reserve is still cautious, but big brands – including Coca-Cola, Hilton and Visa — are singing praises to shoppers seemingly undeterred by companies’ raising prices. What’s more, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé and Barbie are enticing people to part with their money, bolstering local businesses.

Yes, “girl power” is supposedly saving the U.S. economy.

Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Unfortunately, it just isn’t true. Here are 10 signs that the mainstream media is not telling you the truth about the economy…

#1 When the economy is doing well, there is a tremendous demand for trucking. But when the economy is tanking, trucking companies often get into serious trouble. So it is a very bad sign that “one of the country’s oldest and largest trucking businesses” is literally on the brink of collapse…

Yellow, one of the country’s oldest and largest trucking businesses, is preparing to file for bankruptcy and may collapse within days, leaving some 30,000 workers without jobs.

The nearly 100-year-old company is known for its competitive pricing and has more than 12,000 trucks shipping freight across the US for brands including Walmart and Home Depot.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is preparing to file for bankruptcy and is in the process of selling off other parts of the business.

#2 You can add Anheuser-Busch to the rapidly growing list of large companies that are conducting mass layoffs…

Anheuser-Busch, the parent company of Bud Light, announced it will lay off 350 employees, many of them in corporate positions, as it seeks to recover from the fallout over a campaign involving a trans influencer.

#3 The number of large corporate debt defaults so far this year has already exceeded the grand total for the entire year of 2022…

The total amount of corporate debt defaults in the United States this year have already exceeded the amount seen in 2022.

Experts have been warning of a wave of defaults to hit the economy for some time due to higher borrowing rates.

At least fifty-five American-based companies defaulted on their loans in the first half of 2023, according to data from Moody’s Investors Services.

That is a 53 percent increase from the total number of defaults last year, when just 36 companies said they would fail to repay their debt obligations to lenders.

#4 The cost of living continues to soar. CNBC is reporting that vehicle repair costs have risen by nearly 20 percent over the past 12 months…

Car repair costs are up almost 20% in the past year, according to the consumer price index — more than six times the national inflation rate and among the largest annual price increases of any household good or service.

So, what’s driving up prices?

It’s a combination of factors, experts said. Some emerged in the pandemic era while others are longer-term trends in the auto market, they said.

#5 More than three-quarters of a million households in the state of California are behind on their rent, and now it appears that a tsunami of mass evictions is coming…

More than 768,000 households are behind on rent in the Golden State, with debts totaling more than $5 billion, putting approximately 721,000 children at risk of eviction, according to the National Equity Atlas—a collaborative data and analytics tool founded by Oakland-based Policy Link and the University of Southern California Equity Research Institute.

Residents in the City of Los Angeles are facing a deadline of Aug. 1 to repay all rental debt accrued between March 2020 and September 2021, with that from October 2021 to January 31, 2023, due by February 2024.

#6 Electric vehicles were supposed to be the wave of the future, but Ford is going to lose 4.5 billion dollars on electric vehicles this year alone…

Ford Motor Company announced it is projected to lose a whopping $4.5 billion from electric vehicles (EVs) this year, up from the previous projected loss of $3 billion.

The company released its second-quarter financial results on Thursday. The U.S.-based automaker’s EV division, called “Ford Model e,” has lost $1.8 billion so far this year, according to Fortune.

#7 A yield curve inversion normally means that a recession is coming, and right now the yield curve is the most inverted that it has been in more than 40 years…

How big is big when it comes to the latest inversion? To measure the magnitude of the inversion, a time series of the gap between the yields on a long-term and a short-term is calculated. The most common-used measure of this is the gap between the 10-year Treasury and the 3-month Treasury. If we graph this difference between the 10-year and the 3-month, we can see that we’re now experiencing the largest inversion in more than 40 years

#8 Just like we saw in 2008, home foreclosures are starting to surge…

Home foreclosures have shot up for the second year in a row – as concerns grow that owners are sitting on a ‘negative equity timebomb.’

Figures from data firm ATTOM show that around 186,000 foreclosures have been filed in the first six months of the year. The trend is being driven by an uncertain housing market and soaring mortgage rates.

