Money

The Sequel Is Here: Housing Crash 2 Accelerates As Home Sales Drop To The Lowest Level Since 2009

July 20, 2023July 20, 2023 by Michael

If you are trying to sell your home right now, I feel so sorry for you. Thanks to the Federal Reserve, mortgage rates have risen to very alarming levels, and this has scared millions of potential homebuyers out of the market. Compared to two years ago, the average potential homebuyer is facing mortgage payments that are close to $1,000 per month higher. I don’t know about you, but I certainly wouldn’t want to pay $1,000 more each month for the exact same house. So most potential homebuyers are staying out of the market until interest rates come down, and that could be a while, because officials at the Fed do not plan to reduce rates for the foreseeable future.

On Thursday, we learned that sales of pre-owned homes fell 3.3 percent last month. Overall, they have now dropped to the lowest level that we have seen during the month of June since 2009…

Sales of pre-owned homes dropped 3.3% in June compared with May, running at a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 4.16 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Compared with June of last year, sales were 18.9% lower. That is the slowest sales pace for June since 2009.

In June 2009, we were right in the middle of Housing Crash 1.

Now Housing Crash 2 is here. Over the first six months of this year, only about one percent of all pre-existing homes in the U.S. changed hands…

House sales have reached their lowest level in over a decade, with only one percent of properties changing hands in the first half of the year.

Fresh analysis by real estate brokerage RedFin shows that just 14 out of every 1,000 homes across the US were sold in the last six months.

If you are planning to purchase a home, it is going to cost you a lot more than it would have a few years ago.

As I noted above, average homebuyers are now facing potential mortgage payments that are extremely high thanks to soaring interest rates…

An average homebuyer is now facing mortgage payments nearly $1,000 per month more expensive than two years ago as interest rates hover around 7 percent.

As a result households report feeling ‘locked into’ their current property due to their cheap deals. Last week, Dailymail.com revealed there has been a surge of ‘accidental landlords’ as owners are opting to rent out their homes rather than sell.

If you work in real estate, this is going to be a really tough time for you.

And I am not just talking about residential real estate.

As I keep warning my readers, we have entered the worst commercial real estate crisis in U.S. history, and prices are absolutely plummeting all over the nation…

On Tuesday, we asked: Is this the start of a commercial real estate firesale in crime-ridden Baltimore City?

And to our surprise, it appears so.

Let’s begin with our report on Tuesday when The Baltimore Sun revealed a 30-story office tower at One South Street in downtown Baltimore that was sold in June for $24 million, a 63.6% discount versus the tower’s 2015 sale of $66 million.

This is already happening even though we haven’t even “officially” entered a recession yet.

But a recession is certainly coming.

For the very first time since 2007 and 2008, the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has fallen for 15 months in a row…

“The Leading Index has been in decline for fifteen months—the longest streak of consecutive decreases since 2007-08, during the runup to the Great Recession. Taken together, June’s data suggests economic activity will continue to decelerate in the months ahead. We forecast that the US economy is likely to be in recession from Q3 2023 to Q1 2024. Elevated prices, tighter monetary policy, harder-to-get credit, and reduced government spending are poised to dampen economic growth further,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, Senior Manager, Business Cycle Indicators, at The Conference Board.

That is not good news at all.

And it is being reported that the overall rejection rate for credit applicants has just skyrocketed “to its highest level since June 2018″…

The New York Fed reported that the overall rejection rate for credit applicants rose to its highest level since June 2018, standing at 21.8 percent, a jump from 17.3 percent in February.

Researchers noted that the rise in the application rejection rate “was broad-based across age groups and highest among those with credit scores below 680.”

Do you remember when I warned you that a credit crunch was coming?

Well, it is here.

And it is going to get a lot worse.

Credit conditions are tightening for businesses too, and we are starting to see default rates and bankruptcies spike…

That’s starting to happen already, with more than 120 big bankruptcies in the US alone already this year. Even so, less than 15% of the nearly $600 billion of debt trading at distressed levels globally have actually defaulted, the data show. That means companies that owe more than half-a-trillion dollars may be unable to repay it — or at least struggle to do so.

This week, Moody’s Investors Service said the default rate for speculative-grade companies worldwide is expected to hit 5.1% next year, up from 3.8% in the 12 months ended in June. Under the most pessimistic scenario, it could jump as high as 13.7% — exceeding the level reached during the 2008-2009 credit crash.

The trends are very clear.

Everyone should be able to see what is coming.

The short-term outlook is horrible, and the long-term outlook is even worse.

But many Americans will just continue to believe the talking heads on television that are assuring them that everything will be just fine.

For example, Jim Cramer of CNBC says that he is bullish “on the economy in general and the entire human race”.

And when you consider his track record, you have got to believe that very “interesting” times are just around the corner.

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.

From “America The Beautiful” To “America Smeared With Feces”…

July 19, 2023 by Michael

I am going to warn you right now – this article is all about poop. Our nation was once known as “America the Beautiful”, but now so much of what made us so beautiful has crumbled and decayed, and feces is literally being smeared all over the place. I truly wish that I was exaggerating, but at this point poop in the streets has become a major issue from coast to coast. Our homeless population is absolutely exploding, and many of the homeless are addicted to drugs. Unfortunately, many drug addicts simply do not care where they are when it is time to take a crap. They just pull down their pants and let it fly.

