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The Era Of Cheap Food And Cheap Gasoline Is Over

October 11, 2022 by Michael

All of our lifestyles are about to change in a major way, but the vast majority of the population still does not understand what is coming. Throughout our entire lives, we have always been able to depend on a couple of things. There would always be cheap gasoline to fuel our vehicles and there would always be mountains of cheap food at the grocery store. No matter who was in the White House and no matter what else was going on in the world, those two things always remained the same. Unfortunately, those days are now over and they aren’t coming back.

We have entered the greatest energy crisis that any of us have ever experienced, and it isn’t going to go away any time soon.

So you might as well get used to high gas prices. Earlier this month, brand new all-time record highs were set all over southern California…

Los Angeles-Long Beach – $6.46 (Record high)
Orange County – $6.42 (Record high Saturday)
Ventura County – $6.40
Riverside County – $6.33 (Record high)
San Bernardino County $6.32

But that isn’t the real problem.

The real problem is with natural gas.

Thanks to the war in Ukraine, supplies of natural gas in Europe have become extremely tight, and this has pushed prices into the stratosphere.

Needless to say, this is going to greatly affect food productions in the months ahead. According to Bloomberg, over two-thirds of all fertilizer production capacity in Europe has already been shut down due to soaring natural gas costs…

Europe’s fertilizer crunch is deepening with more than two-thirds of production capacity halted by soaring gas costs, threatening farmers and consumers far beyond the region’s borders.

This is an absolutely massive story, but hardly anyone in the United States is covering it.

Global fertilizer production is going to be greatly reduced, and that is going to have very serious implications for agricultural production all over the world…

“Nitrogen plant shutdowns in Europe are not simply a problem in Europe,” she said. “Reduced supply on the scale seen this week not only raises the marginal cost of production of nitrogen fertilizers, but will also tighten the global market, putting pressure on plant nutrients’ availability in Europe and beyond.”

We’re already seeing prices elsewhere rise again. The price of the common nitrogen fertilizer urea in New Orleans rose over 20% in weekly prices Friday, the most since March, a few weeks after the war began, according to Green Markets.

I know that fertilizer may not be the most exciting topic for a lot of people, but the truth is that approximately half the global population would starve if we didn’t have any…

In fact, it’s estimated that nitrogen fertilizer now supports approximately half of the global population. In other words, Fritz Haber and Carl Bosch — the pioneers of this technological breakthrough — are estimated to have enabled the lives of several billion people, who otherwise would have died prematurely, or never been born at all.

Let that paragraph sink in for a moment.

The only way we can even come close to feeding everyone on the planet is by using vast quantities of fertilizer, but now fertilizer plants all over Europe are being forced to shut down because of the price of natural gas.

As long as this global energy crisis persists, the global food crisis will also persist.

Russia is normally the largest exporter of natural gas in the entire world, and an end to the war in Ukraine would go a long way toward solving our current problems.

But there isn’t going to be an end to the war in Ukraine.

Once again, western leaders are assuring us that the war will not end until Russia is forced out of every inch of Ukrainian territory.

That includes Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea.

Of course the Russians would use tactical nukes long before we ever get to that point.

And once the Russians use tactical nukes, the west will do the same.

As it currently stands, there is no “off ramp” for this war.

Instead, we are simply counting down the days until it goes nuclear.

I am sorry to tell you that, but it is the truth.

If the American people truly understood what was at stake, there would be massive peace protests all over the nation right now.

Meanwhile, the worst multi-year megadrought in 1,200 years continues to absolutely ravage agricultural production in the western half of the United States.

A reporter from FOX recently visited the cornfields of Wayne County, Nebraska and what he discovered is extremely chilling…

“I’m standing in the middle of a cornfield that, if this was a normal year or in other words, if the corn was growing the way it was supposed to be, you wouldn’t even really be able to see me right now,” FOX Business’ Connell McShane reported from Wakefield, Nebraska. “It would be way up above my head. But now I look at this, maybe knee-high at best.”

McShane visited field after field in Wayne County and found the same short stalks with very sparse ears. Over 99% of that county is in exceptional drought.

This drought has been going on for years and years.

And it just keeps getting worse.

On the west coast, we are being warned that production of tomatoes, garlic and onions will be very disappointing this year due to the drought.

As a result, prices are going to go much higher in 2023…

In addition to tomatoes, other crops like garlic and onion are also expected to be impacted.

“What you’re seeing harvested this summer that really hasn’t even hit the grocery shelf is a 25% increase in the cost of the product to the processors — the canners, the buyers downstream,” California State Board of Food and Agriculture President Don Cameron told Reuters. “The onions and garlic have already been negotiated for 2023 with another 25% increase in price.”

This is really happening.

Food prices may seem high to you right now, but the truth is that this is the lowest that they are going to get.

The cost of living is becoming extremely oppressive, and countless people out there are really struggling to make it from month to month.

Earlier today, I came across a tweet from a 47-year-old lawyer that really hammered this point home…

-20 years ago, working as a server, I lived in a corner 1 bdrm apt downtown with amazing water views for $700/month.

-A similar apt now $3,600/month, more than 5x as much.

-As a lawyer at age 47 I am unable to afford living in the apartment I did at age 27 while waiting tables

Sadly, what we have been through so far is just the beginning.

The cost of gasoline is going to continue to go up.

The cost of natural gas is going to continue to go up.

The cost of food is going to continue to go up.

In fact, the cost of just about everything is going to continue to go up.

The artificially-inflated lifestyles that we were able to enjoy for decades are now disappearing, and there is a tremendous amount of pain on the horizon.

