Money

12 Numbers That Show That We Are Getting Dangerously Close To An Economic Crash As The Fall Of 2022 Approaches

September 4, 2022September 4, 2022 by Michael

You have heard me say it over and over again. What we are witnessing right now reminds me so much of 2008, and we all remember what happened in the fall of 2008. That doesn’t mean that this new crisis will unfold exactly the same way that the last one did. Ultimately, every economic downturn is unique. But the fact that we are seeing so many parallels between what is transpiring now and what transpired 14 years ago should deeply alarm all of us. We appear to be on the precipice of another economic crash, and all of the “solutions” that our leaders give us just seem to make things even worse.

Hopefully someone out there can find a way to pull a miracle out of a hat and a worst case scenario can be averted.

But I wouldn’t count on that happening. The following are 12 numbers that show that we are getting dangerously close to an economic crash as the fall of 2022 approaches…

#1 The government is telling us that the unemployment rate only went up to 3.7 percent in August.

#2 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the real rate of unemployment in the United States would be over 24 percent.

#3 About half of all U.S. companies say that they will be eliminating jobs within the next 12 months.

#4 The government is telling us that the inflation rate in the United States is only 8.5 percent.

#5 According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real rate of inflation would be somewhere around 17 percent right now. That is worse than anything that we experienced during the Jimmy Carter era.

#6 At one company, the number of Americans taking out short-term loans for groceries has nearly doubled this year.

#7 One out of every five home sellers in the United States dropped their asking price last month. This is more evidence that home prices are starting to rapidly move in a downward direction.

#8 Sales of previously-owned homes were about 20 percent lower this July than they were last July.

#9 One recent survey found that 3.8 million Americans believe that they could be evicted from their homes within the next two months.

#10 According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, approximately 20 million U.S. households are currently behind on their utility bills.

#11 The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen for three weeks in a row. We also witnessed this sort of a gradual slide just prior to the big crash of 2008.

#12 In August, a whopping 2,150 corporate executives sold off shares in their companies. Are they trying to cash in while they still can?

Gustavo Arnal was one of the corporate executives that recently sold off large amounts of stock.

Now he is dead…

The man who jumped to his death from the 18th floor of the famous ‘Jenga’ tower in lower Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood Friday has been identified as a Bed Bath & Beyond executive.

Gustavo Arnal, 52, was the Chief Financial Officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, a company that has been going through struggles of late due to high inflation and a sagging economy. The company announced plans to close 150 stores, of its roughly 900, and lay off 20 percent of staff just two days before Arnal’s death.

He reportedly sold over 42,000 shares in the company, oft-identified as a ‘meme stock’, for $1million just over two weeks ago, according to MarketBeat.com.

It appears that Arnal was involved in a “pump and dump” scheme, and he may have decided that he didn’t want to spend much of the rest of his life locked away in prison…

The executive vice president and chief financial officer of Bed Bath & Beyond who plunged to his death from the 18th floor of a New York City skyscraper on Friday was the subject of a class-action lawsuit alleging that he and majority shareholder, GameStop Chairman Ryan Cohen, had artificially inflated the company’s value in a “pump and dump” scheme.

Gustavo Arnal, 52, and Cohen, are listed as defendants in the class-action lawsuit filed last month in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

Sadly, I think that we will see quite a few more people jumping off of buildings before this whole thing is over.

Of course most Americans would never do such a thing.

Most Americans will just suffer through whatever comes even as their standard of living is being systematically destroyed.

For example, CNN recently interviewed one young mother that couldn’t even afford to buy a backpack for her preschooler…

As Sarah Longmore finished her back-to-school shopping, the mother of five looked at a $25 backpack for her preschooler. Soaring inflation had crunched the family’s budget, and she decided her daughter could make do with a hand-me-down. She put the backpack back.

Unfortunately, she is not alone.

In fact, one recent poll found that only 36 percent of all parents will “be able to pay for everything their kids need this school year”…

Just 36% of parents said they would be able to pay for everything their kids need this school year, according to Morning Consult’s annual back-to-school shopping report. That’s down sharply from 52% in 2021, when inflation was lower and stimulus checks plus advance child tax credit payments helped some families.

Are things really this bad already?

If so, what will conditions look like six months or a year from now?

2023 is less than four months away, and the stage has been set for an economic implosion of absolutely epic proportions.

Do you remember the extreme pain that our nation went through in 2008 and 2009?

Many believe that what is ahead will be even worse.

The greatest debt bubble in the history of the world is starting to burst, and central banks all over the globe are starting to panic.

If you always wanted to live in “interesting” times, you are going to get your wish.

