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Michael Snyder: The Overall Theme For 2023 Will Be “Here We Go!”

January 4, 2023 by Michael

A lot of people tend to use the phrase “here we go” when they think that something really good is about to happen, and others tend to use it when they think that something really bad is about to happen. Needless to say, in this case I am using the phrase “here we go” as my overall theme for 2023 because I believe that we are going to be facing a really rough year. I expect that so many of the trends that have been percolating throughout 2022 will greatly accelerate over the next 12 months. So if you were not pleased with 2022, it is likely that you are really not going to enjoy what is ahead of us in 2023.

I certainly don’t need to tell any of you that 2022 was a very tough year for the economy. It truly was a year when “everything started to fall apart”, and lots of prominent voices on Wall Street are now warning that things will get even worse in 2023.

But if the Federal Reserve were to suddenly reverse course and begin lowering interest rates, that would help the short-term economic outlook a great deal.

Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. In fact, Fed officials are openly telling us that they expect interest rates to remain elevated for “some time” to come…

Federal Reserve officials reaffirmed their commitment to combating inflation at their December meeting and indicated that interest rates could remain elevated for “some time” until there is clear evidence that consumer prices are falling.

Minutes from the U.S. central bank’s Dec. 13-14 meeting released on Wednesday showed that policymakers worried that investors and financial markets could misinterpret their decision to raise interest rates more slowly as a sign they were ending their campaign to bring prices under control. Officials stressed that the smaller rate hike – 50 basis points, compared to the previous fourth 75-basis point-increases – “was not an indication of any weakening” and warned of continued risks on the inflation front.

So there is no hope on the horizon, and higher rates will continue to crush economic activity for the foreseeable future.

And with each passing day, what is happening to the economy is becoming clearer and clearer. For example, we just learned that Salesforce will be laying off approximately 8,000 workers…

Salesforce plans to lay off about 10% of its workforce, or nearly 8,000 employees, and reduce its office space as tech companies cut costs amid concerns about the economy.

In a note to employees Wednesday, Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff said the move comes as customers take a more cautious approach to spending as the economic “environment remains challenging.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

There will be many more layoffs during the weeks and months to come.

Another trend that I will be watching very closely in 2023 is the deterioration of faith in our politicians and in our governmental institutions.

The drama that is playing out in Washington right now is a perfect example of what I am talking about. Kevin McCarthy is a prototypical “swamp creature”, and that is why the establishment loves him. As Speaker of the House, McCarthy would be in charge of keeping the wheels of corruption in motion. There is so much campaign money that needs to be funneled in the right direction, so many important favors that need to get done, and so many critical deals that need to be orchestrated.

The Washington establishment can’t afford to have someone with principles as Speaker of the House, and so they are going to keep pushing for McCarthy.

Of course McCarthy is deeply unpopular outside of Washington, but so was Nancy Pelosi.

Sadly, that doesn’t really matter, because we we are not supposed to have a say in these battles.

But the American people are getting fed up. They can see the endless corruption that is going on, and the popularity of both parties is sinking.

And the truth is that politicians from both parties have been lying to our faces over and over again.

For many of our politicians, lying is as natural as breathing is.

Unfortunately, we have gotten to a point where most of our politicians have lost all of their credibility, and a population that no longer has faith in the system is going to be exceedingly difficult to govern.

I also expect 2023 to be a year of great natural disasters.

Throughout 2022, there was just one historic disaster after another. It seemed like I was constantly writing about droughts, famines, wildfires, hurricanes, giant storms, earthquakes, volcanoes and tornadoes.

Unfortunately, I believe that the 12 months that are ahead of us will be even worse.

If you doubt this, just consider what has been happening over the past few weeks.

In late December, a colossal “bomb cyclone” brought a “once in a generation storm” to the Midwest. In fact, the blizzard that we witnessed in Buffalo was the worst storm in the entire recorded history of the city.

Just as we were recovering from that, a mammoth “atmospheric river” slammed into the west coast. Some parts of California received more than four feet of snow, and there was catastrophic flooding in other areas.

Now here we are just a few days later, and another “bomb cyclone” is about to hammer California. According to the National Weather Service, this is going to be a “truly brutal” storm…

Another powerful storm, known as a bomb cyclone, is hitting the California coast and the National Weather Service in the Bay Area is warning residents that the “truly brutal” system needs to be taken seriously.

The system could trigger “immediate disruption to commerce, and the worst of all, likely loss of human life,” forecasters say. It comes on the heels of a round of record-breaking rainfall that slammed the same area over the weekend.

I have never seen two immensely powerful storms hit California so close together.

There will be “widespread flooding”, and conditions in some parts of the state will be so dangerous that authorities are actually encouraging people to have “go bags” prepared in advance…

A dangerous storm system is slamming California, with meteorologists at the National Weather Service warning of imminent “widespread flooding, impassible roads, mudslides/landslides [and] rapid rises in rivers/creeks.” The system, which prompted the Weather Service to take the unusual step of urging residents to have “go bags” at the ready and prepare insurance documentation in advance, is set to unleash its harshest conditions Wednesday night into early Thursday.

Virtually the entirety of Northern and Central California is under flood watches and high-wind warnings, with damaging gusts to 60 mph possible. Strong to severe thunderstorms could be in the offing as well, in addition to 2 to 4 inches of rain in the lowlands and more in the mountains. In the highest terrain, the heavy rain will transition to up to 2 to 4 feet of heavy snow. Along the coast, beaches will be battered by large waves and areas of coastal flooding.

