Money

The Cost Of Living Has Become Extremely Oppressive And 57 Percent Of Americans Cannot Afford A $1,000 Emergency Expense

January 25, 2023January 25, 2023 by Michael

I don’t have to tell you that your money doesn’t go as far as it once did. You see it every time that you go shopping. Our leaders flooded the system with money and pursued highly inflationary policies for years, and now we are all paying the price. The cost of living has been rising much faster than our incomes have, and this is systematically destroying the middle class. Survey after survey has shown that a solid majority of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, and at this point most U.S. consumers are tapped out. In fact, one brand new survey just discovered that 57 percent of Americans cannot even afford to pay a $1,000 emergency expense…

According to Bankrate’s Annual Emergency Fund Report, 68% of people are worried they wouldn’t be able to cover their living expenses for just one month if they lost their primary source of income. And when push comes to shove, the majority (57%) of U.S. adults are currently unable to afford a $1,000 emergency expense.

When broken down by generation, Gen Zers (85%) and Millennials (79%) are more likely to be worried about covering an emergency expense.

These numbers are quite ominous, because they clearly demonstrate that we are completely and utterly unprepared for any sort of a major economic downturn.

And thanks to the rapidly rising cost of living, we are losing even more ground with each passing month.

Another survey that was recently released found that “earnings are falling behind the cost of living” for 72 percent of middle income families…

Nearly three-quarters, or 72%, of middle-income families say their earnings are falling behind the cost of living, up from 68% a year ago, according to a separate report by Primerica based on a survey of households with incomes between $30,000 and $100,000. A similar share, 74%, said they are unable to save for their future, up from 66% a year ago.

We haven’t experienced anything like this in the United States in decades.

When I walked into a Walmart store the other day, I was shocked by how high the prices are now.

Isn’t Walmart supposed to be the place with “low prices every day”?

Well, the prices were certainly not “low” when I walked through the store.

And I was stunned to learn that McDonald’s is now selling one hash brown for three dollars.

McDonald’s charging $3 for 1 (one) hash brown is actually insane pic.twitter.com/qZwZrPTrTV

— cabral (@comradeaux) January 18, 2023

Are you kidding me?

I am sure that many of you can remember a time when they were 50 cents.

Sadly, those days are not coming back.

Food prices are going to continue to go up, and the CEO of Unilever recently admitted that his company has actually “been accelerating the rate of price increases that we’ve had to put into the market”…

“For the last 18 months we’ve seen extraordinary input cost pressure … it runs across petrochemical derived products, agricultural derived products, energy, transport, logistics,” he said.

“It’s been feeding through for quite some time now and we’ve been accelerating the rate of price increases that we’ve had to put into the market,” he added.

That doesn’t sound good at all.

And he also ominously warned that “there’s more inflationary pressure coming”…

Unilever’s view, he said, was that “we know for sure there’s more inflationary pressure coming through in our input costs.”

As food prices continue to rise, these big companies are going to look for ways to reduce input costs.

One way that they are going to do that is by starting to put crushed bugs in our food.

I know that this may sound really bizarre to you, but this is already happening in Europe…

As of yesterday, a food additive made out of powdered crickets began appearing in foods from pizza, to pasta to cereals across the European Union.

Yes, really.

Defatted house crickets are on the menu for Europeans across the continent, without the vast majority of them knowing it is now in their food.

So you might want to start reading labels a lot more carefully from now on.

Of course it isn’t just the cost of food that has become extremely oppressive.

Just about everything has gotten more expensive, and this has broken the remaining strength of the U.S. consumer.

If you doubt this, just consider some of the latest economic numbers that we have seen.

-U.S. retail sales fell once again last month…

US retail sales continued their fall in December, dropping by 1.1% as inflation remained high, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.

That’s the largest monthly decline since December 2021, and practically every category (except for building materials, groceries and sporting goods) saw sales drop from the prior month.

-Sales of existing homes have now fallen for 11 months in a row…

U.S. existing home sales slowed for the 11th consecutive month in December as higher mortgage rates, surging inflation and steep home prices sapped consumer demand from the housing market.

-More Americans than ever before are being forced to pay at least 30 percent of their incomes on rent…

The average US household is now considered ‘rent-burdened’ as a record-high number of people are spending more than 30 percent of their income on rent.

According to Moody’s Analytics’ latest affordability report, the national average rent-to-income (RTI) ratio reached 30 percent for the first time since the company began tracking the data more than 20 years ago.

U.S. consumers are being stretched financially like never before, and many are turning to debt to help them maintain their current lifestyles.

As a result, the savings rate has plunged to a historic low, credit card debt has surged to a record high, and the average rate of interest on credit card balances has also risen to a record high. As Zero Hedge has aptly noted, this is “nothing short of catastrophic”…

The combination of record high credit card debt and record high credit card interest is nothing short of catastrophic for both the US economy, and the strapped consumer who has no choice but to keep buying on credit while hoping next month’s bill will somehow not come. Unfortunately, it will and at some point in the very near future, this will also translate into massive loan losses for US consumer banks; that’s when Powell will finally panic.

For a long time, we have been warned that the very foolish economic policies that our leaders were implementing would have deeply tragic consequences.

And now it is starting to happen right in front of our eyes.

Sadly, the truth is that this is just the beginning.

The entire system is cracking and crumbling all around us, and there is much more pain ahead.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

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 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.