For those of us that aren’t addicted to drugs, it can be difficult to understand how addicts can let themselves sink so low.

Sadly, the truth is that many of these drugs are so powerful that they literally make people stagger around like zombies. For example, “tranq” is now being mixed with all sorts of street drugs all over the U.S., and someone that is on “tranq” can be “seemingly unaware of what’s happening around them”…

The sight of drug users hunched over in a lifeless state, seemingly unaware of what’s happening around them, has become increasingly common in recent years.

Many experts point to the influx of an animal tranquillizer that has begun to flood the US illicit drug supply – being mixed with everything from fentanyl to cocaine.

Xylazine – known on the street as ‘tranq’ – is a potent sedative used to put large animals to sleep before procedures.

Once upon a time, it was quite rare to see human feces right in the middle of the street.

But now in cities that have severe drug problems authorities are constantly battling to keep things clean. For example, San Francisco has become world famous for the human feces that is seemingly “everywhere”…

According to 311, some of San Francisco’s most excrement-riddled streets are in the Tenderloin and SoMa neighborhoods. The Tenderloin, in particular, has publicly struggled to help its growing unhoused population and address its filthy streets.

“It’s terrible; this street is covered,” said Joe Souza, a Tenderloin resident who has lived on Larkin Street for a year. “There’s poop everywhere. You always see it along the wall and in front of the garage there.”

A four-block zone in the Tenderloin, between Larkin and Taylor streets, recorded dozens of feces-related 311 cleaning requests in the last five months. But residents say the problem is much bigger than what the data shows.

In addition to the streets, our beaches have also become popular locations for drug addicts and the homeless to relieve themselves.

If you can believe it, 55 percent of America’s beaches had unsafe levels of feces in their waters at some point within the last year…

More than half of America’s beaches contain potentially dangerous levels of feces, according to a new report described as ‘troubling’ by experts.

Testing carried out at more than 3,000 beaches across the country’s coastlines showed that 55 percent had unsafe levels of sewage in their waters on at least one day last year.

Large numbers of drug addicts and homeless individuals live in rapidly growing tent cities that are mushrooming all over the country, but those with a little bit more money often live in illegal RV encampments.

In southern California, one such encampment that is being run by a “vanlord” is being shut down due to “an unbearable stench of feces and urine”…

A California ‘Vanlord’ with at least two dozen illegal RVs parked on her LA property has been ordered to vacate by Monday after residents complained about an unbearable stench of feces and urine.

The campsite, located on private property in Sylmar, California, is managed by Cruz Godoy – dubbed ‘Vanlord’ by locals – who rents out the RVs to individuals without alternative housing options, making up to $20,000 a month.

It turns out that the people that are living in these RVs are literally dumping their urine and feces into the streets, and one boy that lives nearby got so sick from the smell that he was literally vomiting…

Maria Macias, whose backyard faces Cruz’s lot expressed sympathy for the people living in the RVs but decried the unbearable stench emanating from the illegal campers that has plagued residents for years, making life ‘unbearable.’

‘I don’t have peace, not even in my own house,’ she told CBS. ‘My son got sick, all of us got nauseous the ambulance came because my son was vomiting at night.’

Many of the RV residents, who neighbors say are mainly immigrants searching for a better life, are forced to dump their sewage in the streets.

This is what our country has become.

At one time we were a shining example of cleanliness to the rest of the world, but now many of us are super disgusting “pig people” that have no class at all.

Let me give you a perfect example of what I am talking about…

A mother and her boyfriend were arrested for allegedly imprisoning their children inside their Wisconsin home after neighbors spotted both boys wandering the streets completely naked, covered in blood, bruises, and feces.

Katie Koch is facing a slew of felony charges, including chronic neglect of a child, false imprisonment and neglecting a child. Her boyfriend, Joel Manke, 38, was meanwhile hit with felony charges of chronic neglect of a child and false imprisonment in connection with the case.

How can anyone treat children like that?

Sadly, this sort of thing happens way too often.

As a society, we have openly embraced evil, and now we are experiencing severe consequences as a result.

Millions upon millions of Americans have lost all sense of self-respect, and the level of human degradation that we see all around us just gets worse with each passing day.

If we had not rejected the values that this nation was founded upon, “America the Beautiful” could have been our legacy.

But instead we have chosen another road, and it is heavily smeared with feces…

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.

Lab-Grown Beef And Chicken Will Soon Be In Your Local Grocery Store…

July 18, 2023July 18, 2023 by Michael

Would you like to eat a slab of “beef” or “chicken” that has been artificially “grown” inside a giant vat filled with disgusting goo? Personally, I will never eat any “beef” or “chicken” that scientists have cooked up in a lab somewhere. In fact, I would rather crawl on my belly for a mile on a gravel road filled with razor-sharp glass shards than eat a single bite of lab-grown “meat”. I am sure that many of you feel the same. But it is coming anyway. In fact, CNN is reporting that Americans will be able to try lab-grown chicken “soon”…

Soon, Americans are going to be able to try chicken that comes directly from chicken cells rather than, well, a chicken.