I also believe that 2023 will be a year when multiple pestilences run wild all over the planet.

These days, it seems like a different disease is making global headlines each week.

A few weeks ago everyone was talking about RSV, and then it was Strep A, and now this week a new “super variant” of COVID is deeply alarming authorities…

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and chief of the COVID Risk Task Force at the New England Complex Systems Institute, has called XBB1.5 a “super variant.”

XBB.1.5, which is mutated from the original Omicron strain, appears to be spreading faster than others because it is better at attaching itself to human cells.

“A mutation in the virus is located at the site where it binds to the human cells,” said Wine. “To effectively infect humans, the virus needs to bind to cells, and XBB.1.5 seems to do this very tightly.”

Next week it might be something else.

At this point, there are billions of people that have compromised immune systems, and that means that the global population has been perfectly primed for whatever plagues we see in 2023.

I certainly can’t end this article without talking about war.

I expect that both sides will continue to escalate the conflict in Ukraine in 2023, and it appears that the Russians may be preparing a massive new offensive campaign from the north.

Meanwhile, tensions in the Middle East continue to rise, and I believe that a war between Israel and Iran has become inevitable.

On the other side of the planet, the Chinese could soon pull the trigger on an invasion of Taiwan, and if that happens we could also see North Korea invade South Korea while the U.S. is distracted with China.

I have been warning that these wars were coming for a long time, and once they erupt our world will never be the same again.

In fact, our world is already radically different from what it was like just a few short years ago.

So much changed throughout 2020, 2021 and 2022.

But the pace of change is only going to accelerate even more as we get deeper into 2023.

So buckle up and hold on tight, because here we go…

***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.

Let’s Hope That The Irrational Optimists Will Be 100 Percent Correct About 2023

January 3, 2023January 3, 2023 by Michael

I hope that I am wrong about our immediate economic future, and I hope that all of the other respected voices that are warning of economic doom in 2023 are wrong too. It would be wonderful if things turn in a positive direction at some point during the next 12 months and 2023 turns out to be a year of peace and prosperity for the entire world. Of course virtually nobody is expecting the year to start well. As I discussed yesterday, there is a growing consensus among the “experts” that the months ahead will be quite rough. But even though it has become exceedingly obvious that short-term economic conditions will not be good, some optimists are still trying to put a positive spin on things. For example, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi is trying to convince us that we will only have to endure a “slowcession” before things finally turn around…

Many CEOs, investors and consumers are worried about a recession in 2023. But Moody’s Analytics says the more likely scenario is a “slowcession,” where growth grinds to a near halt but a full economic downturn is narrowly avoided.

“Under almost any scenario, the economy is set to have a difficult 2023,” Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi wrote in a report on Tuesday. “But inflation is quickly moderating, and the economy’s fundamentals are sound. With a bit of luck and some reasonably deft policymaking by the Fed, the economy should avoid an outright downturn.”

Let’s hope that he is right on target.

And if he does turn out to be correct, let’s hold a big celebration next December celebrating what a wonderful year 2023 was.

I would be up for that.

But I don’t think that is the way that things will play out.

Even now, all of the “mega-bubbles” are starting to burst all around us and the chaos that we have witnessed in the financial markets is unlike anything that we have seen since 2008.

The “bubble economy” that we had been enjoying for such a long time was dependent on a very rapidly growing money supply, but thanks to the Fed the money fountains have now been turned off.

In fact, the growth of M2 has just turned negative “for the first time in 28 years”…

Money supply growth fell again in November, and this time it turned negative for the first time in 28 years. November’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years. During the thirteen months between April 2020 and April 2021, money supply growth in the United States often climbed above 35 percent year over year, well above even the “high” levels experienced from 2009 to 2013.

Since then, the money supply growth has slowed quickly, and we’re now seeing the first time the money supply has actually contracted since the 1990s. The last time the year-over-year change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November of 1994.

At some point, economic conditions will force the Fed to reverse course.

But for now Fed officials remain deeply afraid of inflation, and so we will remain on the current path.

What this means is that the early portions of 2023 are likely to look a lot like late 2008 and early 2009. We have already started to see a very alarming wave of layoffs, and this has particularly been true in the tech industry…

Tech-driven companies are embarking on a layoff spree the likes of which not seen since the pandemic, a new report has revealed – laying off more than 150,000 workers within the course of a year.

The concerning numbers were laid bare in a recently released analysis from Layoffs.fyi, which tracks firings in real time through information gleaned in media and company releases.

Through these means, the firm found that the technology sector – which had been largely spared in 2020 amid the mass wave of firings when Covid-19 first surfaced – are now among those with the largest numbers of job cuts, with rates increasingly rapidly over the past few months.

Sadly, it is likely that there will be even more tech layoffs in the months ahead.

In fact, one expert is ominously warning that we will see “a continued cutting of heads in Big Tech because they’re getting ready for the Category 5 storm” that is rapidly approaching…

Wedbush Securities managing director Dan Ives shared a similar sentiment about the 2023 economy on “Mornings with Maria” Tuesday, cautioning that Big Tech companies still need to “rip the Band-Aid off” in terms of layoffs as a “Category 5 storm” threatens the macroeconomic landscape.