We were warned that this would happen, and now a day of reckoning is here.

I would encourage you to prepare accordingly.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book I have written five other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, “Get Prepared Now”, 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 digital copies as gifts through Amazon 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 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 ask Jesus to be your Lord and Savior today.

Even The Banksters Are Being Forced To Admit That The U.S. Economy Is Really Starting To Come Apart At The Seams

October 11, 2022October 11, 2022 by Michael

It’s wake up time. For months, there has been a tremendous amount of denial out there. So many of the “experts” assumed that the Federal Reserve and other central banks had everything under control and that things would “return to normal” before too long. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, the wheels seem to be coming off the bus and nobody seems to know what to do. The Fed appears to be determined to keep raising interest rates in a desperate attempt to fight inflation, and this has forced other central banks all over the globe to raise rates as well in order to keep their currencies from absolutely tanking. But all of these interest rate hikes are taking us into a major global economic downturn, and central bankers in Europe are literally screaming at the Fed to end the madness.

But the Fed is not going to end the madness, and so things are going to get really bad.

In fact, Bank of America is now projecting that the U.S. economy will lose 175,000 jobs a month during the first quarter of 2023…

As pressure from the Fed’s war on inflation builds, nonfarm payrolls will begin shrinking early next year, translating to a loss of about 175,000 jobs a month during the first quarter, the bank said. Charts published by Bank of America suggest job losses will continue through much of 2023.

“The premise is a harder landing rather than a softer one,” Michael Gapen, head of US economics at Bank of America, told CNN in a phone interview Monday.

In my opinion, if our job losses are that small during the first three months of next year I think that will be a huge win.

Another bankster, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, is also deeply concerned about the future of the U.S. economy…

“But you can’t talk about the economy without talking about stuff in the future – and this is serious stuff,” Dimon said, citing inflation, quantitative easing, and Russia’s war with Ukraine.

“These are very, very serious things which I think are likely to push the U.S. and the world – I mean, Europe is already in recession, and they’re likely to put the U.S. in some kind of recession six to nine months from now,” he said.

Actually, the U.S. economy is in a recession right now.

But I agree that things will soon get a whole lot worse.

At this point, even the most optimistic woman on Wall Street is warning of disaster.

Ark Investment Management’s Cathie Wood says that what the Fed is doing has the potential to create a “deflationary bust” in this country…

Could it be that the unprecedented 13-fold increase in interest rates during the last six months––likely 16-fold come November 2––has shocked not just the US but the world and raised the risks of a deflationary bust?

The Fed giveth and the Fed taketh away.

Cathie should understand that very well by now.

She looked like a genius on the way up, but the ride down is going to be very painful for her and for everyone else that was swimming in piles of cash during the boom years.

Under normal conditions, I am sure that the Fed would love to ride to Wall Street’s rescue.

But that isn’t going to happen because Fed officials are scared to death of the inflation monster that they played a major role in creating.

All over America, consumers and businesses are being absolutely devastated by rapidly rising prices.

Inflation causing higher prices at the local bakery, explaining all of the price changes for his ingredients. pic.twitter.com/q51hDV1q3U

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) October 9, 2022

Until inflation is under control, the Fed is going to continue to raise rates.

And that might take quite a while.

So for now, stocks and bonds are just going to keep going lower and lower. On Monday, the Nasdaq actually hit the lowest level in two years…

Stocks closed lower on Monday with the Nasdaq Composite index falling to the lowest level in two years as tech shares continue to be the hardest hit in this bear market because of spiking interest rates.

The Nasdaq Composite closed 1.04% lower at 10,542.10, hitting its lowest close since July 2020, weighed down by a slump in semiconductor stocks such as Nvidia and AMD. The S&P 500 also fell 0.75% to 3,612.39, dragged down by semi stocks and dips in major tech names like Microsoft, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 93.91 points, or 0.32%, to close at 29,202.88.

The amount of financial wealth that has already been wiped out is truly frightening, but much worse could be on the horizon.

If stocks and bonds continue to plunge, eventually we will see forced selling by pensions and other large investors, and at that point we truly will be in the midst of a very bitter nightmare…

Indeed, pensions don’t even need to have a near-death experience like in the UK: if the value of underlying assets drops enough, the forced selling will begin sooner or later. And once the capitulation really kicks in – as even formerly bullish Goldman strategists warn – followed closely by mass layoffs, only then will we find just how determined Powell is to pull a Volcker 2.0 and blow up the US economy and markets before he is fired by the president as his parting gift for unleashing the worst recession since the global financial crisis.

I couldn’t have said it any better myself.

But at least we are still in better shape than Europe.

A U.S. Army Special Forces veteran named Michael Yon recently told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily what he believes conditions in Europe will soon be like…

Yon said some people “talk about energy as if everything’s interchangeable, as if solar panels and windmills and nuclear plants can replace natural gas, which [they] simply cannot.”

He noted that of the 26 major plants in Europe that produce nitrogen-based fertilizers, all are either closed down or on the verge of closing.

“This will lead to famine. It’s just mathematics at this point,” he said.

The loss of the Nord Stream pipeline already has driven people in Germany and other European nations to cut down trees to heat their homes.

“People are going to literally freeze to death in Germany,” Yon said. “They’re going to freeze, and then they’re going to starve.”

Personally, I believe that the winter that begins in 2023 will be much worse than this upcoming winter for Europe.

At least the Europeans had the luxury of storing up Russian natural gas ahead of time for this winter.