On Wednesday, the USDA gave Upside Foods and Good Meat the green light to start producing and selling their lab-grown, or cultivated, chicken products in the United States.

The USDA really does a bang up job of protecting us, don’t they?

I can only imagine the new dangers that this sort of “meat” will bring to our population.

If you are not familiar with “lab-grown meat”, the following is a pretty good summary…

In a nutshell, lab-grown meat — or cultivated or cell-based meat — is meat that is developed from animal cells and grown, with the help of nutrients like amino acids, in massive bioreactors.

This happens in a production facility that looks a lot like a brewery: When you picture it, don’t think of people in white coats and hairnets peering through microscopes into petri dishes, but instead people in white coats and hairnets wandering between giant vats.

It wasn’t supposed to be available to the public so quickly, but apparently some people have already had an opportunity to sample it at a restaurant in San Francisco…

On Saturday, cultivated chicken tempura will be on Bar Crenn’s menu, served with a burnt chili aioli and garnished with greens and edible flowers. Chef Dominique Crenn took meat off the restaurant’s menu in 2018 “because of the impact of factory farming on animals and the planet,” according the the restaurant’s website, but is comfortable selling cultivated chicken.

Upside Foods held a contest on social media to determine who would be able to try the product at Bar Crenn, and those winners will be able to dig in this weekend. They’ll each pay a symbolic $1 to try the chicken. Contest winners also get to tour Upside Food’s Engineering, Production, and Innovation Center.

Yuck.

Just plain yuck.

We are being told that “lab-grown beef” is coming soon too, and it is being touted as an environmentally-friendly alternative to normal beef.

But according to one recent study, “lab-grown beef” is actually far worse for the environment…

Researchers at UC Davis have made a startling discovery that could change the way we view lab-grown meat.

As detailed in a yet-to-be-peer-reviewed paper, they found that the meat alternative’s environmental impact appears to be “orders of magnitude” higher than retail beef you can buy at the grocery store — itself already a very environmentally damaging foodstuff — at least based on current production methods.

If confirmed, the research could be damning: lab-grown meat, long seen as a greener alternative to meat products that don’t involve the slaughter of animals, could be more harmful to the environment than the products it’s trying to replace.

How ironic.

But no matter what the science actually shows, global leaders are not going to end their relentless war on normal meat any time soon.

In Germany, the minister of agriculture has come up with a plan to reduce the maximum daily intake of meat for Germans to just 10 grams…

Recently, the German Minister of Agriculture made another shocking statement. He plans to reduce the amount of meat eaten by all residents in Germany, aiming to change the diet structure by changing the habit of eating meat, so as to be environmentally friendly. He advocated “taking nutrition from green plants” and called for a maximum daily intake of 10 grams of meat per capita.

If this plan does get implemented, I think that there will be riots.

Nobody wants our politicians dictating what will and will not be in our diets.

But most of our politicians are control freaks that love to “play god”, and the same thing is true for many of our scientists.

For example, one team of scientists is actually trying to grow artificial human eggs in a laboratory…

Conception is trying to accelerate, and eventually commercialize, a field of biomedical research known as in vitro gametogenesis (IVG). “Basically, we’re trying to turn a type of stem cell called an induced pluripotent stem cell into a human egg,” Krisiloff says. “[This] really opens the door, if you can create eggs, to be able to help people have children that otherwise don’t have options right now.”

The experimental technology could help women who have lost their eggs to cancer treatment, women who have never been able to produce healthy eggs and women whose eggs are no longer viable because of their age.

This is so wrong.

If they are actually able to fertilize such a “human egg”, would such a being even be human?

It turns out that the same scientists are also growing “mini-ovaries” that will be used to “nurture” the artificial human eggs that they are developing…

Hurtado quickly returns the cells to the incubator and pulls out a rectangular dish. “These are some of our mini-ovaries,” he says. “These are a few weeks old now.”

Mini-ovaries are combinations of cells that the company has grown to nurture those primordial cells into becoming immature human eggs.

How sick is that?

There are certain things that should never be done.

But our scientists seem to have lost all restraint in this day and age.

As I have repeatedly reminded my readers, scientists are conducting extremely dangerous and extremely bizarre experiments in secret labs all over the planet.

The stuff that actually gets into the news is quite tame compared to what is really going on behind the scenes.

Our world is becoming a little bit more like a bad science fiction movie with each passing day, and in future years we are going to see things that will absolutely horrify all of 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.

Tech Companies Have Laid Off More Than 219,000 Workers In 2023. But Don’t Worry, Because Biden Says The Economy Is Fine.

July 17, 2023July 17, 2023 by Michael

If you want to believe that propaganda that is coming from the Biden administration, you probably won’t want to read this article. Joe Biden insists that “Bidenomics” is working and that a wonderful new era of peace and prosperity is just around the corner. Meanwhile, inflation is out of control, homelessness is rising to very frightening levels, the commercial real estate market is imploding, and large companies are conducting mass layoffs all over America. In fact, tech companies have already laid off more workers in 2023 than they did all of last year…

More than 219,000 global technology-sector employees have been laid off since the start of 2023, according to data compiled by the website Layoffs.fyi.