Wake Up America! Apocalyptic Scenarios Are Unfolding All Around Us, But Most People Are Still Asleep

January 24, 2023 by Michael

How can you get people to wake up if they are determined to keep sleeping? For decades, global events have been moving us in a very ominous direction, and ever since this decade began the pace of change has accelerated dramatically. But even though we just keep getting hit by one major crisis after another, most people still do not get it. Almost everyone seems to be under the impression that the massive problems that we are experiencing right now are “just temporary” and that everything will “return to normal” soon. Meanwhile, apocalyptic scenarios continue to unfold all around us at a breathtaking pace.

Earlier today, I pulled up a USA Today article about the Doomsday Clock that boldly declared that “the world is closer to annihilation than it has ever been”…

The world is closer to annihilation than it has ever been since the first nuclear bombs were released at the close of World War II, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists said Tuesday. The time on the Doomsday Clock moved forward from 100 seconds to midnight to 90 seconds to midnight.

It’s a reset of what has come to be known as the Doomsday Clock, a decades long project of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists featuring a clock face where midnight represents Armageddon.

Yes, we really are on the brink of nuclear war, but the vast majority of the general population hasn’t gotten the memo.

Instead, most of them are having a great time partying, spending money like there is no tomorrow, and getting into other sorts of trouble.

But just because most Americans choose to ignore the war does not alter the reality of what is taking place.

Sadly, both sides just continue to escalate the conflict. In fact, it appears that the Biden administration will soon be sending M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine for the very first time…

The Biden administration is leaning toward sending “a significant number” of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine, two U.S. officials said, and an announcement could come as early as this week.

The development comes amid a public standoff with German officials, who are under pressure to send their own Leopard tanks and allow other European countries that operate the German-made vehicles to do so as well.

And it is being reported that the German government has reversed course and has now decided to send Leopard 2 tanks to the Ukrainians…

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has finally decided to send a battalion of sought-after Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, Der Spiegel reported on Tuesday, after weeks of pressure from Ukraine and European allies.

On the other side, the Russians have chosen to send a warship armed with hypersonic missiles within shooting range of major east coast cities…

A Russian warship armed with “unstoppable” hypersonic missiles is sailing towards the US coast in a show of strength, reports claim.

The guided missile frigate Admiral Gorshkov has been closely monitored by Nato navies on its maiden voyage armed with 6,670mph Zircon weapons.

An unconfirmed Russian Telegram channel report says it was “spotted on radar in neutral waters of the Atlantic Ocean – at an effective salvo launch distance from the US coast”.

Both sides are playing a very dangerous game.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov just warned that we on the verge of seeing “a real war” between the western powers and Russia…

‘When we speak about what is happening in Ukraine – it is a war, not a hybrid one, almost a real war, that the West has been plotting for a long time against Russia,’ Lavrov said today.

If our leaders were sane, they would be trying to find a peaceful solution to this crisis while it is still possible.

Instead, we seem to be playing a very twisted game of “nuclear chicken” where we see how close we can come to the line without actually starting a nuclear war.

So what happens if a “mistake” is made and the missiles start flying?

You might want to start thinking about that.

Meanwhile, it appears that the coming war between Israel and Iran is also getting closer.

In fact, the U.S. and Israel are conducting “the most significant exercise between the United States and Israel to date”…

The Israel Defense Forces and U.S. Central Command on Monday announced the launch of a large-scale drill, which a senior U.S. defense official called “the most significant exercise between the United States and Israel to date.”

The unprecedented drill, dubbed “Juniper Oak 2023,” involves over 140 aircraft, 12 naval vessels, and artillery systems from both countries and will last until Friday, CENTCOM said in a statement.

Once the war between Israel and Iran starts, our planet will never be the same again.

Speaking of the planet, it is being reported that the inner core has apparently stopped moving…

A new study published in Nature Geoscience by geophysicists Yi Yang and Xiadong Song of Peking University in Beijing explored the nature of movement of Earth’s inner core, largely made up of iron and molten liquids. They found the inner core’s movement recently reduced enough they consider it “paused,” all part of what “seems to be associated with a gradual turning back of the inner core as a part of an approximately seven-decade oscillation.”

But don’t worry, because scientists think that this is normal.

Maybe it is.

Probably it is.

Hopefully it is.

Because if it isn’t normal for the Earth’s inner core to “pause”, then there is a possibility that we are all in really big trouble.

In other planetary news, an enormous asteroid that was “just discovered this past weekend” is about to zip past our world at an “extremely close” distance…

An asteroid just discovered this past weekend is set for an extremely close encounter with Earth—and you can watch it live as it zooms past our planet.

Most people assume that our scientists have a really good idea of what is going on up there, and that if a major threat was coming they would tell us about it.

Unfortunately, the truth is that their ability to detect giant space rocks is still fairly limited, and this new space rock that was “just discovered this past weekend” will come closer to us than we are to the center of our planet…

At that point, the space rock will come “only” about 6,500 miles from the center of the Earth while traveling at roughly 33,300 miles per hour. Given that the average radius of the Earth—the distance from the center to the surface—is considered to be roughly 4,000 miles, 2023 BU will zip past us at an altitude of around 2,500 miles above the ground.

Let me try to explain this another way.

This space rock will come more than 30 times closer to us than the moon is…

The approach is so close that it is less than 3 percent of the average distance between the Earth and the moon. The asteroid will also pass within the orbits of geostationary satellites, which circle the Earth above the equator at an altitude of 22,236 miles.

In other words, a space rock that was “just discovered this past weekend” is going to come very close to hitting us.

But it won’t hit us.

Maybe.

Probably.

Hopefully.

If everything else that I have shared so far is not enough, it is also being reported that “excess deaths” are soaring all over the globe…

Healthcare spending is at record-high levels across the Western world, yet systems are struggling to cope. The combined effects of the pandemic and a rapidly ageing population are stressing hospitals, ambulance crews and social care services to their limit. Excess deaths – those beyond usual numbers – are consequently soaring: the crisis is global.