But for most people, the times that we are moving into will not be fun at all.

***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.

An Absolutely Gigantic Sunspot That Is Pointed Directly At Earth Right Now Could Potentially Produce Another “Carrington Event”

September 1, 2022September 1, 2022 by Michael

How would you feel if someone pointed a loaded gun at you? Well, that is essentially what our entire planet is facing at this moment. An absolutely enormous sunspot is currently pointing directly at Earth, and it has just developed a delta-class magnetic field. We are being warned that this sunspot has the potential to release an X-class flare, and that would be really bad news, because such flares are often associated with coronal mass ejections. If a large enough coronal mass ejection came directly toward our planet, we could see another “Carrington Event”. In such a scenario, our power grids would be fried, trillions of dollars worth of damage would be caused, and society would instantly go completely and utterly haywire.

So let us hope that such a thing does not take place any time soon.

It is being reported that a sunspot known as AR3089 that is pointing right at us has just developed a “delta-class magnetic field”, and that means that it now has the potential to produce X-class flares…

A giant sunspot may be about to erupt, sending out the most powerful form of solar flares growing for days.

Sunspot AR3089, which is facing towards the Earth, has now developed a delta-class magnetic field, meaning that it has built up enough energy that it may release X-class solar flares.

But that doesn’t mean that we will actually see any X-class flares.

At this point, the NOAA is insisting that there is still only a 5 percent chance that this will actually happen…

According to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), there is around a five percent chance that the sunspot will release an X-class flare. If it does, the flare may trigger a powerful geomagnetic storm in the Earth’s atmosphere, possibly resulting in damage to infrastructure and electromagnetic communication systems.

A one out of 20 chance may not seem like a lot, but if we get unlucky the consequences could be absolutely catastrophic.

Solar flares are classified as either C-class, M-class or X-class.

C-class flares are not strong enough to cause problems for us.

M-class flares can cause minor geomagnetic storms, but most of the time they are not really noteworthy.

But X-class flares are an entirely different matter.

Of course not all X-class flares are created equal either. According to NASA, some X-class flares are many times more powerful than others…

And then come the X-class flares. Although X is the last letter, there are flares more than 10 times the power of an X1, so X-class flares can go higher than 9. The most powerful flare measured with modern methods was in 2003, during the last solar maximum, and it was so powerful that it overloaded the sensors measuring it. The sensors cut out at X28.

Very strong X-class flares are often associated with coronal mass ejections.

And it is interesting to note that the coronal mass ejection that caused “the Carrington Event” actually happened on this exact day in 1859…

Solar flares are relatively common events, but the flare that set off the ‘Carrington Event’ on Sept. 1, 1859 was anything but common.

It was then that an English astronomer, Richard Carrington, noticed a bright spot on the sun.

This particular flare was more impactful because it was joined by what’s called a coronal mass ejection or CME. This is when a large concentration of plasma shoots out and, in this case, it was in Earth’s direction.

Scientists have warned us over and over again that it is just a matter of time before another Carrington Event takes place.

In fact, there was a near miss that we “barely escaped” in 2012…

Scientists think we barely escaped getting hit by one such huge storm that erupted from the sun in July 2012 that was at least as strong as the Carrington Event and could have cost over $2 trillion in damage. “The only difference is, it missed,” Daniel Baker, a space weather researcher at the University of Colorado, said a couple of years later.

If another “Carrington Event” were to happen in 2022, it would truly be a worldwide apocalyptic disaster…

Insurance company Lloyds of London investigated this very question and produced a report on the matter in 2013.

“In the more extreme end of the spectrum, a major space weather event on the scale of the Carrington Event could lead to power loss for a period of weeks or more,” one section reads.

“This would cause major disruption to transport, food supplies, emergency and hospital services amongst other things. For example, if pumping operations needed to be suspended that would quickly affect water and fuel supplies, sewage systems and flood defences. The absence of such fundamental services could lead to major and widespread social unrest, riots and theft with ramifications for the insurance industry and society in general.”

Others have warned that a large enough event could result in power grids being down all over the globe for many months.

And without power for an extended period of time, normal activity all over the world would come to a screeching halt.

In such a scenario, we wouldn’t just be dealing with an “economic collapse” of unprecedented scope. The truth is that we would be facing a full-blown societal meltdown as law and order disappeared across the globe.

Without power, there would be a breakdown of even the most essential services. Even if some stores decided to remain open and were selling things for cash, their shelves would go empty almost immediately.

Just think about what your community would look like if there was suddenly no power, no functioning computers and no Internet for the next several months.

And as I noted earlier, scientists have assured us that such a scenario will happen someday.