That number has gone up more than eightfold since mid-January, the website noted.

The data show that 2023 has easily surpassed 2022 for global tech redundancies, with 869 tech companies laying off 219,809 employees since the start of the year. Last year, 1,024 tech companies laid off a total of 154,336 employees, according to Layoffs.fyi.

For some of our largest tech companies, one round of layoffs was simply not enough.

For example, after laying off 10,000 workers earlier this year, Microsoft has decided that another round of layoffs has now become necessary…

Microsoft confirmed Monday that it’s eliminating additional jobs, a week after the start of its 2024 fiscal year.

The cuts are in addition to the downsizing announced in January that resulted in 10,000 layoffs. The software maker also disclosed a small number of cuts this time last year.

Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has already conducted three rounds of layoffs so far in 2023…

Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. (META) also made its latest round of layoffs in late May, according to reports, marking the tech giant’s third set of cuts this year. Meta declined to comment in response to a request from MarketWatch for confirmation of the latest layoffs. The company’s second round of layoffs in April cut technical positions, according to LinkedIn posts. Meta is in the midst of cutting 21,000 jobs in 2023 as part of what CEO Mark Zuckerberg has described as a “year of efficiency” for the company.

What we are witnessing is complete and utter carnage, but the mainstream media is not making a big deal out of all this.

After all, it wouldn’t be good to make Joe Biden look bad, would it?

But no matter what sort of positive spin the Biden administration tries to put on things, the layoffs just keep on coming. For example, on Friday we learned that Binance has decided to give the axe to more than 1,000 highly paid workers…

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has cut jobs just days after it was hit by a wave of executive exits, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.

The layoffs at the world’s biggest crypto exchange come at a time when the industry’s future in the U.S. market is uncertain, with regulators aggressively clamping down on what they deem are illegal activities.

The job cuts were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which said more than 1,000 people had been let go in recent weeks.

I could go on with example after example.

Goldman Sachs has decided to lay off workers, and so has Wells Fargo.

And now that Tucker Carlson is gone, Fox News has determined that this is the perfect time to conduct “company-wide” layoffs…

Fox News is reportedly beginning “company-wide” layoffs, including of the remaining former employees of Tucker Carlson.

The development was reported on Friday by journalist and Carlson biographer Chadwick Moore, who published a screenshot of an email informing employees of the impending action.

The email ordered the recipients to turn in all company equipment and their ID badges at 9 p.m. after the conclusion of the show they were working on.

It is beginning to look a lot like 2008, and there will be so many heartbreaking stories in the months ahead.

Bankruptcies are surging, and vast numbers of businesses are starting to fail.

In San Francisco, Anchor Brewery will be ceasing operations after 127 years in business, and so all of their workers will be losing their jobs…

After 127 years in business, San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company is shutting down.

According to a press release, the brewery has been facing challenging economic factors and declining sales since 2016.

“This was an extremely difficult decision that Anchor reached only after many months of careful evaluation,” Anchor Brewing spokesperson Sam Singer said. “We recognize the importance and historic significance of Anchor to San Francisco and to the craft brewing industry, but the impacts of the pandemic, inflation, especially in San Francisco, and a highly competitive market left the company with no option but to make this sad decision to cease operations.”

But even though they can see what is happening, officials at the Federal Reserve just keep telling us that more interest rate hikes are coming.

They insist that they can dramatically hike interest rates and engineer a “soft landing” for the economy at the same time, but many are skeptical of this claim…

Can the Federal Reserve navigate a narrow path and slay price inflation while steering the economy to a soft landing?

During an interview on CNBC Squawk Box, financial analyst Jim Grant expressed his doubts.

He compared Jerome Powell’s task to Captain Chelsey Sullenberger’s when he was forced to land a US Airways plane on the Hudson River after an inflight emergency, noting Powell is “no Sully.”

Grant went on to explain that even if things don’t look so bad right now, rivets are popping in the economy.

Yes, rivets are definitely popping, and things are only going to get worse in the months ahead.

But just like Joe Biden, officials at the Fed insist that everything is just fine.

In fact, the Federal Reserve says that Taylor Swift is boosting the U.S. economy all by herself.

Apparently her concert tour is so popular that it is greatly energizing the local economy at each stop.

Good for her.

But Taylor Swift is not going to save us from what is coming.

Neither is Joe Biden.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is already starting to come apart at the seams, and the layoffs that we have seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg.

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.