#9 I have repeatedly warned my readers that we are in the early stages of the worst commercial real estate crisis in U.S. history, and now one expert is comparing it to a “Category 5 hurricane”…

Starwood Capital Group’s Barry Sternlicht recently told Bloomberg’s David Rubenstein about the ongoing crisis in the commercial real estate sector, equating it to a severe “Category 5 hurricane”. He cautioned, “It’s sort of a blackout hovering over the entire industry until we get some relief or some understanding of what the Fed’s going to do over the longer term.”

Currently, the biggest problem in the CRE space is sliding office and retail demand in downtown areas. Couple that with high-interest rates, and there’s a disaster lurking for building owners.

#10 According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in the United States during the first half of this year was 244 percent higher than the number of announced job cuts during the first half of last year…

Employers have announced 458,209 cuts so far this year, a 244% increase from the 133,211 cuts announced through June 2022. It is the highest first-half total since 2020, when 1,585,047 cuts were recorded. With the exception of 2020, it is the highest January to June total since 2009, when 896,675 job cuts were announced.

Considering all of the facts that I just shared with you, how in the world can anyone possibly claim that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction?

It just doesn’t make any sense.

Of course those that work for the mainstream media can write anything that they want.

But that doesn’t mean that we have to believe them.

We live in a time of great deception, and it is only going to get worse.

If you think that things are bad now, just wait until we get to this time next year.

With the presidential election looming, the mainstream media will be desperate to portray the Biden administration in a good light.

But no amount of spin can change the truth.

The U.S. economy really is in big trouble, and very dark storm clouds are gathering on the horizon.

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 CBDCs Are Coming, And The Elite Plan To Use These “Digital Currencies” To Enslave Humanity

July 27, 2023July 27, 2023 by Michael

Central bank digital currencies are feverishly being developed all over the globe, and this is something that should deeply alarm all of us. For a moment, I would like for you to imagine a world where the government instantly knows whenever you buy or sell something. No transaction would ever be truly private, not even your most personal or embarrassing ones. In addition, your money would not be truly your own under such a system. Your access to the digital currency system would be a privilege which could potentially be suspended or revoked with the click of a mouse. All of a sudden you would not be able to buy or sell anything and you would become an outcast from society. Under no circumstances should any government ever be given such power.

Unfortunately, the CBDCs are coming, and they are going to radically change how commerce gets done.

Here in the United States, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco has posted a job listing for a “Senior Crypto Architect” to work on the development of a digital dollar.

U.S. Representative Warren Davidson is very upset about this, because he believes that a CBDC issued by the Federal Reserve would be the “financial equivalent of the Death Star”…

The job description specified that the Federal Reserve seeks a technologist to “perform central bank digital currency (CBDC) research and development.”

The expert will work to “ensure the Federal Reserve is well-positioned to design, develop, and implement technology to support a CBDC as may be required by the Board of Governors.”

Although the job listing shows that the Federal Reserve is only working on CBDC research, Rep Davidson believes it is a sign of what is to come and described it as the “financial equivalent of the Death Star.”

Davidson added that CBDC would turn money into a tool of coercion and control.

Sadly, he is right on target.

Once “digital dollars” issued by the Federal Reserve become the dominant form of currency in our nation, whoever has power over that system would truly have an unprecedented “tool of coercion and control”.

So we must not allow this to happen.

Sadly, CBDCs are now in development all around the world.

For example, the UK has been moving toward the development of their own CBDC…

The de facto head of His Majesty’s Treasury announced this week that the Bank of England has begun consultations on implementing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) that could usher in the globalist vision of a cashless society in which all transactions are traceable by the government.

Chancellor of the Exchequer Jeremy Hunt revealed that, as a part of his ‘Edinburgh Reforms’ of Britain’s financial services, the Bank of England will begin consultations on the design of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) which would act as a digital version of the pound sterling.

Meanwhile, the EU is looking at creating a digital version of the euro. The following comes from the official website of the European Central Bank…

We are working with the national central banks of the euro area to investigate whether to introduce a digital euro. It would be a central bank digital currency, an electronic equivalent to cash. And it would complement banknotes and coins, giving people an additional choice about how to pay.