What this means is that far more people are dying than normal all over the world.

In fact, we are being told that there were approximately 15 million “excess deaths” worldwide in 2020 and 2021…

Nearly 15 million excess deaths from any cause are thought to have occurred during 2020 and 2021, according to new WHO research – nearly three times the 5.42 million coronavirus fatalities reported over the same period. Health statistician William Msemburi said the figure was also likely especially high due to people dying from delayed health screenings and medical procedures.

More people will be dropping dead today, and more people will be dropping dead tomorrow.

But at least you won’t be one of them.

Maybe.

Probably.

Hopefully.

I could go on and on, but this article is already getting way too long. We keep getting hit by one thing after another, and I really like how Hal Lindsey summarized the current state of affairs in his most recent article…

The price of eggs… a Mall of America security guard threatening the wearer of a “Jesus saves” t-shirt… attacks on the US power grid… a worldwide obsession with pornography… another wave of nuclear threats coming out of Russia… a universal weakening of democratic institutions… a global reshuffling of leaders… threats of “civil war” in Israel… corruption in the highest levels of government across the world… weaponized Artificial Intelligence… deep fake audio and video enabling previously unimagined levels of deception… global economic chaos… and on and on.

What do these and hundreds of other things like them have in common?

Needless to say, the answer to Hal’s question is quite obvious.

The reason why so many apocalyptic things are happening is because we really are living in apocalyptic times.

Hopefully the general population will wake up and realize what time it is, because the clock is ticking.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

“The Job Cuts That Are Coming Are Going To Be Super Brutal”

January 23, 2023 by Michael

A shockingly large wave of layoffs has already begun, and we are being warned that much larger layoffs are coming in the months ahead. That is very chilling to hear, because job cut announcements are already coming in so rapidly that I couldn’t possibly share them all with you. I wrote about some of the major layoffs that are happening just a few days ago, and now I have more to share. We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008, and many of you still have very painful memories of what the “Great Recession” was like. Unfortunately, America is now plunging into another severe economic downturn, and that means that there will be a tremendous amount of pain in the weeks and months to come.

Earlier today, I was stunned to learn that a new survey has found that 20 percent of business economists “expect employment at their company to fall in the coming months”…

A growing number of business economists expect companies to reduce their headcounts for the first time since the pandemic, a sign the job market is beginning to cool amid an increasingly dark economic outlook.

That’s according to a new survey published on Monday by the National Association for Business Economics, which shows that about 20% of the group’s members expect employment at their company to fall in the coming months.

Is this survey representative of the U.S. economy as a whole?

If it is, that is truly chilling.

Can you imagine what our economy would look like if about one-fifth of all U.S. companies started suddenly letting workers go all at once?

Hopefully that will not happen.

But it appears that the coming layoffs in the banking industry could be historic.

In fact, one expert is publicly warning that “the job cuts that are coming are going to be super brutal”…

Banks are set to undertake the largest wave of job cuts in 15 years amid declining revenues.

Industry watchers told the Financial Times (FT) the layoffs — expected to be in the tens of thousands — reverse a trend of widespread hiring and banks’ reticence to let go of workers during the pandemic.

“The job cuts that are coming are going to be super brutal,” Lee Thacker, owner of financial services headhunting firm Silvermine Partners, told the FT in a Saturday (Jan. 21) report.

He didn’t just say that the job losses will be “brutal”.

He said that they will be “super brutal”.

Of course many would argue that the outlook for tech industry workers is even worse.

At this point, “tens of thousands of employees” have already been laid off within just “the past few months”…

Big tech giants have laid off tens of thousands of employees over the past few months as recession fears, persistent inflation, and rising interest rates continue to weigh on earnings results. The likes of Google, Amazon, and Meta have let go of nearly 40,000 employees combined.

But Gene Munster, managing partner at the tech-focused investment and venture capital firm Deepwater Asset Management (formerly Loup Ventures), believes the worst is yet to come.

“There’s still another 15% to 20% of headcount reductions for these big tech companies in the next three to six months,” he told CNBC on Monday.

The startling layoffs that we just witnessed at Google made headlines all over the planet, because most of the experts didn’t see them coming.

Sadly, many of those that were laid off didn’t see them coming either.

Can you imagine giving 20 years of your life to Google and then getting suddenly laid off one day via email?…

A software engineer described the way he found out Google was laying him off as a “slap in the face.”

Jeremy Joslin, whose LinkedIn profile says he had worked at the tech giant since 2003, said Friday the company gave him the news over email.

“It’s hard for me to believe that after 20 years at Google I unexpectedly find out about my last day via an email,” he tweeted. “What a slap in the face. I wish I could have said goodbye to everyone face to face.”

That is cold.

But it appears that this is becoming something of a trend.

In fact, Vox just laid off 7 percent of its workforce, and those that lost their jobs were “notified through email”…

Vox Media, the publisher of news websites such as Vox and The Verge, in addition to New York magazine, will lay off 7% of its workforce, chief executive Jim Bankoff said in a Friday morning memo to staff.

Bankoff said the layoffs, which will result in about 130 people losing their roles, impacted multiple teams, including editorial. Those who had their jobs eliminated were notified through email, followed by a later meeting with a human resources officer who would discuss severance packages with them.

If you are in human resources and you are reading this, please don’t ever do something so cruel at your own company.

It may be much easier to fire people by email, but it is simply the wrong thing to do.

On Monday we also learned that Spotify will be conducting mass layoffs…

Spotify has joined a slew of other tech giants in laying off employees.