“Look, a lot of Big Tech, they were spending money like 1980s rockstars. And I think that really shows,” Ives explained. “Sometimes they were increasing 15, 20% per year. I still think it’s a ‘rip the Band-Aid off,’ still some more headcount cuts. We think potentially another 8 to 10% headcount cuts in Big Tech. You look at what happened with Meta, and that’s a good example. Once Zuckerberg finally read the room, cut in terms of what he needed to, stock ultimately lifted. I think, be that as a catalyst, I think you will see a continued cutting of heads in Big Tech because they’re getting ready for the Category 5 storm in terms of what we’re seeing with the macro.”

I don’t like the sound of that.

Could we really see a “Category 5” economic storm in 2023?

Yes, we could.

But once again, let’s hope that the irrational optimists will be correct and that such a storm can be avoided somehow.

Ultimately, many of the irrational optimists are entirely convinced that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with our system and that just a few minor adjustments are all that is needed to get us back on the road to endless prosperity.

On the other hand, there are people like me that are entirely convinced that our system is fundamentally unsound and that it is inevitable that the entire Ponzi scheme will eventually come crashing down all around us.

Normally, most Americans tend to be quite optimistic about the coming year, but this year is different.

According to a Gallup survey that was just released, approximately 80 percent of U.S. adults believe that “2023 will be a year of economic difficulty”…

When offered opposing outcomes on each issue, about eight in 10 U.S. adults think 2023 will be a year of economic difficulty with higher rather than lower taxes and a growing rather than shrinking budget deficit. More than six in 10 think prices will rise at a high rate and the stock market will fall in the year ahead, both of which happened in 2022. In addition, just over half of Americans predict that unemployment will increase in 2023, an economic problem the U.S. was spared in 2022.

But maybe 2023 won’t be so bad after all.

Maybe our leaders will be able to find a way to reinflate all of the old bubbles one more time.

We better hope that they have one final miracle up their sleeves, because the alternative will not be pleasant at all.

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

11 Ominous Predictions For 2023

January 2, 2023January 2, 2023 by Michael

There is a growing consensus that 2023 is going to be a miserable year for the U.S. economy and for the global economy as a whole. In fact, in all the years that I have been writing I have never seen so many big names on Wall Street be so incredibly pessimistic about the coming year. Of course much of that pessimism is due to the fact that 2022 went so poorly. The cryptocurrency industry imploded, trillions of dollars in stock market wealth evaporated, inflation became a major problem all over the industrialized world, and a new housing crash suddenly erupted. Considering all of the pain that we have experienced over the past 12 months, it is only natural for the experts to have a negative view of 2023. The following are 11 ominous warnings that they have issued for the year ahead…

#1 The IMF: “We expect one-third of the world economy to be in recession. Even countries that are not in recession, it would feel like recession for hundreds of millions of people”

#2 Bloomberg: “Economists say there is a 7-in-10 likelihood that the US economy will sink into a recession next year, slashing demand forecasts and trimming inflation projections in the wake of massive interest-rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.”

#3 The World Bank: “As central banks across the world simultaneously hike interest rates in response to inflation, the world may be edging toward a global recession in 2023 and a string of financial crises in emerging market and developing economies that would do them lasting harm, according to a comprehensive new study by the World Bank.”

#4 Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan: “We’re going to have a shallow recession”

#5 Mohamed El-Erian: “Many ‘high-conviction’ U.S. recession calls are immediately coupled with the assertion that it’ll be ‘short and shallow.’ Reminds me of the behavioral trap ‘transitory inflation’ proponents fell into last year”

#6 Nouriel Roubini: “No, this is not going to be a short and shallow recession, it’s going to be deep and protracted”

#7 Larry Summers: “My sense is that it’s much harder than many people think to achieve a soft landing”

#8 Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon: “Economic growth is slowing,” Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon said at the same conference. “When I talk to our clients, they sound extremely cautious.”

#9 Charles Schwab & Co.’s Liz Ann Sonders: “We have to take our medicine still, meaning a weaker economy and a weaker labor market. The question is, is it better to take our medicine sooner or later?”

#10 BlackRock: “Central bankers won’t ride to the rescue when growth slows in this new regime, contrary to what investors have come to expect. They are deliberately causing recessions by overtightening policy to try to rein in inflation”

#11 Michael Burry: “Inflation peaked. But it is not the last peak of this cycle. We are likely to see CPI lower, possibly negative in 2H 2023, and the US in recession by any definition. Fed will cut and government will stimulate. And we will have another inflation spike. It’s not hard.”

As you can see, there is a general consensus that things will be bad in 2023, but there is disagreement about just how deep the coming economic downturn will turn out to be.

If the worst of these forecasts turn out to be accurate, that will actually be incredibly good news.

Because the reality of what we will be facing in 2023 is likely to be significantly worse than any of these experts are currently projecting.

With each passing day, we continue to get even more numbers that indicate that big trouble is ahead.

For example, we just learned that luxury home sales absolutely cratered during the months of September, October and November…

Sales of luxury homes fell 38.1% year over year during the three months ending November 30, 2022, the biggest decline on record, according to a new report from Redfin, a technology-powered real estate brokerage. That outpaced the record 31.4% decline in sales of non-luxury homes. Redfin’s data goes back to 2012.

The luxury market and the overall housing market lost momentum in 2022 due to many of the same factors: inflation, relatively high interest rates, a sagging stock market and recession fears.