Hopefully we can avoid such a nightmare here in 2022. But the fact that this colossal sunspot is currently pointing right at our planet should deeply alarm all of us.

I have repeatedly warned my readers that we need to be watching the sun, because the sun has been behaving rather oddly in recent years.

We have all become deeply dependent on the high tech control grid that has been constructed all around us, but the sun could potentially take that away from us in a single moment.

So let us keep a very close eye on this sunspot, because it certainly has the potential to turn all of our lives completely upside down.

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

What Would You Do If You Had To Go Through The Economic Horrors Of 2008 Again? (Spoiler Alert: The Next Economic Crisis Has Already Begun)

August 31, 2022August 31, 2022 by Michael

If you knew for certain that we were about to plunge into another massive economic downturn like we experienced during the “Great Recession”, how would you respond? The events of the second half of 2008 took almost everyone by surprise, and the vast majority of the population was completely unprepared for what happened next. Millions of Americans lost their jobs, and that meant that they were suddenly unable to pay their bills. Countless households got behind on their mortgages and rent payments, and we witnessed a dramatic spike in foreclosures and evictions. I wish that we would never have to see such suffering again, but unfortunately it is already starting to happen right in front of our eyes.

The Biden administration keeps insisting that the U.S. economy is in good condition, but if that is the case why are so many large companies now laying off workers?

On Wednesday, we learned that Snap Inc. will be laying off approximately 20 percent of their entire global workforce…

Snap Inc., the parent company of the popular app Snapchat, announced plans to lay off some 20% of its more than 6,400 global employees.

The news will impact the jobs of more than 1,200 staffers at the tech giant, and comes as broader economic conditions have deteriorated in recent months amid rising inflation and the Federal Reserve’s interest rates hikes. The recent market downturn has especially pummeled the tech sector, where news of hiring freezes, layoffs, and other cost-cutting measures have dominated headlines for months.

Of course it isn’t just the tech industry that is getting monkey-hammered these days.

It was also just announced that Bed Bath & Beyond will be permanently closing 150 stories and will be getting rid of about 20 percent of their corporate employees…

Bed Bath & Beyond is in deep turmoil. The company is trying to rescue itself and stay out of bankruptcy by shrinking.

The chain said Wednesday that it will lay off approximately 20% of corporate employees, close around 150 stores and slash several of its in-house home goods’ brands.

Crucially, the company also said it secured more than $500 million in financing to shore up its ailing financial straits.

Normally, retailers wait until after the lucrative holiday season before announcing store closings.

So this move seems highly unusual.

Sadly, this is all part of a “layoff tsunami” that has now started. As I discussed the other day, approximately half of all U.S. companies anticipate that they will be eliminating jobs over the next 12 months.

Needless to say, a “tsunami of layoffs” is only going to accelerate the new housing crash that we are now witnessing.

Last week, total mortgage application volume was 63 percent lower than it was during the same week in 2021…

After falling back earlier this month, mortgage rates began rising sharply again to the highest level since mid-July. That caused mortgage demand to pull back even further.

Total mortgage application volume fell 3.7% last week compared with the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s seasonally adjusted index. Volume was 63% lower than the same week one year ago.

63 percent!

What a catastrophe.

And many other recent numbers confirm the fact that we are now past the peak of the housing bubble and are now on the way down…

Sales volume of existing homes plunged by 20% from a year ago across the US, and by 31% in California, and by 41% in San Diego. Median prices in the West have begun to drop, and in the San Francisco Bay Area fell below year-ago-levels, including by 8% in San Francisco. Sales of new houses plunged by nearly 30% year-over-year across the US, and in the West by 50%, as the supply of new houses has exploded to 11 months, the highest since the peak of Housing Bust 1. And big institutional buyers have started to pull out of this market because they don’t want to overpay. This has been going on for months.

Home prices have only just begun to drop.

They could potentially go down a lot further, because soaring mortgage rates have put home ownership out of reach for a huge chunk of the population at this point.

What we really need is for the Federal Reserve to stop hiking interest rates.

But Fed officials have already told us that they aren’t going to do that.

So the housing crash that we are currently experiencing is only going to get worse.

Meanwhile, an increasing number of renters are getting behind on their rent payments. In fact, it is being reported that 3.8 million renters believe that it is likely that they will be evicted within the next two months…

For the first time ever, the median rent in the U.S. topped $2,000 a month in June — and the increases show no sign of stopping.

Those rising rents mean that households representing a total of 8.5 million people were behind on their rent at the end of August, according to Census Bureau figures. And 3.8 million of those renters say they’re somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.

If things are this bad already, what will conditions look like once millions more Americans have lost their jobs?