Next winter, they will not have that opportunity.

And that is when things will get really insane.

But what everyone should be able to agree on is the fact that we are heading into a truly historic crisis.

We will soon see things happen that once would have been unimaginable for most people.

I would very much much encourage you to do what you can to get prepared in advance, because the road ahead of us is going to be incredibly challenging.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

The Energy Crisis In Europe Is So Bad That Some People Are Thinking Of Using Horse Poop To Heat Their Homes This Winter

October 9, 2022 by Michael

Europe is facing an extremely cold winter that will be filled with energy shortages, blackouts and absurdly high power bills. All across the continent, ordinary people can see what is coming, and many of them are starting to panic. Demand for wood stoves is off the charts, and many Europeans are hoarding wood and other materials to burn in their existing wood stoves during the bitterly cold months ahead. We truly are in unprecedented territory, and things are about to start getting really crazy out there.

If you live in Europe and you haven’t purchased a wood stove yet, it is probably already too late to get one for the beginning of winter.

It is being reported that any stoves ordered now could take “months to deliver”, and prices for wood pellets have almost doubled…

As much as 70% of European heating comes from natural gas and electricity, and with Russian deliveries drastically reduced, wood — already used by some 40 million people for heating — has become a sought-after commodity.

Prices for wood pellets have nearly doubled to 600 euros a ton in France, and there are signs of panic buying of the world’s most basic fuel. Hungary even went so far as to ban exports of pellets, and Romania capped firewood prices for six months. Meanwhile, wood stoves can now take months to deliver.

With wood and wood pellets being so expensive, some people in Europe are considering “other options” that once would have been unthinkable.

For example, we are being told that some Europeans are actually contacting local chimney sweeps to inquire about the possibility of burning horse poop in their stoves…

Inexperience is also evident in Germany, where the country’s association of chimney sweeps is dealing with a flood of requests to connect new and old stoves, and customers are inquiring about burning horse dung and other obscure fuels.

If you were cold enough, would you burn horse poop in order to stay warm?

Under normal conditions, no rational person would do such a thing.

But at this point, Europeans can see that they may not be able to rely on their national power grids this winter.

In fact, one top EU official is openly warning that energy shortages could lead to widespread blackouts in the months ahead…

The European Union could face blackouts this winter as the continent faces an ongoing energy crisis amid Russia’s war in Ukraine, but Brussels is preparing for worst-case scenarios, according to EU Crisis Management Commissioner Janez Lenarčič.

Asked in an interview published Tuesday by Germany’s RND media network whether EU countries would need disaster relief due to the energy crisis, Lenarčič responded: “Yes, that is quite possible.”

Sadly, this is true even in Germany.

The Germans have the largest economy in the EU by a wide margin, but their leaders are publicly acknowledging that Germany “may run out of gas” at some point by the end of the winter…

German Federal Economy Minister Robert Habeck expressed concern over the looming energy crisis this winter, telling German media that the situation was extremely tense and there is a possibility that Germany may run out of gas.

Habeck spoke on Friday, appealing to Germans to reduce their consumption of natural gas ahead of this winter a day after the German government launched a new price break programme to help Germans with the rising costs of energy.

And whoever bombed the NordStream pipeline system made sure that Russia would not be able to come to the rescue by providing much needed natural gas at a critical moment.

Germans desperately need to cut back if rationing is to be avoided, but here we are just weeks away from severely cold weather and that is still not happening…

The head of Germany’s Federal Network Agency, which would be in charge of gas rationing in the event of a supply emergency, repeated his warning a week ago that consumption was too high.

“We will struggle to avoid a gas emergency this winter without at least 20% savings in private households, businesses and industry,” Klaus Mueller of the Bundesnetzagentur told Reuters.

“The situation may become very serious if we do not significantly reduce our gas consumption,” he added.

The situation in the UK is quite dire as well.

Last week, a warning that the British people could potentially face three hour rolling blackouts this winter made headlines all over the globe…

Households could experience a series of three-hour power cuts this winter if Vladimir Putin shuts off gas supplies from Russia and Britain experiences a cold snap, National Grid has warned.

Such an event would mean consumers in different parts of the country being notified a day in advance of three-hour blocks of time during which their power would be cut off, in an effort to reduce total consumption by 5%.

What would you do if the power went out for three hours on one of the coldest days of the year?

You might want to think about that.

Here in the United States, it appears unlikely that we will face energy shortages this winter, but heating costs will definitely surge to record highs as energy prices continue to soar all over the planet.

And we definitely do not want prices to go higher, because approximately 20 million Americans are already behind on their power bills…

At least 20 million households — or about 1 in 6 American homes — are behind on their power bills as soaring electricity prices spark what is said to be the worst-ever crisis in late utility payments, according to Bloomberg, citing data from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (Neada).

Neada said electricity prices had increased significantly since 2020 after a decade of stagnation. The steep rise has resulted in billions of dollars in overdue power bills.

The greatest energy crisis in any of our lifetimes is here, and it is setting the stage for the kind of historic economic meltdown of epic proportions that so many prominent voices have warned would be coming.

The price of energy has already gotten so high that some major European manufacturers have already been forced to shut down operations.

If energy costs make it impossible to operate profitably, the only logical thing to do is to close up shop until energy costs come back down.

But they aren’t going to come back down any time soon.