Monday’s announcement shared by CEO Daniel Ek said that impacted employees, about 6% across the company, will be notified Monday morning.

I suppose that they have to pay Joe Rogan somehow.

But it always pains me when I hear of people losing good paying employment.

Sadly, for many firms one wave of layoffs will not be enough.

As we plunge into a very harsh economic environment, some companies will have to get out the axe again and again.

For example, just look at what the Winklevoss twins are doing. They just conducted their third round of layoffs within the last eight months…

Cryptocurrency exchange Gemini is slashing 10 percent of its staff – the third round of layoffs within just eight months.

The announcement was made in an internal message on Monday by founders and identical twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, 41, The Information reported.

The company also cut staff in July, according to TechCrunch, just a month after it laid off 10 percent in June.

Instead of subjecting us to horrifying renditions of some of our most beloved classic songs, perhaps they should have spent more time trying to figure out how to keep their company afloat.

In any event, it turns out that the doe-eyed optimists were dead wrong and the economic realists were quite correct.

The massive economic meltdown that we have been relentlessly warned about is happening.

Hordes of American workers have already been laid off, and countless more will be laid off as 2023 rolls along.

So you may want to try to butter up your boss while you still can, because otherwise you may be one of the people that gets “laid off by email” in the months ahead.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The United States Is Insolvent

January 22, 2023January 22, 2023 by Michael

You can call everyone for dinner, because our goose is cooked. We are so deep in debt that the only way we can keep the entire system from collapsing is to keep borrowing even more money. Perhaps you have been through a similar scenario with your own personal finances. When you simply do not have enough money to pay your bills, borrowing more money can seem like a really easy short-term solution. Unfortunately, the U.S. government has been doing this for decades, and now our national debt spiral has reached a terminal stage. Even if we gathered up all of the money that exists in every bank account in America, we could not pay off the national debt. The debt level is exploding upwards at an exponential rate, and the only way that the federal government can continue to pay the bills is to keep borrowing and spending colossal mountains of money that we must borrow from someone else.

As I write this article, the U.S. national debt is sitting at 31.4 trillion dollars.

But the total value of all goods and services produced in the United States last year was only about 25 trillion dollars.

Our leaders in Washington could try to reverse course by balancing the budget, but that would lead to a short-term economic disaster.

Just think about it.

What do you think would happen if a couple trillion dollars of government spending was suddenly sucked out of the economy?

We would immediately plunge into a horrifying economic depression.

Sadly, the truth is that we have been borrowing from the future to make the present a lot more pleasant. We are enjoying an artificially-inflated standard of living that we do not deserve, and we have been using debt to fund that artificially-inflated standard of living.

But now a day of reckoning is here.

Of course it isn’t just the federal government that has gone completely insane.

Our state and local governments are collectively more than 3 trillion dollars in debt.

Corporate debt in the United States has now surpassed the 12 trillion dollar mark.

And total U.S. household debt is now over 18 trillion dollars.

As the U.S. economy has slowed down in recent months, an increasing number of Americans have turned to credit card debt.

So now credit card debt is rising at an exponential rate while the savings rate has dropped to a historic low.

And at this point the average rate of interest on credit card balances is the highest ever.

I don’t even have the words to describe how self-destructive we are being.

On every level of society, debt levels are absolutely skyrocketing.

We are literally committing national financial suicide, but many people don’t seem to care.

And many people don’t seem to care because they don’t even understand what is happening.

At this point, our “system of education” has produced hordes of completely clueless individuals that can barely even function in a modern society.

If we had a population that was properly educated and properly informed, they would be absolutely horrified by what our leaders have been doing to us.

But instead, our leaders have been free to systematically destroy our financial future for a very long time, and very few of us have even cared enough to object.

Unfortunately, we have reached a point where there is no turning back.

We have already destroyed the reserve currency of the planet.

We have already created rampant inflation.

The Federal Reserve has been feverishly hiking interest rates, but that is dramatically raising debt service costs at every level of our society, and it is also causing economic activity to slow down all around us.

Companies all over America are now laying off workers, and that even includes Google…

On Friday, Alphabet-owned Google announced it was cutting 12,000 employees, roughly 6% of the full-time workforce. While employees had been bracing for a potential layoff, they are questioning leadership about the criteria for layoffs which surprised some employees, who woke up to find their access to company properties cut off. Some of the laid-off employees had been long-tenured or recently promoted, raising questions about the criteria used to decide whose jobs were cut.

Shortly after CEO Sundar Pichai’s initial email to employees Friday morning, Google’s search boss Prabhakar Raghavan sent an email to employees saying he “also feels the responsibility to reach out” and asking for them to save questions for next week’s town hall. There will be “bumps in the road” as the organization moves forward with the layoffs, Raghavan noted.

Why is Google doing this?

No corporation in the entire country is stronger than they are.

If there is one company in America that should not be laying off workers, it is Google.

Of course just about every large tech company is laying off workers these days.

Microsoft is laying off workers.

Amazon is laying off workers.

Facebook is laying off workers.

Twitter is laying off workers.

We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008, and that is because we haven’t had an economic crisis like this since 2008.

So many people are going to lose their jobs in the months ahead.

And the economic pain that we will experience in 2023 will be just the beginning, because the entire system is starting to come down all around us.

Did you actually think that we could go on the greatest debt binge in all of human history and that everything would work out just fine somehow?

That is not how the real world works.