We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008.

And we all remember what the housing crash of 2008 ultimately did to the financial markets.

Normally, the beginning of a calendar year is a time for optimism. As we look forward to a completely clean slate, it can be easy to forget the difficulties of the previous 12 months.

But this year things seem completely different.

On some level, just about everyone can feel that very challenging times are ahead of us.

Decades of very foolish decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way.

Our leaders tried very hard to keep the party going for as long as possible, and to a certain extent they were quite successful in doing so.

Our politicians in Washington kept borrowing and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have, and that definitely delayed our day of reckoning.

And the Federal Reserve kept the financial markets artificially propped up for years by endlessly pumping giant mountains of fresh cash into the system.

But such foolish measures only made our long-term problems even worse, and now our leaders are losing control.

All of the “mega-bubbles” are starting to burst, and the system is beginning to fall apart all around us.

It is time to turn out the lights, because the party is over.

We all had a lot of fun while it lasted, but now the bill is due and an extraordinary amount of pain is ahead.

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

The Year When Everything Started To Fall Apart

January 2, 2023January 1, 2023 by Michael

It amazes me that so many people still cannot understand what is happening. 2022 was supposedly going to be a year when America entered a new golden age of prosperity, but that didn’t happen. Instead, it was a complete and utter disaster. Stock prices fell by the most that we have seen since 2008, the cryptocurrency industry came apart at the seams, inflation soared to absurd heights, and home sales just kept declining all throughout the year. Without a doubt, 2022 represented a major turning point. Americans have already collectively lost trillions of dollars, and many experts are telling us that 2023 will be even worse.

We warned over and over again that the party on Wall Street would eventually come to a very bitter end, but most people didn’t want to listen.

Well, the party has now ended, and the stock market losses that we have witnessed over the past 12 months have been absolutely staggering…

As of closing time on Friday evening, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by nearly 3,500 points since the start of the year, a 9.4 percent drop.

The S&P 500 was also down by 957 points this year, with the tech-heavy index falling by almost 20 percent, capping off a brutal year for the tech industry.

Meanwhile, the Nasdaq sunk by more than 5,600 points, a nearly 34 percent decline in 2022.

More than a third of the entire value of the Nasdaq is already gone.

Just think about that.

Of course some stocks were hit much harder than others.

Tesla is down about 70 percent from the peak, and Elon Musk “has become the first person ever to lose $200 billion from his net worth”…

Tesla CEO and Chief Twit Elon Musk has become the first person ever to lose $200 billion from his net worth, according to a Bloomberg report.

Musk, 51, previously became the second person ever to amass a fortune of more than $200 billion in January 2021, after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. Musk has now seen his wealth drop to $137 billion following a recent drop in Tesla shares.

Musk saw his fortune peak in November 2021, hitting $340 billion, and held the title of the world’s richest person up until last month. Musk was ultimately toppled off the throne by Bernard Arnault, the CEO of French luxury giant LVMH.

You have to give him credit for holding up so well under the circumstances.

200 billion dollars is an amount of money that is so large that it is almost unimaginable.

Facebook also got monkey-hammered over the course of 2022. At this point, Facebook stock has fallen over 64 percent from where it was last January…

On the last day of trading this year, Meta’s stock was down more than 64 percent compared to January, with prices sinking from over $338-per-share to now $120-per-share.

The company has lost more than $600 billion in valuation as it spend billions to make its controversial leap to virtual reality with its Metaverse, with the efforts continuing to come up short.

Perhaps Facebook shouldn’t have put so much effort into banning and censoring millions of their best users.

What an incredibly stupid thing to do.

When I go on Facebook these days, it just feels so incredibly dead.

There are still a few diehard users hanging around, but overall it is just a pathetic hollow shell of a social media platform at this point.

Speaking of implosions, 2022 was an absolute disaster for the cryptocurrency industry. The following summary of what we witnessed over the past 12 months comes from Zero Hedge…

Among all the chaos and downfall of many crypto exchanges and leading venture capital firms, the biggest losers are crypto investors. If the burn of the bear market was not enough, millions of crypto investors who had their funds on FTX lost their life savings overnight.

Terra was once a $40 billion ecosystem. Its native token, LUNA — now known as Terra Classic (LUNC) — was one of the top five biggest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. With millions of customers invested in the ecosystem, the collapse brought their investment to zero within hours. After the Terra collapse, crypto investors lost their funds on a series of centralized exchanges and staking platforms like Celsius, BlockFi and Hodlnaut. Crypto investors also lost significantly in the nonfungible token market, with the price of many popular collections down by 70%. Overall, crypto investors are among the biggest losers of the year.

The total value of all cryptocurrencies exceeded 3 trillion dollars at the peak of the market.

Now the total value of all cryptocurrencies has fallen to less than 1 trillion dollars.

Hopefully you got out before the crash happened.

2022 was also a year when we experienced really painful inflation.

Food prices, energy prices and vehicle prices all went completely nuts, and many compared what we were going through to the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s.

But this shouldn’t have been a surprise to any of us. Starting in 2020, our leaders absolutely flooded the system with new cash and the size of the money supply absolutely exploded.

Increasing the size of the money supply so dramatically was inevitably going to cause prices to go haywire, and anyone that thought otherwise was just not being rational.

In a desperate attempt to fight the inflation monster that they helped to create, officials at the Federal Reserve aggressively raised interest rates throughout much of 2022.