Europe is truly entering a new “Dark Ages”, and right now there is no light at the end of the tunnel.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Hardly Anyone In Washington Seems To Care About The Future At This Point

October 6, 2022October 6, 2022 by Michael

Our politicians in Washington are literally destroying our future. But do you see anyone out in the streets protesting their calamitous policies? By now, you have probably heard that the U.S. national debt has hit 31 trillion dollars. To be more precise, as I write this article the U.S. national debt is currently sitting at $31,142,591,307,260.01. It is the largest single debt in the history of the world, and given enough time it would completely destroy our economy all by itself. Unfortunately, hardly anyone in Washington seems to care about our rapidly exploding debt at this point.

In the old days, the Republicans would at least put on a show for us. They would huff and puff about the national debt but then give the Democrats virtually all of the spending that they wanted anyway.

But now they have figured out that such a charade is no longer necessary, because most of their constituents just don’t care.

So most of our politicians no longer even pretend to care about fiscal responsibility. In recent years they have been on the biggest borrowing and spending binge in our entire history, and there are no indications that they ever plan to stop.

They borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars, and they expect you, your children, and your grandchildren to pay it back.

Of course that will never happen.

We are never going to pay back the 31.1 trillion dollars that we have borrowed.

Instead, we are just going to push the accelerator all the way to the floor until we finally go off a cliff.

During the month of August alone, the U.S. government ran a $219.6 billion budget deficit…

Some things never change — such as the federal government spending more money than it has month after month after month.

August was no different. The US government ran a massive $219.6 billion budget deficit last month, according to the latest Monthly Treasury Statement. That nudged out July as the second-largest monthly deficit in fiscal 2022.

Sadly, I didn’t hear of anyone in Washington giving a major speech when that happened, because the national debt is not even considered to be an important national issue today.

But our entire standard of living depends on the value of the U.S. dollar. Having the default reserve currency of the world has been such a massive advantage for the United States, and now we are frittering it away.

The rest of the world can see what we are doing.

We are transforming our currency into toilet paper, and it is just a matter of time before it completely collapses.

Today, our politicians are stealing more than 200 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

Just think about that.

The old geezers in Washington know that they are near the end of the road.

So they know that they will never have to pay any of this money back.

But they get to spend it on whatever they want.

Of course it was inevitable that all of this borrowing and spending would eventually create rampant inflation, and now we are facing the worst inflation crisis in our history.

Yes, even worse than the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s.

The Federal Reserve is rapidly hiking interest rates in a desperate attempt to get inflation under control, but that is causing all sorts of problems.

For one thing, the interest payments on our national debt will soon exceed a trillion dollars a year…

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this is exactly what will happen. It projects interest payments will triple from nearly $400 billion in fiscal 2022 to $1.2 trillion in 2032. And it’s worse than that. The CBO made this estimate in May. Interest rates are already higher than those used in its analysis.

Unfortunately, I don’t think that the current system will survive until 2032.

Previous generations handed us the keys to the reserve currency of the world and the greatest economic machine that the planet had ever witnessed.

Sadly, we took those precious gifts and completely destroyed them.

As a society, we have lost all regard for long-term consequences.

Let me give you another example. Joe Biden just announced that he will be releasing more oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve…

“At the president’s direction, the Department of Energy will deliver another 10 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to the market next month as part of the historic 180-million-barrel release the President ordered back in March. And the President will continue to direct SPR releases as necessary,” she said.

What an incredibly foolish thing to do.

It is only supposed to be used in the event of a national emergency, and what Biden has decided to do is absolutely unprecedented.

The fact that things are not looking good for his party in November is not an “emergency”, and Senator Tom Cotton is not amused…

Whoa, say critics, including Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.).

“Well, it’s called the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. It’s not the political petroleum reserve,” Cotton told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham Wednesday night.

We are going to need that oil someday.

But thanks to Biden, most of it will already be gone.

If we found ourselves in the middle of a major war, the worldwide flow of energy supplies would suddenly be greatly restricted. That is the sort of emergency scenario that the Strategic Petroleum Reserve was designed for.

Sadly, thanks to the warmongers in the Biden administration we may soon find ourselves fighting wars with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran simultaneously.

Most Americans have no idea what is going on behind the scenes. Things with North Korea are getting really, really tense, and a major war in the Middle East could erupt at any time.

World War 3 has already started, but thankfully we haven’t gotten to the part where billions of people die just yet.

Unfortunately, our current crop of leaders couldn’t care less about the long-term future of humanity.

So they continue to pursue policies that are incredibly self-destructive, and we are all going to pay a very great price for their foolishness.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

46 Trillion Dollars In Financial Wealth Has Already Been Lost During The Great Global Market Crash Of 2022

October 3, 2022October 3, 2022 by Michael

In less than one year, 46 trillion dollars in financial wealth has been wiped out. If that isn’t a “crash”, how would you define one? Since last November, stocks and bonds have been plunging all over the globe. When there is a good day like we saw on Monday, sometimes that can fool us into thinking that everything is going to be okay. But in order to understand what is really going on we need to step back and look at the bigger picture. And when we look at the bigger picture, it becomes exceedingly clear that we are in the midst of a historic worldwide market crash. According to Bank of America, a whopping 46.1 trillion dollars in financial wealth has already been wiped out since last November…

It’s been a tough year for investors, with global stock and bond markets erasing $46.1 trillion in market value since November 2021, according to Bank of America.

The massive drawdown has led to forced liquidations on Wall Street, the bank’s chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett said in a Friday note, highlighting the recent break below 2018 support in the NYSE Composite Index.

When I first came across that number I could hardly believe it.

But it is accurate.