We sat by and did nothing while our leaders made disastrous decisions for decades, and now we will be forced to watch in horror as the consequences of those decisions play out right in front of our eyes.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

We Are Witnessing An Enormous Wave Of Bankruptcies And Layoffs During The Early Stages Of 2023

January 18, 2023January 18, 2023 by Michael

Is your job safe? Right now, we are witnessing so much turmoil is so many different sectors of our economy. The housing market is crashing, the cryptocurrency industry has imploded, the tech industry is laying off workers at an extremely frightening pace, and some of our most important retailers are heading into bankruptcy. The information that I am about to share with you is deeply troubling. It has become exceedingly clear that our economy is in huge trouble, and I fully expect that our problems will accelerate even more as the year rolls along.

Let me start by pointing out what is currently happening at Microsoft. It is one of the wealthiest companies in the entire world, but due to a shift in “macroeconomic conditions” executives have decided that it has become necessary to lay off 10,000 workers…

Microsoft announced thousands of job cuts this week, becoming the latest tech company to pluck its workforce as the global economy slows.

The software company confirmed Wednesday its reducing workforce by 10,000 people through the end of the third quarter of the 2023 fiscal year.

The cuts come “in response to macroeconomic conditions and changing customer priorities,” the company’s CEO Satya Nadella released in a statement to its employees Wednesday.

If even Microsoft is laying off thousands of workers, is any job in the private sector truly safe?

Meanwhile, some of the biggest names in the retail industry are plunging into bankruptcy now that the holiday season is over.

On Tuesday, it was Party City’s turn…

Party City filed for bankruptcy protection Tuesday, weighed down by competition and years of financial losses.

The largest party goods and Halloween specialty retail chain in the United States said in a regulatory filing that it reached an agreement with debtholders to cut its $1.7 billion debt load.

Even more alarming is the fact that it is being reported that a bankruptcy filing for Bed Bath & Beyond has become “likely”…

Bed Bath & Beyond has been in discussions with prospective buyers and lenders as it works to keep its business afloat during a likely bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter.

The retailer is in the midst a sale process in hopes of finding a buyer that would keep the doors open for both of its major chains, its namesake banner and Buybuy Baby, said the people, who weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

So many brick and mortar retailers are really struggling right now, and many of them are blaming competition from Internet retailers such as Amazon.

But if Amazon is doing so well, why did they start laying off approximately 18,000 workers on Wednesday?…

Earlier this month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in a blog post that the company was laying off about 18,000 people as it seeks to cut costs and would begin contacting impacted employees on Jan. 18.

“Amazon has weathered uncertain and difficult economies in the past, and we will continue to do so,” Jassy said in the Jan. 4 post. “These changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.”

The wave of layoffs that we have been witnessing in the tech industry is truly unprecedented.

Prior to this week, more than 25,000 tech industry workers had already been laid off this year, and this comes on the heels of the massive layoffs that we saw last year…

According to the data tracking website, more than 101 tech companies around the world have laid off 25,436 employees so far in 2023. Most of the layoffs have taken place in the United States, accounting for 22,400 employees fired.

The number of workers being laid off from tech companies is a trend that is continuing since 2022, when 154,336 workers were fired from over 1,000 tech companies around the world, according to the data.

But at least the tech industry is in far better shape than the cryptocurrency industry is.

Let me share four major announcements that have all happened within the past 10 days…

#1 It is being reported that Genesis Global Capital “is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing”…

Genesis Global Capital is laying the groundwork for a bankruptcy filing as soon as this week, according to people with knowledge of the situation.

The cryptocurrency lending unit of Digital Currency Group has been in confidential negotiations with various creditor groups amid a liquidity crunch. It has warned that it may need to file for bankruptcy if it fails to raise cash, Bloomberg previously reported.

#2 Crypto.com announced that it will be laying off “20% of its workforce”…

Crypto.com announced plans to lay off 20% of its workforce Jan. 13. The company had 2,450 employees, according to PitchBook data, suggesting around 490 employees were laid off.

CEO Kris Marszalek said in a blog post that the crypto exchange grew “ambitiously” but was unable to weather the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire FTX without the further cuts.

#3 Coinbase has decided “to cut about a fifth of its workforce”…

On Jan. 10, Coinbase announced plans to cut about a fifth of its workforce as it looks to preserve cash during the crypto market downturn.

The exchange plans to cut 950 jobs, according to a blog post. Coinbase, which had roughly 4,700 employees as of the end of September, had already slashed 18% of its workforce in June saying it needed to manage costs after growing “too quickly” during the bull market.

#4 The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato has actually been arrested. Apparently he was laundering money on a scale of epic proportions…

The founder of the Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency exchange Bitzlato was arrested early Wednesday in Miami in connection with a vast money laundering operation, accused of transmitting more than $700 million in illicit funds in the past four years.

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said Anatoly Legkodymov, 40, a Russian national, oversaw a major “high-tech financial hub that catered to known crooks,” including cybercriminals and drug dealers seeking to process dirty money.

The cryptocurrency industry will never look the same again after all of this turmoil.

On top of everything else, the Saudis appear to be poised to make a major move that could literally change everything.

At the yearly gathering of the World Economic Forum in Davos, the Saudi finance minister decided to drop a bombshell…

Saudi Arabia is open to discussions about trade in currencies other than the US dollar, according to the kingdom’s finance minister.

Needless to say, this could potentially completely undermine the dominance of the petrodollar.

Of course we cannot afford to have that happen, because the dominance of the dollar is one of the only things that is keeping our system afloat.

At this point just about everything is moving in the wrong direction for the U.S. economy, but most people still do not understand the bigger picture.

A lot of the “experts” assume that we will just suffer through a temporary recession and then things will eventually return to normal.

I wish that was true.