A CBDC is currently being tested in Brazil, and it turns out that it has hidden backdoor features that would actually allow the government “to freeze people’s funds and adjust their balances at will”…

Brazil, like most other masters, seeks to control the population with a central bank digital currency, or CBDC. Its pilot program made it possible for the ruling class to have complete control over the money of the slaves.

The new system contains hidden backdoor features allowing the Brazilian government to freeze people’s funds and adjust their balances at will. Even though these features are “hidden”, there is no secret as to why these sociopaths all so desperately need people to accept their enslavement through a CBDC scheme.

According to a blockchain developer by the name of Pedro Magalhaes, founder of the Web3 consulting firm Iora Labs, the ruling class will have access to every single slave’s bank account once they roll out the CBDC system.

Magalhaes claimed that he reverse-engineered the code behind Brazil’s CBDC program, which led him to this shocking discovery.

And in Russia, the “digital ruble” is already here.

Just a few days ago, Vladimir Putin signed “the digital ruble bill” into law…

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin signed the digital ruble bill into law today, allowing the country’s central bank to issue its own digital currency.

The digital ruble, which the Bank of Russia has long been mulling over, will be used for payments along with other methods, according to the new amendments to Russia’s Civil Code. The digital ruble accounts will be managed by the central bank, the law says. The bill passed its third, final hearing on July 11 and had been waiting for the president to be signed.

Digital ruble is a CBDC project the Bank of Russia has been working on since 2020, when the Bank of Russia published its first analytical report on the topic. Later, the regulator updated the report including the feedback from Russian banks and other financial market participants. The regulator announced it stared piloting the system with a number of Russian banks in February 2022, shortly before the country started a war in Ukraine.

This was a historic development.

So why did we barely hear anything about it in the news?

Overall, it is being reported that 130 different countries are now interested in potentially developing their own CBDCs…

Out of 195 countries in the world, 130 nations are moving towards building their Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC).

Wow.

Our world is changing so rapidly now.

Once a “digital currency” is introduced where you live, how will you keep your “digital wallet” safe?

After all, someone could just steal your “digital wallet” and spend all of the “digital currency” that you have saved up.

Well, one German economist is warning that eventually we could see “digital wallets” actually get implanted under the skin…

A well-known German economist has revealed that central banks around the world are planning to introduce central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in the form of microchips implanted under the skin. This technology will enable complete government control over personal finances of its citizens.

“I was taught by a central banker [that] the CBDCs look like a small grain of rice that they want to put under your skin,” said Richard Werner in an interview with podcaster Ivor Cummins. Werner is known for developing the now commonly used bank practice of quantitative easing.

Let us hope that nothing like that happens any time soon.

But we truly are living in unprecedented times, and they are only going to get crazier with each passing year.

If we are going to object to the implementation of CBDCs, the time is now.

Hopefully we can get a lot more people in the general population to wake up, because the clock is ticking.

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.

Will A New BRICS Currency Backed By Gold Mean The End Of Global Dominance For The U.S. Dollar?

July 25, 2023July 25, 2023 by Michael

Is the global dominance of the U.S. dollar in danger? In recent weeks, there has been lots of speculation about the introduction of a new BRICS currency that would be backed by gold. In this article, my goal is to sort through what is true and what is not true. From August 22nd to August 24th, the 15th BRICS summit will be held in Johannesburg, South Africa. Back on July 5th, RT sparked a firestorm of rumors when it reported that a decision to introduce a new BRICS currency that would be backed by gold would be made prior to the upcoming summit in Johannesburg…

BRICS is set to introduce a new currency backed by gold, in contrast to the credit-backed US dollar, with the decision coming a month ahead of the bloc’s summit in Johannesburg. With the growing initiative, more and more countries are lining-up to join the group.

In the aftermath of that report, many prominent voices were warning that the U.S. dollar was in big trouble.

For example, author Robert Kiyosaki boldly declared that the U.S. dollar “will die”…

The end of the U.S. dollar is near, said the best-selling author of ‘Rich Dad Poor Dad’ Robert Kiyosaki, citing an upcoming BRICS summit in South Africa as a trigger.