As a result, we now find ourselves in the midst of another horrifying housing crash. Home values are now steadily receding all over the nation, and home sales have been falling month after month.

Home sales have already fallen by more than a third.

How much lower can they possibly go?

I don’t know, but we are being warned to brace ourselves for more hard times ahead.

In fact, even the IMF is publicly admitting that “the worst is yet to come”…

“The worst is yet to come, and for many people 2023 will feel like a recession,” the IMF said in October, noting the slowdown “will be broad-based” and may “reopen economic wounds that were only partially healed post-pandemic.”

If only they knew.

We aren’t just heading into a temporary economic downturn. Ultimately, the entire system is starting to fall apart all around us, and the years ahead are going to be incredibly challenging.

Our leaders have been making mistake after mistake for decades, and now we get to pay the price.

So buckle up and hold on tight, because 2023 is not going to be pleasant at all.

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

The “Mega-Bubbles” Have Started To Burst, And That Could Mean Unprecedented Financial Chaos Is Ahead

December 29, 2022December 28, 2022 by Michael

The Federal Reserve giveth, and the Federal Reserve taketh away. In a desperate attempt to help the U.S. economy recover from the horrific economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor and kept them at or near the floor until 2022. During that same time period, the Fed also created trillions of dollars out of thin air and pumped it into the financial system. All of this new money had to go somewhere, and it created colossal financial bubbles that were unlike anything we had ever seen before. There were a few voices that were warning that all of this foolishness would end very badly, but those voices were mostly drowned out by those that were super happy that asset values were absolutely exploding. The Fed had essentially created the ultimate “get rich quick scheme”, and countless Americans were more than happy to take advantage of it.

But in 2022 inflation started to become exceedingly painful, and the Federal Reserve went into panic mode. The flow of free money stopped, and the Federal Reserve began to aggressively hike interest rates.

Everyone knew that this sudden change of course by the Fed would crash the housing market, and that is precisely what is happening. In fact, even the Wall Street Journal is now admitting that we are facing “a housing slump as severe, by some metrics, as that of 2007-09”…

The Federal Reserve’s interest rate increases have brought on a housing slump as severe, by some metrics, as that of 2007-09, inflicting pain on prospective buyers, homeowners, builders and other industries linked to real estate.

For the Fed, this is a feature, not a bug: Slumping housing could help deliver the lower economic activity and inflation that the Fed wants in the coming year.

Home sales have been falling month after month, and it is being projected that they could soon fall below the levels that we witnessed during the last housing crash…

Sales of existing homes fell in November for a record 10th straight month. Economists at Fannie Mae and Goldman Sachs forecast they will drop below 4 million in 2023, lower than during the 2006-11 housing bust.

On Wednesday, we got some more bad news.

Pending home sales are one of the best leading indicators for where the housing market is going next, and at this point pending home sales have dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

Contracts to buy U.S. previously owned homes fell far more than expected in November, diving for a sixth straight month in the latest indication of the hefty toll the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes are taking on the housing market as the central bank seeks to curb inflation.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Wednesday its Pending Home Sales Index, based on signed contracts, fell 4% to 73.9 last month from October’s downwardly revised 77.0. November’s was the lowest reading — aside from the short-lived drop in the early months of the pandemic — since NAR launched the index in 2001.

With interest rates so high, very few people want to buy homes right now.

So home prices are going to have to come down.

A lot.

In fact, George Gammon has demonstrated that we will need a crash in housing prices even larger than we witnessed during the last housing crash just to get back to the long-term trend line.

Do you think that our system will be able to handle a housing crash of that magnitude?

Of course not.

Meanwhile, the absurd cryptocurrency bubble that was created by the Fed’s easy money policies has already imploded.

I really like how Wolf Richter described what we have been witnessing over the past year in one of his most recent articles…

And then come the copycats since anyone can issue a crypto currency. Suddenly there were a dozen of them, and then there were 100 of them then a 1,000, and suddenly 10,000 cryptos, and now there are over 22,000 cryptos, and everyone and their dog is creating them, and trading them, and lending them, and using them as collateral, and all kinds of businesses sprang up around this scheme, crypto miners, crypto exchanges, crypto lending platforms, and some of them went public via IPO or via merger with a SPAC.

And the market capitalization of these cryptos reached $3 trillion, trillion with a T, about a year ago, and then when the Fed started raising its interest rates and started doing QT, the whole thing just blows up. Companies go like POOF, and the money is gone, and whatever is left is stuck in bankruptcy courts globally possibly for years. Cryptos themselves have imploded. Many have gone to essentially zero and have been abandoned for dead. The granddaddy, bitcoin, has plunged by something like 73% from the peak. The whole crypto market is also down about 73%.

More than two trillion dollars of “crypto wealth” has already been wiped out.

Less than a trillion is left.

But the party was fun while it lasted, right?

Sadly, all of the bubbles are starting to burst, and 2023 is going to be a really painful year.

Normally, major economic downturns take just about everyone by surprise. But this time around, almost everyone can feel that really bad times are coming. The following is what Mark Zandi of Moody’s Analytics recently had to say about this…

“Usually recessions sneak up on us. CEOs never talk about recessions,” said Zandi. “Now it seems CEOs are falling over themselves to say we’re falling into a recession. … Every person on TV says recession. Every economist says recession. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He is right.