Unfortunately, our entire system is starting to crack and crumble all around us, and those that are currently running things are not going to be able to put it back together again.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Is The War In Ukraine About To Go To An Entirely New Level?

January 17, 2023 by Michael

If Russia intends to make a major move to win the war in Ukraine, it needs to do it very soon. As you will see below, representatives from over 50 different nations will gather this week for a historic meeting in Ramstein, Germany. The goal of that meeting will be to implement a plan to absolutely flood Ukraine with tanks and missile systems in an attempt to turn the tide of the war. At the moment, the Russians have regained the initiative and the Ukrainians are steadily losing territory in eastern Ukraine. The Ukrainians are hoping to buy enough time for the next massive influx of military aid to arrive, because it could potentially change everything.

Most of you have probably not heard about the meeting that will be held in Ramstein, Germany on Friday. The following originally comes from the Wall Street Journal…

Representatives of more than 50 countries supporting Ukraine are set to gather in Ramstein, Germany, to discuss provisions for Kyiv and pledge fresh supplies later this month. The U.S.-led assembly, known as the contact group, includes all countries in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and allies, including Japan, South Korea and Australia, offering lethal and nonlethal aid.

Ukraine is expected to receive Patriot missile systems, which Ukrainian officials say would hobble Russia’s missile attacks that have wreaked havoc on Ukraine’s civilian and critical infrastructure. Some Western officials also said that the first-ever shipment of Western-made main battle tanks could also be announced at the Friday meeting in Ramstein.

The only way that the Russians will be able to stop all of this equipment from getting to Ukraine would be to launch an enormous new invasion from the north that completely cuts off the flow of aid from the western powers.

Russia has been moving troops and equipment into Belarus for months, and many believe that such an offensive will soon happen.

And it is interesting to note that Russia and Belarus just initiated “a series of air-force exercises” on Monday…

Russia and its ally Belarus launched a series of air-force exercises Monday along the border with Ukraine in an effort to boost cooperation ahead of what Ukrainian officials and military analysts believe could be a fresh effort by Moscow in the coming months to retake battlefield momentum.

Throughout history, military exercises have often been used as a cover for major military operations.

But that doesn’t mean that the Russians will pull the trigger in this case.

Perhaps the Russians are just bluffing and are simply trying to hold a large number of Ukrainian forces along the northern border as the main push happens in the east.

At this point we just don’t know.

But many analysts in the western world do believe that the Russians will launch some kind of new offensive in the coming months…

“The Kremlin is likely preparing to conduct a decisive strategic action in the next six months intended to regain the initiative,” said a note from the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank that publishes daily reports on the war in Ukraine.

Actually, I think that if the Russians are going to make a move it will happen soon.

When the mud returns in the spring, it will be much more challenging for Russian tanks to move around efficiently.

So if a major offensive is going to take place, it will almost certainly be conducted within the next several weeks.

Meanwhile, Russian television continues to be filled with talk of nuclear war…

One of Vladimir Putin’s allies has claimed World War Three has already started as he called for Russia to launch a nuclear missile strike on Britain, France and Poland.

TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov told Russians that Moscow should target the West to disrupt NATO countries from sending supplies to Ukraine.

You don’t hear this sort of talk on television here in the United States.

In fact, at this point most Americans still believe that the risk of nuclear war is extremely low.

But they see things very, very differently inside Russia.

These remarks by Solovyov were in response to reports that NATO powers are getting ready to ship large numbers of tanks and armored vehicles to Ukraine…

It comes as Britain is poised to supply Challenger II main battle tanks to Kyiv, in the first such move of the war.

France is shipping French AMX-10 reconnaissance vehicles, Germany is sending 40 Marder infantry fighting vehicles, and the US is promising 50 M2 Bradley fighting vehicles.

Both sides just continue to escalate matters, and that has brought us dangerously close to nuclear conflict.

Earlier this month, Dmitry Medvedev made headlines all over the globe when he “threatened the United States of America with hypersonic cruise missiles”…

Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev threatened the United States of America with hypersonic cruise missiles and compared the American government’s policies to that of Nazis in a Thursday Telegram post in response to a US embassy appeal to Russian citizens for peace.

“The main gift of the New Year was the arsenal of Zircon missiles that went yesterday to the shores of NATO countries,” said Medvedev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin who currently serves as Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council.

The nuclear warhead-capable Zircon missiles were reported by Reuters Wednesday to have been placed on the frigate Admiral Gorshkov to be deployed to the Indian and Atlantic oceans.

By the way, we have absolutely no way to defend against those hypersonic cruise missiles.

If the Russians launch them, they will hit their targets.

If our leaders were sane, they would be trying to find a peaceful way out of this mess while there is still an opportunity to do so.

Sadly, that window is rapidly closing.

If the Russians launch another massive invasion of Ukraine from the north, there will be no going back.

Both sides will just keep escalating the conflict until someone crosses a line that will never be able to be uncrossed.

On Russian television, they are already talking about the inevitability of a nuclear conflict.

Unfortunately, most Americans don’t even realize that our leaders have us on the brink of the unthinkable.

Hopefully people will start to wake up before it is too late, because the clock is ticking.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The Clock Is Ticking For Humanity As A Horrifying Fertility Crisis Looms

January 16, 2023January 16, 2023 by Michael

Is humanity running out of time? Based on the growth of the global population during the last century or so, you wouldn’t come to such a conclusion. In 1900 there were about 2 billion people living on this planet, and now there are about 8 billion. But some experts are now suggesting that we have reached a very significant turning point. Global population growth has slowed dramatically, and birth rates have actually fallen well below replacement level in many industrialized nations. Couples are having a more difficult time producing babies, and there are many that are blaming our highly toxic environment for this.