Stocks have been falling and falling and falling, and Bank of America is warning that this is one of the worst global bond market crashes that we have ever seen…

Analysts at BofA liken it to going “Cold Turkey” and blame it for causing the third “Great Bond Bear Market.”

They calculate the 20% plus losses suffered by government debt investors over the last year are now a par with the post World War I and II years of 1920 and 1949, and the Great Depression rout of 1931.

The combined collapse in global stock and bond markets means global market capitalisation has been slashed by over $46 trillion.

That is an amount of money that is difficult to comprehend.

The total value of all goods and services produced in the United States last year was approximately 23 trillion dollars.

So we are talking about an amount of money that is roughly twice as large as our GDP for an entire year.

When the Federal Reserve and other central banks around the world took the punch bowl away, it was obvious that something like this would happen.

Central bank intervention pushed global financial markets to absolutely absurd levels, and there was no way that they could remain there once the artificial support was removed.

Here in the United States, all of the major stock indexes have fallen for three quarters in a row, and tech stocks have been leading the way down…

The S&P 500 Index closed on Friday at 3,586, down 25.6% from its intraday high on January 3, and where it had first been in November 2020.

The Russell 2000, which tracks small-cap stocks, is down 31.8% from its high on November 5, having thereby maintained its function as early warning signal.

The Nasdaq closed at 10,576, down 34.8% from its intraday high on November 22, the very day Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella dumped 50.2% of his Microsoft stock in a bunch of frenzied trades, totaling $285 million. On the list of best-timed insider trades ever, he must be at the very top. Since then, Microsoft shares have plunged 33.4%, to $232.90, the lowest closing price since March 2021.

As I discussed a few days ago, the wealthiest tech tycoons have collectively lost 315 billion dollars over the past year.

Ouch.

The Federal Reserve giveth and the Federal Reserve taketh away.

The same thing is true for the housing market. Fed policies created the largest housing bubble in our history, but now that bubble is bursting.

In fact, it is being reported that we just witnessed “the largest single-month price declines” since the last financial crisis…

… today Black Knight confirmed that the US housing market has turned decidedly ugly with the two biggest monthly declines since the global financial crisis.

According to a Monday report from mortgage-data provider, median home prices fell 0.98% in August from a month earlier, following a 1.05% drop in July.

The two periods marked the largest monthly declines since January 2009. In fact, at the current pace of declines, we may soon see a record drop in home prices, surpassing the largest historical slide hit during the global financial crisis.

The report noted that July and August 2022 mark the largest single-month price declines seen since January 2009 and rank among the eight largest on record.

If the Federal Reserve does not reduce rates, things will soon get really, really ugly for the housing market.

Unfortunately, the Fed is actually going to keep raising rates because Fed officials are scared to death of the raging inflation crisis that they originally helped to create.

Thanks to the Fed, grocery prices were up 13.5 percent in August…

We’ve seen the higher prices at the grocery store, and it looks like they won’t be coming down anytime soon.

New government data shows grocery prices climbed 13.5% in August from the year before. That’s the highest annual increase since March 1979.

Food producers say the surge is a result of paying higher prices for labor and packaging materials. They also point to extreme weather, disease and supply issues.

As long as we keep seeing numbers like that, the Fed is going to keep raising rates.

And the price of gasoline just hit another all-time record high in Los Angeles…

Gas prices hit a record high in Los Angeles County of $6.466 per gallon on Monday morning, soaring past the previous record set during the nationwide price surge this past spring.

If you think that is bad, just wait until California residents are paying 10 dollars a gallon for gasoline.

The cost of living has become incredibly oppressive, and one recent survey found that 73 percent of Americans believe that their incomes are “falling behind inflation”…

Scott Rasmussen’s Number of the Day survey results on Ballotpedia also found that 73% of Americans say that over the past year, their income has been falling behind inflation. The survey’s sample size was 1,200 registered voters, and it was conducted online by pollster Scott Rasmussen on Sept. 15-17. The margin of error for the full sample is +/- 2.8 percentage points.

Until inflation is under control, the Fed is going to keep raising rates.

And inflation is not likely to be under control any time soon, because the vast majority of U.S. manufacturers are planning more price increases in 2023…

In a new Forbes/Xometry/John Zogby Strategies survey shared with Secrets about the impact of inflation and the continued supply chain crisis under President Biden, 87% of manufacturing CEOs said they planned to increase prices in 2023.

Many cited the ongoing supply chain crisis, problems getting materials from China, and sellers taking advantage of the economic mess to jack up prices.

“Our margins are under pressure as costs creep up throughout the supply-chain network,” one CEO told the poll conducted by Jeremy Zogby, the managing partner of John Zogby Strategies.

So the Federal Reserve will not be riding to the rescue of the financial markets this time around.

Fed officials are absolutely petrified of high inflation, and so rates will continue to go up.

And that means that this financial bubble will continue to implode. As Eric Peters has aptly noted, market crashes can take a long time to fully play out…

“It’s important to remember that the bursting of a bubble takes a long time to play out. It may feel fast and chaotic at various points in the process, but it isn’t really. Look at 2008. Everyone thinks of Lehman’s Bankruptcy on September 15, 2008, as the big catalyst for that crisis, but the S&P 500 had peaked the previous November. Bear Sterns failed on March 13th, 2008. From the Friday before Lehman’s bankruptcy to the end of that month, the S&P was only down 7%. The real weakness was in October with a local low in November.”

The final bottom wasn’t until March of the next year. “The bubble was bursting before Lehman Brothers.” That was just the large cathartic event that caught our attention, ignited our imagination. “And even after that it took months for the market to bottom. Markets don’t clear imbalances instantaneously. So we should be preparing ourselves for a marathon, not a sprint.”