Store Food While You Still Can, Because 2.4 Billion People Already Do Not Have Enough Food As This New Global Famine Accelerates

July 16, 2023July 16, 2023 by Michael

Global food supplies just keep getting even tighter, and global hunger has risen to extremely alarming levels. People on the other side of the world are literally starving to death as I write this article, but most of us in the western world simply do not care about the millions that are deeply suffering because the mainstream media hardly ever talks about what is happening. But the truth is that we are feeling the impact of this global food crisis too. As I warned my readers repeatedly, the primary way that this crisis would manifest itself in wealthy countries during the early stages would be through higher food prices, and that is precisely what we are witnessing. On Friday, I went to the grocery store and a small bag of chips that I could once buy on sale for 99 cents now has a regular price of 5.99 stamped on it. Throughout the store there were so many products that I refused to purchase because I thought that they had simply become way too expensive, but those prices are not going back down to where they once were. Food inflation is here to stay, and the entire planet is going to suffer as a result.

Unfortunately, most people simply cannot comprehend what is taking place on a planetary scale.

As a major British news source recently noted, we are facing “environmental breakdown and food system failure” simultaneously…

We face an epochal, unthinkable prospect: of perhaps the two greatest existential threats – environmental breakdown and food system failure – converging, as one triggers the other.

A decade ago, some experts were optimistically talking about eradicating global hunger completely.

But the number of hungry people around the world started to go back up in 2015, and things have been getting worse ever since…

For many years, the number of hungry people fell. But in 2015 the trend turned and has been curving upwards since.

According to the United Nations, nearly 30 percent of the global population does not have constant access to food right now, and there are approximately 900 million people that are facing “severe food insecurity”…

The food security and nutrition situation remained grim in 2022. The report finds that approximately 29.6 percent of the global population, equivalent to 2.4 billion people, did not have constant access to food, as measured by the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity. Among them, around 900 million individuals faced severe food insecurity.

Just think about that for a moment.

2.4 billion people do not have enough food to eat.

And as global food supplies get even tighter, that number is only going to go higher.

Unfortunately, in 2023 we have seen crops get devastated by natural disasters and bizarre weather patterns over and over again.

For example, in areas of Vermont that have been hammered by flooding this month many farmers have completely lost all of their crops…

Farmers across our region are grappling with massive crop losses due to this week’s flooding. That includes dozens of farm operations at Burlington’s Intervale, who are picking up the pieces as they face a difficult road ahead.

“For us. it is kind of over until we can replant,” said Hillary Martin with Diggers’ Mirth Collective Farm. She says the flooding was a total crop loss for everyone at the Intervale and that her farm has already lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. “We have just totaled what we lost that was in the field — about $250,000 in produce. That does not include what we can not plant for the next month.”

Vermont Agriculture Secretary Anson Tebbetts says many farmers are in the same situation statewide. “It will run millions of dollars. It will be extraordinary because of just the crop losses,” he said.

In the middle of the country, a crippling drought is absolutely devastating corn and soybean farmers…

Record-breaking heat and pockets of drought are baking farmland across the country, threatening crop yields and squeezing out any remaining wiggle room to cope with more extreme weather this summer.

Throughout the Sun Belt, an extended heat wave is sending temperatures soaring into the triple digits and risking heat stress to crops. At the same time, breadbasket states in the Midwest are struggling to manage a drought that’s affecting some areas for a second year in a row. Nearly two-thirds of Kansas is in severe, extreme or exceptional drought, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor, and about half of Missouri and Nebraska are in the same rough shape.

Of course it isn’t just the U.S. that is being hit extremely hard.

As I explained last week, tomato prices in India have gone up by 400 percent due to the historic disasters that nation has been dealing with.

In central Canada, one farmer hasn’t had a good crop since 2016 due to the seemingly endless drought that has plagued Saskatchewan…

Seven is often considered a lucky number but not for Tyson Jacksteit.

That’s how many consecutive years of drought his family has now gone through on their west-central Saskatchewan farm near Golden Prairie.

The last good crop was in 2016, he said, with the rain from that year carrying them through the next. But since then it’s just been “a downhill slide of drought.”

“We’re in survival mode,” he said last week.

Unfortunately, conditions are only going to get more difficult for farmers around the globe in the years ahead.

So I would encourage you to stock up while you still can.

I know that prices may seem high now, but they are only going higher.

For instance, canned peaches are already quite expensive, but soon they will cost a whole lot more because “the Peach State” is barely going to produce any peaches at all in 2023…

Midsummer is the peak of juicy peach season in the state of Georgia. But, recently, the Peach Cobbler Factory in Atlanta ran out of peaches and was forced to pivot to… apple cobbler.

The Peach State lost more than 90% of this year’s crop after a February heat wave followed by two late-spring frosts. The triple-whammy destroyed peach varieties specifically bred to survive different weather scenarios and wildly inflated prices of the fruit. It also moved much of the local market — in some cases, quite unwillingly — to California peaches.

But, beyond the toll this took on employment, the state economy, decades of tradition and restaurant menus, peaches are a matter of pride for Georgians. The peach is the state fruit. Its in the name of dozens of state roads. It’s even on the flip side of the Georgia state quarter. So, how embarrassing is this?

In previous articles I have discussed many other examples.

All over the world, food producers are facing unprecedented challenges.

You can believe that things will eventually “return to normal” if you want, but the truth is that a “return to normal” is simply not in the cards.

We really have reached a major tipping point, and from this moment forward we really are going to see things happen that once would have been unimaginable.