A twitter thread about our looming fertility crisis has gotten a tremendous amount of attention over the past few days.

There’s a deluge of chemicals today poisoning us:

if you’re an average person using regular soaps, deodorants, shampoos, body washes, conditioners, hair products, makeup, you’re ingesting over 200+ chemicals + heavy metals a day, all linked to infertility

— Carnivore Aurelius ©🥩 ☀️🦙 (@AlpacaAurelius) January 14, 2023

There are some pretty bold claims being made in that thread, and I decided to fact check three of the most startling…

#1 “1 in 4 couples cannot conceive naturally”

According to the official CDC website, 19 percent of women aged 15 to 49 in the United States are not able to get pregnant…

In the United States, among heterosexual women aged 15 to 49 years with no prior births, about 1 in 5 (19%) are unable to get pregnant after one year of trying (infertility). Also, about 1 in 4 (26%) women in this group have difficulty getting pregnant or carrying a pregnancy to term (impaired fecundity).

So that would suggest that it is actually around 1 in 5 couples that are not able to conceive naturally.

However, it should be noted that the infertility rate has been steadily rising, and the number on the official CDC website reflects data that is a bit old.

If current trends continue, it is just a matter of time before “1 in 4 couples cannot conceive naturally” if we are not there already.

#2 “Sperm counts are down 60%”

This claim appears to be right on the nose. As I noted last week, a study that was recently released found that sperm counts have fallen by about 60 percent since 1973…

The latest analysis added seven years of sample collection and 44 study results to the 244 included in the earlier 2017 analysis. That study, in its analysis of data trends between 1973 and 2011, found an average decline in mean sperm concentration of 1.6% per year, and an overall decline of 59.3%. The latest study found an even steeper decline – to 2.64% post-2000 and an overall fall of 62.3% among unselected men. This, add the authors, represents a decline of –4.70 million/year, and indicates that this world-wide decline is continuing into the 21st century at an accelerated pace.

If sperm counts continue to plunge this rapidly, it won’t be too long before a majority of human males are infertile.

If that happens, the global population will begin to decline very rapidly.

#3 “if you’re an average person using regular soaps, deodorants, shampoos, body washes, conditioners, hair products, makeup, you’re ingesting over 200+ chemicals + heavy metals a day, all linked to infertility”

This claim was much harder to verify.

On the official NIH website, we are told that “pregnant women in the United States are exposed to 43 or more different potential chemical toxins”…

Environmental toxins are ubiquitous and sometimes implicated in infertility development, either through anatomical abnormalities or endocrinological dysfunction. Based on a National Health and Nutrition Survey from 2003 through 2004, pregnant women in the United States are exposed to 43 or more different potential chemical toxins.[3]Knowledge and experience in evaluating exposure to environmental toxins are critical for any reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist.

Environmental toxins affect individuals throughout the lifespan, including prenatally, and can have various effects, from increasing cancer risk to ovulatory dysfunction to altered semen quality.

Of course the NIH has not exactly been a beacon of truth in recent years.

Without a doubt, we are all endlessly exposed to extremely hazardous toxins in our food, in what we drink, in the air that we breathe and in the products that we put on our bodies.

A lot of those toxins have been linked to infertility, and many believe that this is one of the primary reasons why birth rates have been falling all over the world year after year…

It’s happening to men and women and as well, I should add, non-human species. And what we see is that the decline in the number of children that people have is one percent per year worldwide over the past 50 years. That’s true of developed countries and underdeveloped countries. And the same rate of decline, one percent per year, is what we see for the declining sperm count, what we see for the decline in testosterone, we see for the increase in miscarriage rates, and we’ve examined in our book “Count Down,” how each of these endpoints is deteriorating, if you will, at the same rate, about one percent per year, which is another bit of evidence, although not conclusive, that these are related to a common cause.

What do you think is going to happen to us if these trends continue?

Already, the fertility rate in the United States is way below replacement level…

According to the US Census Bureau, the fertility rate – which measures how many children an average woman will give birth to during her life – was 1.6 in 2020.

This falls far below the level of 2.1 needed to maintain current population levels.

As I detail in my new book, this crisis is an existential threat to the future of humanity, but most people simply do not care.

Most of us are just going to continue to bombard ourselves and our children with highly dangerous toxins no matter what information comes our way.

Sometimes I think that we are simply too stupid to continue as a species for much longer.

pic.twitter.com/fEboX7O5QZ

— Darwin Awards 🤦🏻‍♂️ (@DarwinAwards_) January 10, 2023

Instead of trying to figure out how to avoid extinction, we have become an “idiocracy” in which our young people are constantly devising increasingly bizarre ways to get the most social media views possible…

Man attempts to paraglide with couch pic.twitter.com/iSkgN4gUXY

— Weird and Terrifying (@weirdterrifying) January 16, 2023

The clock is ticking for humanity, and we cannot save ourselves from the historic catastrophe that is in front of us.

Hopefully we will realize how desperate our situation has become before time runs out completely.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The Mainstream Media Admits That We Are Facing “The Worst Food Crisis In Modern History”

January 15, 2023January 15, 2023 by Michael

People on the other side of the planet are dropping dead from starvation right now, but most people don’t even realize that this is happening. Unfortunately, most people just assume that everything is fine and dandy. If you are one of those people that believe that everything is just wonderful, I would encourage you to pay close attention to the details that I am about to share with you. Global hunger is rapidly spreading, and that is because global food supplies have been getting tighter and tighter. If current trends continue, we could potentially be facing a nightmare scenario before this calendar year is over.