We’ve never seen anything like this before, and that is because the coming crisis is going to be really bad.

Many among the elite can sense that what is approaching will be truly nightmarish, and so they have been feverishly preparing for the worst…

Though a recent poll found that four-in-ten Americans believe we are ‘living in the end of times,’ it’s not just the everyman who is fearing the apocalypse these days – billionaires have been prepping themselves for the apocalypse with elaborate doomsday bunkers for years.

As the world still reels from the scars of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change-driven storms lash American coastlines and flood inland cities, and Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to talk of using nuclear weapons to devastate Ukraine, a Pew Research Center survey of more than US 10,000 adults found that 39 percent called these the ‘end times.’

The world’s wealthiest are among those cautious of a coming calamity, including billionaire PayPal founder Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Sam Altman, who have famously laid down routes in remote New Zealand with the express purpose of riding out the end of days.

Yes, things will soon get really crazy as global events spiral completely out of control.

But that doesn’t mean that you should curl up into a fetal position and throw a pity party for yourself.

When I was growing up, I was told that when the going gets tough, the tough get going.

So get prepared for some really rough years ahead.

The clock is ticking, and just about everything that can be shaken will be shaken in 2023 and beyond.

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

Why Do So Many Bad Things Keep Happening To Us?

December 29, 2022December 26, 2022 by Michael

I suppose that this is a fitting way to end the year. 2022 has been a year of war, plagues, natural disasters, shortages and severe economic troubles, but up until this month we had not been able to add “an apocalyptic winter storm” to the list yet. Unfortunately, what we have just been through over the last week definitely qualifies. A “monster storm” that covered almost the entire country at one point brought blizzard conditions to much of the U.S. over the past several days. Temperatures dipped down to minus 50 degrees in some areas, and extremely high winds and heavy snow combined to create truly nightmarish conditions in certain cities. For example, we are being told that this was the “most devastating storm in Buffalo’s long storied history”…

“We had to send specialized rescue crews to go get the rescuers,” Poloncarz told “CNN This Morning” Monday, adding it was the worst storm he could remember. “It was just horrendous, and it was horrendous for 24 hours in a row.”

“We’re used to snow here, we can handle snow,” he said. “But with the wind, the blinding views – it was complete whiteouts – and the extreme cold, it was some of the worst conditions that any of us have ever seen.”

The storm has drawn widespread comparisons to Buffalo’s famous blizzard of 1977. Poloncarz said in Monday’s news conference the current storm’s “ferocity … was worse than the blizzard of ’77.” And in a news conference Sunday, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called this storm the “most devastating storm in Buffalo’s long storied history.”

Buffalo has had a lot of really bad storms over the years.

But this one takes the cake.

According to a local news report, Buffalo has already received about 4 feet of snow, and snow is going to continue to fall until the middle of the day on Tuesday…

The blizzard began Friday, dumping nearly 4 feet of snow in the Buffalo area and making many roads impassable.

The snow is still falling. Some parts of the county could see another 8 to 12 inches by 1 p.m. Tuesday.

I have never seen anything quite like this.

Of course I have been using that phrase a lot lately.

So far, at least 27 people have been killed by the storm in Erie County, and the overall national death toll from the storm is up to 55.

But both of those numbers will inevitably go much higher because right now there are countless drivers stranded in their vehicles on highways all over the United States.

What part of “don’t drive during this storm” did people not understand?

Many others are without power and are slowly freezing as they find themselves trapped inside their own homes by colossal mountains of snow.

Those that are in need of rescue could use our prayers right about now.

Sadly, it seems like whenever there is some sort of a major natural disaster in this country there are hordes of looters ready to take advantage of it.

On Monday, the rampant looting that we just witnessed in Buffalo made headlines all over the globe…

Videos posted online show brazen thieves taking advantage of the chaos, trudging over mounds of snow to get into abandoned storefronts — like a Dollar General where shelves were overturned and items were scattered across the ground.

Residents filmed some of the thieves as they entered the store and left with handfuls of items like paper towels and toilet paper, as one shameless woman even posted a Facebook Live of her and her friends grabbing items from the store.

Others were filmed hauling televisions out of stores, and security footage caught one man breaking the glass of a liquor store door, where he allegedly stole $500 worth of goods.

Zero Hedge has posted lots of videos of the vicious looting, and those videos are prime examples of just how far we have fallen as a society.

As I have said so many times before, the thin veneer of civilization that we all depend upon on a daily basis is rapidly disappearing.

If a truly horrific long-term disaster were to erupt that causes law and order to break down on a widespread basis, we will devolve into a “Mad Max society” very quickly.

Speaking of crime, someone just attacked four more electrical substations in Washington state…

Thousands of homes were left in the dark after four electrical substations in western Washington were vandalized on Christmas Day, local authorities said on Sunday, adding that it was unknown if the incidents were connected.

The attacks on Sunday cut power to more than 14,000 utility customers in south Pierce County, near Tacoma, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office said.

The burglaries were reported at two substations belonging to Tacoma Public Utilities and two belonging to Puget Sound Energy.

In a previous article, I discussed the fact that the number of these attacks has reached an all-time record high this year, and they are happening all over the nation.

Utility companies are going to have to start hiring 24 hour security to guard their equipment, because this is a problem that isn’t going to go away.

And that will mean even higher utility bills for all of us.

I truly wish that our society was not coming apart at the seams all around us.