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.

Vast Hordes Of Americans Are Being Forced Out Into The Streets As The Middle Class Disintegrates

July 13, 2023 by Michael

How many people will be sleeping in homeless shelters, on the streets or in their vehicles where you live tonight? That is the sort of question that not a lot of us like to think about. But the truth is that homelessness is growing at a very rapid pace all over the country right now. But if you have lots of money, life probably seems pretty good to you at the moment. You may eat at a different restaurant every night, and you may be one of the approximately 10 million Americans that currently own a second home. Our leaders made the wealthy even wealthier by pumping trillions of dollars into the system in recent years, but as the cost of living has soared the poor have gotten even poorer and the middle class has steadily disintegrated. So now the gap between the wealthy and the rest of the nation is larger than ever, and that is creating a tremendous amount of tension in our society.

In California, vast hordes of homeless people sleep in the shadows of multi-million dollar homes every single night.

And even though California has spent a whopping 17.5 billion dollars on homelessness during the last four years, the homeless population in the state has just continued to grow…

California has spent a stunning $17.5 billion trying to combat homelessness over just four years. But, in the same time frame, from 2018 to 2022, the state’s homeless population actually grew. Half of all Americans living outside on the streets, federal data shows, live in California.

Across the country, homelessness is on the rise. But California is adding more homeless people every year than any other state. More than 170,000 unhoused people now live here.

Just think about that number for a moment.

There are 170,000 homeless people in just one state.

And those are the ones that they can actually count. They are many more that haven’t been found yet or that don’t want to be counted.

We have also just learned that family homelessness in the United States is surging…

Family homelessness in the US is on the rise in an alarming sign of how the increasing cost of goods, the ever-tightening housing supply and the end of most pandemic-era benefits are putting pressure on Americans.

Some 72,700 people in families with children were experiencing homelessness in 20 of the largest cities in the nation as of January, a 37.6% jump from a year before, according to an analysis of data provided by jurisdictions. In New York, that figure shot up by two thirds, while Chicago, the District of Columbia and Fort Worth, Texas, also saw outsize increases.

I thought that Joe Biden was “fixing” the economy.

So why has that number gone up by 37.6 percent in just one year?

Something is not adding up.

A 28-year-old single mother in Washington D.C. named Mercedez Millings doesn’t have a home for herself and her four children. Since she is so close to the White House, perhaps Biden and his family would be willing to take her in…

Among those homeless in the nation’s capital is Mercedez Millings, a 28-year-old single mother of four. She delivered packages and worked at a pizza shop during the pandemic, but experienced homelessness during that time and bounced between living in her car and staying with family.

She and her children have been living in a Salvation Army transitional housing program with some 25 other families for most of this year — and Millings is taking personal finance and workforce development classes. But one big obstacle is stopping her from getting a job: She gave birth to her youngest at her mother’s home during the pandemic and never received an official birth certificate. Without it, she’s unable to sign her daughter up for child care.

There are countless others just like her.

They would love to have homes, but housing costs have simply become way too high.

As I mentioned yesterday, an unused space next to a laundry room that has been converted into an “apartment” in one building in New York City will run you $2,300 a month.

And actually purchasing a home is now out of reach for tens of millions of Americans.

The Fed has made certain of that by hiking interest rates so dramatically.

Earlier today, I came across a tweet that shared some mortgage math that is just stunning…

New mortgage math is brutal.

Say you buy a $1m house with $200k down at a 7% rate ($800k mortgage).

Over the first three years you pay $193k ($5,322/mo.)

After those $193k of payments your $800k mortgage is now at $774.5k.

You paid $166k in interest, $25.5k in principle.

Ouch.

Of course housing costs are not the only thing that is going up.

According to Zero Hedge, auto insurance rates are going up by double digit percentages all over the nation…

The Wall Street Journal found Allstate has jacked up car insurance premiums by 40% in Georgia, Nationwide Mutual Insurance has increased insurance rates by 32% in California, and State Farm has bumped rates in New York by 11%. The reason is that many of these insurers have experienced significant losses over the last several years, an indication premiums will continue to rise well into 2024.

If you are still making the same amount of money that you did two or three years ago, you are rapidly falling behind.

The cost of living is not going to slow down for any of us, and if you can’t keep up that is too bad for you.

In such an environment, many middle class Americans find themselves falling into poverty, and many poor Americans are finding themselves out in the streets.

All over America, giant homeless encampments are sprouting like mushrooms. Here is just one example…

One of California’s famous wine regions has a government-sanctioned homeless encampment set up near the local courthouse, Fox News Digital has learned.

Photos taken on Sonoma County’s administrative campus in Santa Rosa show blue tents lining a parking lot where up to 100 homeless individuals can live. Leaders in Sonoma County, located in northern California’s famed wine region, approved the taxpayer-funded homeless camp this year after a “shelter crisis” declaration. The administrative complex is home to various offices such as Sonoma County Human Resources, the county registrar, Superior Court of California and district attorney’s office.

If you still have plenty of money, you may not care what is happening to everyone else.

For now, those with lots of cash are living the high life.