We are still only in the very early chapters of this story.

As I have been relentlessly warning my readers, things are going to eventually get really, really bad.

The Federal Reserve and other central banks flooded the global financial system with money, and so now we are facing a horrific worldwide inflation crisis.

They are attempting to fix things by rapidly raising rates, but that is causing absolutely enormous problems for global financial markets.

This isn’t going to end well, and we have finally gotten to a point where this should be exceedingly obvious to everyone.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Will The Collapse Of Credit Suisse Be Europe’s “Lehman Brothers Moment”?

October 2, 2022 by Michael

The parallels between 2008 and 2022 just keep getting stronger. 14 years ago, the collapse of Lehman Brothers sent a massive wave of panic through global financial markets and is widely considered to be the key event that plunged us into a horrifying financial crisis that we still talk about to this day. Well, now an even larger bank appears to be on the brink of collapse, and analysts all over the world are deeply concerned about what that will mean for the global financial system if it does fail.

Right now, Credit Suisse is one of the most important banks in the entire world. If you are not familiar with Credit Suisse, the following is some good background information that comes from Wikipedia…

Credit Suisse Group AG is a global investment bank and financial services firm founded and based in Switzerland. Headquartered in Zürich, it maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world and is one of the nine global “Bulge Bracket” banks providing services in investment banking, private banking, asset management, and shared services. It is known for strict bank–client confidentiality and banking secrecy. The Financial Stability Board considers it to be a global systemically important bank. Credit Suisse is also primary dealer and Forex counterparty of the FED .

Credit Suisse is truly one of the central hubs of the entire international banking system.

If it were to fail, the ripple effects would be felt very deeply in literally every nation on the planet.

Unfortunately, it is being reported that Credit Suisse could be “on the verge of collapse” and we are being warned that if it does collapse it could cause “a shock similar to that caused by the bankruptcy of the U.S. bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008”…

Speculation surrounding the future of the Swiss banking giant has been going on for several months in the markets, in business and political circles, as well as on social networks.

The No. 2 Swiss bank and one of the largest banks in the world is in deep trouble and is currently fighting for its survival. A negative outcome is likely to cause a shock similar to that caused by the bankruptcy of the U.S. bank Lehman Brothers in September 2008. This event triggered one of the most serious financial and economic crises since the Great Depression.

When Lehman Brothers collapsed in 2008, it had 639 billion dollars in assets.

In late 2022, Credit Suisse currently has 1.5 trillion dollars of assets under management.

pic.twitter.com/mpAoIj7zdI

— SG (@GhoshSubhag) October 2, 2022

The collapse of Credit Suisse would create a wave of panic that would be unlike anything that we have seen since the last financial crisis.

But new CEO Ulrich Koerner insists that everything is just fine…

There has been plenty of movement around Credit Suisse over the weekend. On Friday, CEO Ulrich Koerner sent around a memo saying that the bank had a “strong capital base and liquidity position”, whilst senior executives spent their weekend doing their best to reassure large clients, counterparties and investors, according to the Financial Times.

The memo from the CEO also noted that the bank was at a “critical moment” as it prepares for a restructuring, the details of which are the be revealed on October 27. Expectations are that some 5000 jobs could be cut, with assets sold off. Some analysts are saying it won’t be enough, however. According to a Bloomberg report, Credit Suisse is estimated to need a further $4 billion Swiss francs even after asset sales, to fund the restructuring, with a capital raise touted as the most likely option.

Are the markets buying what Koerner is selling?

Nope.

Credit Suisse credit default swaps just keep going the wrong direction, and that means that investors are starting to get really, really nervous…

Credit Suisse’s Credit Default Swaps, or CDS, a derivative instrument that allows an investor to swap their credit risk with another investor, surged on Friday, reflecting the market perception of increasing risk. It is now approaching the highs seen during the 2008 financial crisis, which saw U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers go bankrupt.

Houston we have a problem. Market cap of $CS is now a rounding error. 35x leverage. This and Deutsche Bank…a canary in coal mine.

CDS on Credit Suisse now at GFC highs. #btc pic.twitter.com/cVTOavkBv2

— FOSS – Lehman CDS at 9bps in ’06, now at 41 (@FossGregfoss) September 30, 2022

At this point, just about everyone can smell blood.

And it certainly isn’t going to take much to set off widespread hysteria.

Formal Announcement: pic.twitter.com/Pmygv369gq

— Credit Suisse Risk Department (@RammityCap) October 1, 2022

This is such an ominous time for Europe. The EU is heading into the worst energy crisis that it has ever experienced, the bond market is starting to go bonkers, and now giant financial institutions such as Credit Suisse are being greatly shaken.

Martin Armstrong was recently interviewed by Greg Hunter, and he boldly declared that a “crisis in banking will start in Europe”…

So, could Europe suck the rest of the world down the tubes? Armstrong says, “Oh, absolutely. Europe is the problem. . . . The crisis in banking will start in Europe. . . . The debt is collapsing. They have no way to sustain themselves. The debt market over there is undermining the stability of all the banks. You have to understand that reserves are tied to government debt, and this is the perfect storm. Yes, the (U.S.) stock market will go down short term. We are not facing a 1929 event or a 90% fall here. . . . Europeans, probably by January of 2023, as this crisis in Ukraine escalates, anybody with half a brain is going to take whatever money they have and get it over here.”

I am not as optimistic about U.S. financial markets as Armstrong seems to be.