But this is where we are at, and denying reality is not going to make things any better.

So why is our society in such bad shape?

And why do so many bad things keep happening to us?

The end of the year is often a time of self-reflection for individuals, and it should also be a time of self-reflection for our nation as a whole.

Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, the pain that we will experience in the years ahead will be far more severe than what we have been through already.

Good decisions lead to good consequences.

And bad decisions lead to bad consequences.

Wake up America, because time is quickly slipping away.

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

Horrifying Pestilences Are Starting To Run Wild All Over The Globe

December 22, 2022 by Michael

How many millions have to die before people start to realize what is happening? For years, I have been persistently warning that we would soon enter an era of great pestilences, and now it is here. Sadly, what we have witnessed over the past few years is just the tip of the iceberg. At this point we have been perfectly primed for future pandemics because vast numbers of people all over the planet are now running around with compromised immune systems. That means that diseases will now be able to spread even more easily, and this is a trend that we have already started to see all throughout 2022.

Strep A is the latest illness to run wild in the western world. The number of children being admitted to the hospital with Strep A is way above normal in the U.S., and this appears to particularly be true in the western half of the country…

A deadly wave of Strep A infections in children looks set to take off in the US — weeks after the UK was hit by a spate of deaths.

At least two children have died in Colorado after suffering the normally-mild illness, and pediatric hospitals in five states — Arizona, Colorado, Texas, Washington and West Virginia — are reporting much higher levels of admissions than usual.

At the country’s largest pediatric hospital in Texas, doctors are already handling four times more Strep A patients than last year.

But this has not been a typical Strep A outbreak.

In fact, hospitals are reporting that children are coming in with very strange symptoms that are not usually associated with Strep A at all…

One of the largest children’s hospitals in Missouri is seeing an influx of children with bizarre Strep A symptoms – as the outbreak continues to spread in the US.

Children’s Mercy Kansas City Hospital has had seven children in recent weeks come in with symptoms like a ‘stuck’ eye, lumps behind the ear and trouble swallowing – which led to drooling.

Doctors were initially perplexed by the cases – but further testing found each child was suffering from Strep A. The normally-mild bacterial infection is causing a spate of hospitalizations across the US, UK and Europe.

So what is going on?

Is this a new form of Strep A that is more severe than we have ever seen before?

Right now there is so much that we do not know.

But what we do know is that Strep A is also spreading like wildfire in the UK and elsewhere.

This is an outbreak that we will want to keep a very close eye on, because it could end up killing a lot of kids.

Meanwhile, a “mystery disease” that causes “bleeding from the mouth and nose” has erupted in Afghanistan…

An unknown pathogen has infected more than 80 people and killed two children in the Afghan province of Zabul, Taliban authorities said. The disease causes intense fever and bleeding from the mouth and nose.

Taliban public health chief Abdul Hakim Hakimi said that clinics in the Shahjoy district of the province have seen a sharp increase in the numbers of people suffering from the “suspicious” disease in recent weeks, Afghanistan’s Hasht-e Subh Daily reported on Tuesday.

Hopefully this illness will be able to be contained in Afghanistan, because it sounds like it is really bad.

In China, health officials are dealing with a “thermonuclear” outbreak of COVID. According to one projection, there will soon be 800 million Chinese cases…

CHINA is facing a “thermonuclear” Covid outbreak says one expert, as hospitals and crematoriums start to overflow.

According to one estimate, Covid could spread rapidly until there are 800 million cases in 90 days after the Zero Covid policy of harsh lockdowns was ditched.

Video has emerged showing patients rammed into a hospital sleeping on floors and bodies stored in corridors, in a chilling echo of the when Covid first hit China.

If this is just one of the usual strains of COVID that is currently circulating around the globe, the number of cases should not get anywhere close to 800 million.

So precisely what is going on in China right now?

We are being warned that this new outbreak “could kill up to one million people”, and it is being reported that even now crematoriums are literally running out of space for all the dead bodies that are coming in…

Crematoriums across China said Tuesday they were straining to deal with an influx of bodies, as the country battles a wave of Covid cases that authorities have admitted is impossible to track.

Hospitals are struggling and pharmacy shelves have been stripped bare in the wake of the Chinese government’s sudden decision last month to lift nearly three years of lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing.

In Chongqing – a city of 30 million where authorities this week urged people with ‘mild’ Covid symptoms to go to work – one crematorium told AFP they had run out of space to keep bodies.

I am going to be watching developments in China very carefully, because I am not entirely convinced that we are getting the whole story.

On top of everything else, we are being told that the bird flu has become a “worldwide problem” as it continues to spread rapidly across the globe.

Here in the United States, the total death toll has now reached 58 million…

The highly contagious bird flu spread like wildfire across the US poultry stock this year, killing about 58 million birds – the deadliest outbreak in American history, according to US Agriculture Department data.

The bird flu is the main reason why turkey, chicken and eggs have become so absurdly expensive.

If you can believe it, the wholesale price of Midwest large eggs actually hit an all-time record high of $5.36 a dozen this month.

It wasn’t too long ago when I could buy a dozen eggs for 99 cents at the local grocery store.

Things are changing so rapidly now, and none of our lives are ever going to be the same again.