But that won’t last for long.

A day of reckoning is coming for the wealthy, and they will deeply mourn as their tremendous wealth is wiped out.

During the early stages of this economic crisis, it will be the poor that are hit particularly hard, but great pain is eventually coming for those at the top of the food chain too.

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 Mainstream Media Is Not Telling You The Truth About Inflation

July 12, 2023 by Michael

Inflation is going down! Isn’t that wonderful? When many less educated Americans hear this news, they will think that prices are going down. But that is not true at all. In fact, prices are still going up. They are just going up at a slower rate than they were before. According to the federal government, the Consumer Price Index was only 3 percent higher in June 2023 than it was in June 2022. That sounds like pretty good news, but it is imperative to realize that the formula used for the Consumer Price Index has literally been changed dozens of times over the decades. If the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would still be well into the double digits.

So we should be thankful that prices have moderated a bit (for now), but anyone that believes that inflation is “under control” is just being delusional.

Month after month, the cost of living just keeps becoming more oppressive for average Americans. At this point, U.S. families are under so much financial stress that they are even “skimping on everyday items such as toothpaste and toilet paper”…

Americans are skimping on everyday items such as toothpaste and toilet paper in a troubling sign for the US economy and major manufactures, financial experts have warned.

Personal hygiene products have taken a hit – with units of toothpaste, laundry detergent and toilet paper sold down three to four percent in the year through June 24, according to data from NIQ, Bloomberg reported.

Americans are also opting for cheaper brands and budget stores to combat inflation, in a blow to manufacturing giants such as Procter & Gamble and a boost to the likes of Dollar General.

Surveys have shown that more than 60 percent of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, and the reality of the matter is that a lot of us are looking to cut back anywhere that we possibly can.

Sadly, that even includes school supplies. According to Zero Hedge, it is being projected that back-to-school spending will decline “for the first time in nine years”…

According to a Deloitte survey released on Wednesday, back-to-school (BTS) spending, the second-largest spending event for families after the holiday season, is anticipated to decline for the first time in nine years. The survey’s findings indicate that consumers are struggling amid the two-year inflation storm, raising concerns about the success of “Bidenomics.”

Inflation has been eroding our standard of living for decades, and now we are at a point where tens of millions of Americans are just barely scraping by from month to month.

Once upon a time, anyone with a middle class income could afford to buy or rent a decent home or apartment.

But now it takes more than a middle class income to even rent a “glorified dungeon” in New York City…

A tiny disused space which has been turned into a $2,300-a-month apartment has been dubbed as nothing more than a ‘glorified dungeon.’

Popular TikTok account NYC Sales & Rentals took to the video sharing platform to showcase the bizarre set-up.

It revealed how the unusual apartment in central Harlem could be found at the back of the lobby, hidden behind the laundry room.

When I see stuff like that, it makes me very angry.

I simply cannot understand how anyone can possibly believe that the cost of living is under control.

It isn’t.

And more inflation is coming. Now that the “debt ceiling crisis” is over, our politicians in Washington have added a trillion dollars to the national debt in just five weeks…

It looks like the Biden-McCarthy “Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023” will rival the Inflation Reduction Act (Green New Deal) in its Orwellian meaning and outcome. Just five weeks after the deal was hatched, the Treasury has issued over $1 trillion in new debt!

This is simply astounding. It took from our founding until 1980 to accrue the amount of debt that we have now added in just over five weeks. It is truly hard to overstate the magnitude and impact of this spending.

Pumping so much money into the economy in such a short period of time is highly inflationary.

If our “leaders” in Washington were serious about getting inflation under control, they would stop borrowing and spending so much money.

But they will never do that.

So it is up to the Federal Reserve to try to do something about inflation, and it appears that they are gearing up for yet another interest rate hike…

Despite the slowdown in inflation, policymakers are widely expected to approve another quarter-percentage point hike at the conclusion of their two-day meeting. An overwhelming percentage of traders – more than 92% – anticipate the Fed will lift interest rates again at the end of the month.

Reading that makes me want to tear my hair out.

U.S. home values have already fallen by more than 100 billion dollars as the housing bubble bursts, and the commercial real estate market is coming apart like a 20 dollar suit.

As a result, small and mid-size banks all over the country are experiencing great pain, and loan losses are rising at a very frightening pace…

The major U.S. banks are set to report the biggest jump in loan losses since the COVID-19 pandemic, as rising interest rates put mounting pressure on borrowers across the country.

There is no way in the world that the Federal Reserve should be thinking about raising interest rates even higher.

But they are going to do it anyway.

Sometimes I feel like I am banging my head into a brick wall.

No matter how much we may object, our “leaders” just keep making incredibly foolish decision after incredibly foolish decision.

And it isn’t just the economy. Decades of incredibly foolish decisions in all areas have literally brought us to the brink of national suicide.

So please don’t be fooled when the mainstream media tells you that inflation is “under control” and that the outlook for the economy is improving.

The truth is that our long-term problems continue to escalate, and everything that those in power do to “fix things” just makes matters even worse.