Yes, Europe is currently in worse shape, but things are starting to unravel quite rapidly here too.

In fact, we just witnessed the worst month for U.S. stocks since the very early days of the pandemic…

September was a horrible month for stocks. The Dow fell nearly 9%, its worst monthly drop since March 2020, when pandemic lockdowns started in the United States. The index ended Friday deeply in the red, too.

Overall, this is the very first time that the Dow Jones Industrial Average has been down for three quarters in a row since 2015.

And it is the very first time that the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq have been down for three quarters in a row since 2009.

A lot of people out there still seem to think that things will “return to normal” very soon, and unfortunately all of those people are very wrong.

The truth is that we are right on the precipice of the sort of historic meltdown that I have been relentlessly warning was coming.

Our leaders kicked the can down the road for a long time, but now they are running out of road.

A day of reckoning has arrived for Europe, and soon a day of reckoning will arrive for us as well.

So buckle your seatbelts, because we are in for a very bumpy ride.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Worse Than Katrina? It Appears That We Just Witnessed The Most Costly Natural Disaster In U.S. History By A Wide Margin

September 29, 2022 by Michael

I don’t know if I have the words to describe what we have just seen. Summer just ended, and within one week we have already witnessed the most costly natural disaster in the entire history of the United States. There are some areas along the west coast of Florida that have literally been destroyed. Some have compared the devastation to the dropping of an atomic bomb, and that is not an exaggeration at all. The state of Florida has never experienced a storm quite like this before, and recovery is going to be measured in years.

When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005, it was a Category 3 storm.

Hurricane Ian had maximum sustained wind speeds of 155 mph, and that put it just 2 mph short of being a Category 5 storm.

But the high winds weren’t what made Ian so horrible.

What made Ian so horrible was the storm surge. Giant walls of water picked up cars, boats, telephone poles and palm trees and tossed them around like toys. According to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, what we just witnessed was a “500-year flooding event”…

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said the storm caused a “500-year flooding event” and said Coast Guard helicopters were plucking trapped residents from the roofs of homes. Communities across the state were or will be swamped by the overwhelming waters, he said.

“The impacts of this storm are historic and the damage that has been done is historic,” DeSantis said. “We’ve never seen a flood event like this, we’ve never seen a storm surge of this magnitude.”

This storm greatly strengthened right before it made landfall, and a lot of people were caught off guard by that.

It was already too late when many finally realized that they should evacuate, and it appears that there was a “substantial loss of life” as a result…

“This could be the deadliest hurricane in Florida history,” Biden said after a briefing at FEMA emergency management headquarters in Washington.

He said the numbers “are still unclear, but we’re hearing reports of what may be substantial loss of life.”

In fact, Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno says that “the fatalities are in the hundreds”…

“This is a life-changing event for all of us,” Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno told “Good Morning America.”

“I don’t have confirmed numbers — I definitely know the fatalities are in the hundreds,” he added.

“So far, confirmed in the hundreds,” he said, noting that conditions were too dire for his officers and other rescuers to get a true sense of the disaster.

Was he referring to just his county or the state as a whole?

Someone should ask him that question.

This is truly a historic tragedy, but some have decided that all of this chaos makes it the perfect time for a crime spree…

Amid the chaos of Hurricane Ian, looting and other crimes have been committed in Lee County.

In coordination with Lee County Sheriff Carmine Marceno, County Commission, city managers and city councils, Dejarlais announced a 6 p.m. curfew for Lee County, which will be in place until further notice.

“To be sure, and I feel safe relaying this in on behalf of law enforcement, there’s going to be a zero-tolerance policy for looting and violence in this town,” Dejarlais said.

I suppose that we shouldn’t be surprised that looting is happening.

Every time there is some sort of a major disaster, this is what some of us do.

It truly is disgusting.

This is a time when everybody should be pulling together. According to one estimate, the economic damage from this storm could be somewhere in the neighborhood of 260 billion dollars…

Experts expect the damages to cost up to $260 billion, though the clean-up efforts are currently unable to get underway as swathes of Florida remain underwater.

Prior to Hurricane Ian, the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history was Hurricane Katrina.

According to the GAO, Katina caused 170 billion dollars in damage…

Hurricanes Katrina, Sandy, Harvey, and Irma (selected hurricanes) caused costly damages and challenges for some populations in affected communities. In these communities, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) estimated the cost of damages to be approximately $170 billion for Katrina, $74 billion for Sandy, $131 billion for Harvey, and $52 billion for Irma. These estimates include the value of damages to residential, commercial, and government or municipal buildings; material assets within the buildings; business interruption; vehicles and boats; offshore energy platforms; public infrastructure; and agricultural assets.

At this point, it appears that Katrina has been knocked out of the top spot.

Right at the end of September 2022, we have witnessed the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history by a wide margin.

And Ian is not done yet.

As I write this article, the city of Charleston is “bracing for a direct hit” very early on Friday morning…

Charleston is bracing for a direct hit from Hurricane Ian with storm surges of up to 7ft as it hurtles towards the historic city after barreling through Florida leaving swathes of the state decimated and at least 13 dead.

Monster tempest Ian has recharged from a tropical storm back into a Category 1 hurricane as it angles northwards towards South Carolina to pummel the state Friday morning, as well as neighboring North Carolina and Georgia.

Landfall in Charleston is expected around 8am on Friday, with the surrounding states also being issued with several extreme weather warnings.

When the damage to Charleston is factored in, the total economic damage from this storm could easily surpass 300 billion dollars.

This is not something that we are going to be able to bounce back from easily.