Earlier today, I was saddened to learn that life expectancy in the United States fell once again last year…

The death rate for the U.S. population increased by 5%, cutting life expectancy at birth to 76.4 years in 2021 from 77 years in 2020. The CDC in August released preliminary estimates demonstrating a similar decline. Before the pandemic, in 2019, life expectancy at birth in the U.S. was 78.8 years. The decline in 2020 was the largest since World War II.

Unfortunately, life expectancy is going to go a lot lower than that as the death rate continues to rise.

Countless numbers of people will die as various plagues and pestilences sweep across our planet in the years ahead.

But most people still don’t understand that conditions have fundamentally changed, and so they continue to expect that life will eventually “return to normal”…

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

15 Facts Which Prove That A Massive Economic Meltdown Is Already Happening Right Now

December 21, 2022December 21, 2022 by Michael

Economic conditions just keep getting worse. As we prepare to enter 2023, we find ourselves in a high inflation environment at the same time that economic activity is really slowing down. And just like we witnessed in 2008, employers are conducting mass layoffs as a horrifying housing crash sweeps across the nation. Those that have been waiting for the U.S. economy to implode can stop waiting, because an economic implosion has officially arrived. The following are 15 facts that prove that a massive economic meltdown is already happening right now…

#1 Existing home sales have now fallen for 10 consecutive months.

#2 Existing home sales are down 35.4 percent over the last 12 months. That is the largest year over year decline in existing home sales since the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

#3 Homebuilder sentiment has now dropped for 12 consecutive months.

#4 Home construction costs have risen more than 30 percent since the beginning of 2022.

#5 The number of single-family housing unit permits has fallen for nine months in a row.

#6 The Empire State Manufacturing Index has plunged “to a reading of negative 11.2 in December”. That figure was way, way below expectations.

#7 In November, we witnessed the largest decline in retail sales that we have seen all year long.

#8 Even the biggest names on Wall Street are starting to let workers go. In fact, it is being reported that Goldman Sachs will soon lay off approximately 4,000 employees.

#9 The Federal Reserve is admitting that the number of actual jobs in the United States has been overstated by over a million.

#10 U.S. job cuts were 417 percent higher in November than they were during the same month a year ago.

#11 A recent Wall Street Journal survey found that approximately two-thirds of all Americans expect the economy to get even worse next year.

#12 A newly released Bloomberg survey has discovered that 70 percent of U.S. economists believe that a recession is coming in 2023.

#13 Inflation continues to spiral wildly out of control. At this point, a head of lettuce now costs 11 dollars at one grocery store in California.

#14 Overall, vegetable prices in the United States are more than 80 percent higher than they were at this same time last year.

#15 Thanks to the rapidly rising cost of living, 63 percent of the U.S. population is now living paycheck to paycheck.

In a desperate attempt to get inflation under control, the Federal Reserve has been dramatically increasing interest rates.

Those interest rate hikes are what has caused the housing market to crash, but Fed officials insist that such short-term pain is necessary in order to tame inflation.

But meanwhile our politicians in Washington are busy creating more inflation by borrowing and spending money at a rate that is absolutely unprecedented in our entire history.

This week, an abominable 1.7 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill is being rammed through Congress, but not a single member of Congress has read it.

The bill is 4,155 pages long, and U.S. Senator Rand Paul just held a press briefing during which he wheeled it out on a trolley…

After the grossly bloated $1.7 trillion Omnibus spending bill advanced in the Senate by a vote of 70-25, GOP Senator Rand Paul held a press briefing during which he wheeled in the “abomination” on a trolley and demanded to know how anyone would be able to read it before the end of the week.

Paul, along with the only other dissenting Senate Republicans Mike Braun, Ron Johnson, Mike Lee, and Rick Scott highlighted how ludicrous the fast tracking of the bill has been.

Unfortunately, this absurd spending bill has broad support on both sides of the aisle, and that just shows how broken Washington has become.

Our system of government has failed time after time, and our politicians continue to spend money on some of the most ridiculous things imaginable.

The following examples that were pulled out of the 1.7 trillion dollar omnibus spending bill were discovered by the Heritage Foundation…

-$1.2 million for “LGBTQIA+ Pride Centers”
-$1.2 million for “services for DACA recipients” (aka helping illegal aliens with taxpayer funds) at San Diego Community College.
-$477k for the Equity Institute in RI to indoctrinate teachers with “antiracism virtual labs.”
-$1 million for Zora’s House in Ohio, a “coworking and community space” for “women and gender-expansive people of color.”
-$3 million for the American LGBTQ+ Museum in New York City.
-$3.6 million for a Michelle Obama Trail in Georgia.
-$750k for the for “LGBT and Gender Non-Conforming housing” in Albany, New York.
-$856k for the “LGBT Center” in New York.

And have you noticed that our politicians often prefer to push these types of bills through just before major holidays when hardly anyone is paying attention?

No matter who we send to Washington, the story remains the same.

As long as our politicians are borrowing and spending trillions of dollars that we do not have, Fed officials won’t be able to win their war against inflation.

The Fed can send interest rates into the stratosphere, but inflation will continue to remain high because our politicians insist on showering the nation with giant mountains of cash.

We should all be deeply, deeply offended by what is happening, but most Americans simply do not know enough to care.

But once economic conditions get even worse than they were in 2008 and 2009, the majority of the U.S. population will become extremely angry.

Of course things could have turned out much differently if we had made better decisions during the years leading up to this crisis.

Unfortunately, we have run out of time to change course, and that means that a tremendous amount of pain is ahead 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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