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

Lonely America: More Americans Are Living Alone Than Ever Before

July 11, 2023 by Michael

Once upon a time, it was fairly rare to find someone that was living by themselves in America. But now that has completely changed. Americans are getting married later in life, couples are having fewer children, divorce is rampant, and millions of broken families litter our national landscape. As a result, the traditional family unit in the United States is weaker than it has ever been before. And that is extremely unfortunate, because the family is a fundamental support system in any society. Without strong families, no society is going to thrive for long.

I knew that the percentage of single person households was rising, but this week I was stunned to learn that it has now reached almost 30 percent in the United States…

Nearly 30 percent of American households comprise a single person, a record high.

Scholars say living alone is not a trend so much as a transformation: Across much of the world, large numbers of people are living alone for the first time in recorded history.

This greatly contributes to the epidemics of loneliness and depression that we are witnessing.

Humans were designed to love and be loved, but today so many of us feel so isolated.

But it wasn’t always this way. In fact, only 8 percent of all households in the U.S. were made up of a single person in 1940…

The U.S. Census shows that “solitaries” made up 8 percent of all households in 1940. The share of solo households doubled to 18 percent in 1970 and more than tripled, to an estimated 29 percent, by 2022.

This is another instance where the trend is not our friend, and we are being told that there are a lot of reasons why we have seen such a dramatic shift…

The solo-living movement intersects with several other societal trends. Americans are marrying later, if at all. The nation is aging. The national birthrate is falling. People are living longer — or they were, until the pandemic arrived.

More than anything, perhaps, the rise of single-person households is about women entering the workforce and achieving economic self-sufficiency.

In previous generations, multi-person households were often an economic necessity.

But thanks to the affluence that we have enjoyed in recent decades, more Americans now have the option of living alone.

And it shouldn’t surprise any of us that single person households are particularly common in some of our largest cities…

Living alone is much more common in large cities. Singles now make up more than 40% of households in Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and Denver, according to a paper by the British historian Keith Snell. Half of Manhattan apartments are one-person residences.

Ultimately, what we are witnessing comes down to a fundamental shift in our culture more than anything else.

Previous generations of Americans valued family much more highly than we do, and we value ourselves much more highly than they did.

In other words, we have become exceedingly selfish.

For example, just consider the reasons why one female author says that living alone can be “a dream come true”…

According to Bella DePaulo, author of the upcoming book “Single at Heart”: “Living alone can be a dream come true. You get to curate your own life. You decide when to go to sleep and when to get up, what and when to eat, what to watch or to listen to for entertainment, and how warm or cool your place will be.”

Having some time to yourself can be nice for a few hours.

But how empty are you going to feel after you have nobody to share your life with year after year?

In addition to training our young people to be selfish, we have also trained them to think of children as “burdens” that should be avoided if you want to enjoy life.

Earlier today, I came across an article about a man that had a vasectomy at 34 years of age just so that he and his wife can be free to do whatever they want…

A young couple are child-free so they can be ‘selfish’, take naps and go on holiday whenever they want – and are so sure they don’t want kids they use extreme birth control.

Indi, 25, and her husband Heraldo Uribe, 34, are intentionally child-free and consider themselves as DINKS – which stands for ‘dual income no kids’.

I am sure that might be fun for a while.

But they will never get to see their kids grow up.

And they will never have grandchildren.

And there will never be any family reunions when they get older.

And there won’t be anyone to take care of them when they are near the end of their lives.

On a broader level, how are we going to maintain our Social Security system now that our birth rate has been way below replacement level for many years?

We aren’t even producing enough babies to replace ourselves, and so there simply is not going to be enough people paying into the system to support our rapidly aging population.

Thankfully, some young people are waking up and realizing that marriage and family should be a priority.

In fact, one woman is actually offering $5,000 if you can find the right man for her to marry…

In a viral video, which has so far amassed over 556,000 views, she revealed that she had previously made this deal with her friends, and her boss, but was now ready to open it up to the ‘general public.’

She said: ‘So the offer is if you introduce me to my husband and I marry him, I will give you $5,000 dollars.

‘I don’t have to stay married to him for long, I can get divorced from him in 20 years, it doesn’t matter, but if you introduce to me a man that I walk down the aisle and get married to, I will give you $5,000.’

Of course she isn’t going to marry just anyone.

She has some pretty stringent requirements for her future spouse, and that includes being at least six feet tall…

She noted that she wanted her future husband to be between the ages of 27 and 40, like sports, be a good communicator, be at least six-foot, and have good wit, banter, and the ability to poke fun at her.

The 34-year-old also noted that she doesn’t want the man she marries to do any drugs, adding that she has no preference on where they live or what their political or religious stances are.

I will never understand why so many women have a height requirement.

Love can often arrive in an unexpected package.

And we all need to remember that marriage and family are absolutely critical to the overall success of our society.

Unfortunately, more Americans than ever are rejecting traditional values, and so we are steamrolling down a road that doesn’t lead anywhere good.

Living to please ourselves may seem gratifying for a while, but in the end it leads to great emptiness.

On the other hand, loving others often involves great sacrifice, but in the end it can lead to great fulfillment.

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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