Pakistan is not one of the poorest nations in the world, but the lack of affordable food is starting to cause panic inside that country. The following comes from Time Magazine…

Last Saturday in Mirpur Khas, a city in Pakistan’s Sindh province, hundreds of people lined up for hours outside a park to buy subsidized wheat flour, offered for 65 rupees a kilogram instead of the current, inflated rate of about 140 to 160 rupees.

When a few trucks arrived, the crowd surged forward, leaving several injured. One man, Harsingh Kolhi, who was there to bring a five kg bag of flour home for his wife and children, was crushed and killed in the chaos.

We are seeing similar things happen all over the planet.

Just because you still may have enough food to eat doesn’t mean that everybody else is okay.

In fact, things have already gotten so bad that even CNN is admitting that we are facing “the worst food crisis in modern history”…

Yet the world is still in the grips of the worst food crisis in modern history, as Russia’s war in Ukraine shakes global agricultural systems already grappling with the effects of extreme weather and the pandemic. Market conditions may have improved in recent months, but experts do not expect imminent relief.

That means more pain for vulnerable communities already struggling with hunger. It also boosts the risk of starvation and famine in countries such as Somalia, which is contending with what the United Nations describes as a “catastrophic” food emergency.

Sadly, it isn’t just in Somalia where the food crisis has reached “catastrophic” proportions.

According to Reuters, the entire continent is now dealing with the worst food crisis that Africa “has ever seen”…

Across Africa, from east to west, people are experiencing a food crisis that is bigger and more complex than the continent has ever seen, say diplomats and humanitarian workers.

Please go back and read that statement again.

Do you remember all those years when Sally Struthers was begging us to feed the starving children in Africa?

Well, the truth is that conditions are now far worse than when she was making those commercials.

At one hospital in Somalia, grieving mothers are regularly bringing in very young children that have literally starved to death…

“Sometimes mothers bring us dead children,” said Farhia Moahmud Jama, head nurse at the paediatric emergency unit. “And they don’t know they’re dead.”

Weakened by hunger, camp residents are vulnerable to disease and people are dying due to a lack of food, said Nadifa Hussein Mohamed, who managed the camp where Isak’s family initially stayed.

“Maybe the whole world is hungry and donors are bankrupt, I don’t know,” she said. “But we’re calling out for help, and we do not see relief.”

UN officials are doing what they can to help, but the truth is that they are being absolutely overwhelmed by the scope of this crisis.

Over the past 12 months, the number of Africans that are dealing with “acute food insecurity” has absolutely exploded…

The number of East Africans experiencing acute food insecurity – when a lack of food puts lives or livelihoods in immediate danger – has spiked by 60% in just the last year, and by nearly 40% in West Africa, according to the World Food Programme (WFP).

Sadly, a lot of Americans are simply not going to care about what is going on over there as long as we have enough food over here.

Of course food supplies continue to get tighter on our side of the planet as well.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, our corn harvest this year was the smallest in 15 years…

Last year was a bad year for corn — the latest US Department of Agriculture (USDA) report shows drought conditions and extreme weather wreaked havoc on croplands.

USDA unexpectedly slashed its outlook for domestic corn production amid a severe drought across the western farm belt. Farmers in Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas were forced to abandon drought-plagued fields.

The agency estimated farmers harvested 79.2 million acres, a decline of 1.6 million acres versus the previous estimate — the smallest acres harvest since 2008.

That wouldn’t be so bad if our population was still the same size that it was back in 2008.

Other harvests have been extremely disappointing too, and that is one of the factors that has been steadily driving up food prices.

At this point, the average U.S. household is spending 72 more dollars on food per month than it was at this same time a year ago…

As inflation continues to decimate the budgets of American families, the December report from Moody’s Analytics showed that families are spending an estimated $72 more on food per month than they were a year ago.

That figure is pulled out of a report that says the typical US household is shelling out $371 on goods and services more than they were a year ago.

In particular, the price of eggs has gone completely nuts.

I recently came across an article about one small business owner that is now paying three times as much for eggs as she once did…

It just seems like the cost of everything is going up these days and that includes egg prices, which are affecting local businesses. “We used to buy 15 dozen eggs from Sam’s for 23 dollars. They are now 68 dollars,” said Cindy Gutierrez, the owner of Creative Cakes. “Now it’s about 63-ish for 15 dozen and it’s also hard to get 15 dozen,” said Caitlyn Wallace, the owner of Catie Pies.

The prices for eggs have surged three times their original price. According to the consumer price index, egg prices increased by 10% in October 2022 and that increase has continued to rise. This is causing a domino effect for restaurants, businesses, and bakeries who use eggs.

Economic conditions are changing so rapidly now, and nothing will ever be quite the same again.

As we move forward, the widespread use of “beetleburgers” is one of the “solutions” that the global elite are starting to push…

Beetleburgers could soon be helping to feed the world, according to new research. The creepy crawlers’ larvae — better known as mealworms — could act as a meat alternative to alleviate hunger worldwide. The process uses a fraction of the land and water and emits a smaller carbon footprint in comparison of traditional farming.

To make this a reality, French biotech company Ynsect is planning a global network of insect farms, including nurseries and slaughterhouses. A pilot plant has already been been set up at Dole in the Bourgogne-Franche-Comte region of France.

Doesn’t that sound yummy?

Of course these “beetleburgers” will just be a drop in the bucket.

No matter what the global elite try, they will not be able to stop “the worst food crisis in modern history” from getting a whole lot worse.

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

Global food supplies are getting a little bit tighter with each passing day, and I have a feeling that 2023 will have lots of “unexpected surprises” for all of us.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

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