For years, I have been warning that unprecedented natural disasters would be headed our way.

Now it is happening right in front of our eyes.

The summer is over, the fall is here, and winter is coming.

We have been through so much already, but the rest of 2022 is inevitably going to have even more surprises for us.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

This Cycle Of Retaliation Between The U.S. And Russia Will Ultimately Lead To Nuclear War

September 28, 2022 by Michael

For the good of humanity, this has got to stop. The United States and Russia both keep raising the stakes, and if we keep repeating this cycle it will end with a nuclear war that could ultimately result in billions of deaths. Unfortunately, leaders on both sides do not seem interested in peace at this point. The votes that Russia just conducted in four disputed territories were inevitably going to raise tensions even higher. Of course the western powers have been greatly escalating matters themselves. Over the past couple of months, NATO has gotten far more deeply involved in the conflict in Ukraine, and now the war is starting to spread beyond Ukrainian borders.

Everyone agrees that the damage caused to the Nord Stream pipeline system was an act of sabotage. As I discussed yesterday, an explosion that registered 1.9 on the Richter scale was followed by a second explosion that registered 2.3 on the Richter scale. These explosions were absolutely huge, and that suggests that this was a military operation.

Many in the western world are blaming Russia for the sabotage, but why would they blow up pipelines that they spent so much time and energy constructing and that have enabled them to make giant mountains of money selling natural gas to Europe?

The Russians have already been punishing the Europeans by restricting the flow of gas through those pipelines. There was certainly no need to blow them up.

If it is ultimately proven that the Russians did this, it would be one of the stupidest geopolitical moves that I have ever seen.

Of course there is someone else that could have done it.

On Friday, September 23rd the following statement was posted on the official White House website…

The United States will never recognize Ukrainian territory as anything other than part of Ukraine. Russia’s referenda are a sham – a false pretext to try to annex parts of Ukraine by force in flagrant violation of international law, including the United Nations Charter. We will work with our allies and partners to impose additional swift and severe economic costs on Russia. The United States stands with our partners around the world – and with every nation that respects the core tenets of the UN charter – in rejecting whatever fabricated outcomes Russia will announce. We will continue to support the Ukrainian people and provide them with security assistance to help them defend themselves as they courageously resist Russia’s invasion.

So Joe Biden promised to impose “swift and severe economic costs on Russia” on Friday, and then on Monday both Nord Stream pipelines were blown up.

And by now you have probably already heard that Joe Biden threatened to attack the Nord Stream pipeline system before the war in Ukraine even started…

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Biden had obviously been discussing this option with his advisers, and one of those advisers named Victoria Nuland also made a similar threat prior to the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict…

“If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

Some enterprising reporter needs to ask the Biden administration if they were responsible for the sabotage.

Of course they will probably deny it even if they ordered the attack.

But it is interesting to note that the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group entered the Baltic Sea in early September…

The Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) with the embarked 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) concluded two successful training events with the Swedish Armed Forces and Standing NATO Maritime Group (SNMG) 1 while operating in the Baltic Sea, Sept. 4, 2022.

Unfortunately, the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group didn’t leave the Baltic Sea area right away.

In fact, it is being reported that this task force didn’t actually leave the Baltic Sea until a few days ago…

The Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group (ARG) and the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) have departed the Baltic Sea and are in the English Channel. The ARG includes USS Kearsarge (LHD-3), USS Arlington (LPD-24) and USS Gunston Hall (LSD-44). Kearsarge and Gunston Hall completed port calls in Gdynia and Gdansk, respectively, last week.

This would have given them plenty of time to plant explosives on the Nord Stream pipeline system if they were inclined to do so.

In addition, we have learned that the U.S. Navy was testing “the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology” in the Baltic Sea during the month of June…

A significant focus of BALTOPS every year is the demonstration of NATO mine hunting capabilities, and this year the U.S. Navy continues to use the exercise as an opportunity to test emerging technology, U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa Public Affairs said June 14.

In support of BALTOPS, U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers to bring the latest advancements in unmanned underwater vehicle mine hunting technology to the Baltic Sea to demonstrate the vehicle’s effectiveness in operational scenarios.

Experimentation was conducted off the coast of Bornholm, Denmark, with participants from Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, Naval Undersea Warfare Center Newport, and Mine Warfare Readiness and Effectiveness Measuring all under the direction of U.S. 6th Fleet Task Force 68.

Our Navy seems to have spent a lot of time in the Baltic Sea lately, eh?

Needless to say, the Russians are very angry about what has happened, and they have called an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council…

“Russia has requested an urgent meeting of the UN Security Council in connection with sabotage against two lines of the Nord Stream. We expect it to be held tomorrow,” Dmitry Polyanskiy, one of Russia’s top representatives at the U.N., wrote on his Telegram channel, according to a translation.

Shortly after issuing the statement early Wednesday, the French delegation to the U.N. confirmed to him that a meeting would indeed take place on Friday – a tacit acknowledgement of the panic that the explosions and subsequent leaks have caused.

It will be very interesting to see what transpires at that meeting.

Let us hope that the truth about all of this eventually comes out.

But even more, let us hope that cooler heads start to prevail and that leaders on both sides start to push for peace.

Because if both sides continue to hammer one another, at some point someone is going to cross a line that can never be uncrossed.

We are steamrolling toward nuclear war, and once the missiles start flying our world will never be the same again.

So I am not ashamed to say that I am pro-peace.

Nuclear war is a fate that is too horrible for words, but with each passing day our leaders are dragging us ever closer to such a conflict.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

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