Kiyosaki is projecting that the BRICS group, comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, will announce their new gold-backed digital currency during its summit on August 22-24, and it will have dire consequences for the U.S. dollar.

“August 22, 2023, in Johannesburg, South Africa, BRICS nations announce gold backed crypto. US $ will die,” Kiyosaki tweeted last week. “Trillions of US $ rush home. Inflation through the roof.”

Without a doubt, the dominance of the U.S. dollar is under threat from multiple directions.

But a new BRICS currency will not be introduced during this upcoming summit.

During an interview with Bloomberg, one of the top executives at The New Development Bank publicly admitted that the creation of a new BRICS currency is “a medium to long term ambition”, but he also confirmed that such a currency will not be introduced right now…

The New Development Bank, a financial institution created by the BRICS bloc of emerging markets, doesn’t have any immediate plans for the group to create a common currency, its vice president and chief financial officer said.

While the members of BRICS – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – are pushing to conduct more trade between each other in local currencies, they aren’t ready to challenge the global dominance of the dollar, Leslie Maasdorp said in an interview on Wednesday with Bloomberg TV’s Haslinda Amin.

“The development of anything alternative is more a medium to long term ambition,” he said. “There is no suggestion right now to creates a BRICS currency.”

But that doesn’t mean that really big things aren’t happening.

In addition to the core BRICS nations, Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates and Uruguay are apparently getting very close to joining The New Development Bank.

Those are relatively minor players on the global scene, but if Saudi Arabia also joins, that could change everything.

There is lots of chatter that this could happen soon, and during a recent interview Lobo Tiggre said that such a move would be “a watershed event”…

Saudi Arabia joining BRICS would be “a watershed event,” he said. “I think if we wake up and Saudi Arabia joins the BRICS alliance, the world would be a different world in a meaningful and significant way.”

I agree.

If Saudi Arabia joins BRICS, it would represent an enormous shift.

And that would probably greatly accelerate the transition to trading Middle Eastern oil in currencies other than the U.S. dollar.

Even without a new currency, it appears to be inevitable that BRICS is going to continue to accumulate more power and more influence.

According to South Africa’s ambassador to BRICS, over 40 different nations “have indicated an interest in joining the bloc”…

Anil Sooklal, South Africa’s ambassador to BRICS, told reporters on Thursday that more than 40 countries have indicated an interest in joining the bloc of major developing economies, but there is no gold-backed currency announcement planned for next month’s summit.

And Sooklal also told reporters that a whopping 69 global leaders have been invited to attend the BRICS summit next month…

Sooklal said that “Argentina, all the major Global South countries,” have applied for membership, and that other economically significant countries have expressed an interest in joining, including Bangladesh, the United Arab Emirates, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and even some European countries. “They are quite weighty countries,” he said.

He added that South Africa has invited 69 global leaders to attend the BRICS summit, demonstrating the bloc’s interest in increasing its global influence.

When BRICS was formed in 2009, many western leaders didn’t take it very seriously.

But now it has become a powerhouse.

And during this upcoming summit, finding more ways for BRICS countries to settle trades “in their own national currencies” is something that will be on the agenda…

Sooklal says BRICS, which is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, is looking to strengthen economic ties among member nations by settling trades in their own national currencies.

“What we have said and we continue to deepen is trading in local currencies and settlement in local currencies.”

Sooklal adds that the decision of the US and its allies to impose financial and economic sanctions against Russia for the war in Ukraine has catalyzed the move of the economic bloc to shift away from the dollar.

They really do intend to move away from using the U.S. dollar.

This is a process that will take time, but the dominance of the U.S. dollar in global trade is definitely starting to erode.

So whether the BRICS countries choose to establish a new currency or not, the truth is that things are changing.

The U.S. dollar will never again be as dominant as it once was, and great economic chaos is ahead of us.

The western elite had dreamed of uniting the entire globe under one economic and financial regime, but right now the very deep divisions between east and west continue to grow with each passing day.

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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