Just like we saw in 2008, huge numbers of evictions and foreclosures are on the horizon, and the middle class is going to be absolutely eviscerated by this crisis.

Last time around, the Fed was able to reduce the severity of the crisis by pushing interest rates to the floor and by pumping trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system.

This time around they are unlikely to implement such measures because they are deathly afraid of causing even more inflation.

So the stage is set for an economic meltdown of absolutely epic proportions, and there is no hero that is going to come riding to the rescue.

We are about to experience the consequences of literally decades of exceedingly foolish decisions.

Enjoy the rest of the summer while you still can, because the U.S. economy is only going to go downhill from here.

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

Here Are 5 Examples That Show Why There Is A Mass Exodus Out Of Major U.S. Cities Right Now

August 30, 2022August 30, 2022 by Michael

Once upon a time, our major cities were highly civilized places that were filled with highly civilized people. In fact, there was a time when even our largest cities were sparkling clean and people dressed up in their best clothes would leisurely stroll through downtown areas without being concerned that they might be suddenly attacked. But now everything has changed. Crime rates are surging all over the nation, open air drug markets have become commonplace in many communities, an epidemic of homelessness is rapidly growing from coast to coast, and there are countless predators that fearlessly roam the streets searching for their next victims. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why so many Americans have been fleeing our urban areas in recent years. Our once great cities are degenerating into crime-infested hellholes, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Let me give you an example. In New York City, armed moped thieves are now brazenly terrorizing random citizens and robbing them in broad daylight…

New York City has been hit by spate of recent thefts by armed moped thieves who aggressively drive up onto city sidewalks and attack unsuspecting victims.

Three of the most recent attacks happened over the weekend where thieves ripped a $12,000 Rolex watch from a man’s arm while he was walking in Chelsea and the very next day, two women walking near the Guggenheim Museum on the Upper East Side fought off thieves on a moped who tried to snatch their jewelry.

A third attack happened in Inwood. In all three, the thieves on bikes jump the sidewalks, reach out at their unsuspecting victims and attempt to rob them.

This is the sort of thing that normally happens in third world countries.

Now it is happening here.

On the west coast, things are getting really crazy too.

The number of homicides in Hollywood has doubled this year, and Los Angeles Police Department Captain Ray Valois is also extremely concerned about the huge spike in armed robberies that his department has been seeing…

“You’ll have a victim walking back to their car, maybe from a night out, and a suspect will come up behind them with a gun and say, ‘Give me all your money.’ Those are the ones that concern me the most and those are what I believe we had a spike in,” Capt. Valois said.

Capt. Valois says it’s important for Angelenos and visitors to be aware of street lighting, especially at night.

Actually, I don’t think that is very wise advice.

If you choose to go out in the Hollywood area at night in 2022, you are literally putting your life on the line.

Farther north, one of the biggest problems in San Francisco these days is the hordes of homeless people that seem to grow with each passing month.

Many of them are drug addicts, and way too often those addicts can be found passed out or defecating on the streets of one of the wealthiest cities in the entire world…

Rows of tents were pictured lined up outside businesses with people’s belongings strewn across the sidewalk.

Homeless individuals, some of whom were struggling with clear physical ailments as well as drug and alcohol addiction, sat in the street right outside entrances to residential properties and small businesses struggling to bounce back after highly restrictive COVID laws forced them to close, destroying revenues.

Some images depicted addicts openly smoking illegal drugs on the sidewalk and passing out on the asphalt in the middle of the day.

All the way up in Portland, being at the wrong place at the wrong time can literally get you killed.

It wasn’t always this way. Once upon a time, Portland was one of the most beautiful and most peaceful cities in the entire country.

But now there are times when the streets of Portland literally resemble a war zone. The following example happened just this past Sunday night…

At one of the street racing takeovers on Sunday night near the Expo Center attended by hundreds, an elderly man in a van appeared to be caught in the road before being violently attacked by an armed mob. Video posted on social media shows that as he desperately attempted to reverse and drive away while being attacked, he backed into a car.

A man in the crowd then fires at least 18 rounds at his fleeing van. A follow-up video shows the crowd catching up with the elderly man who had stopped on a patch of grass. He appeared to be in shock and was bleeding heavily.

Lastly, let me talk about Baltimore a bit.

In the old days, I would visit Baltimore quite often.

It was scary in those times, and things have gotten significantly worse since then.

When I read about what just happened to an Apple TV+ show that features Natalie Portman in a leading role, I just had to smile…

The Apple TV+ show “Lady in the Lake” was filming in downtown Baltimore when two local hoodlums claimed that the Hollywood crew were on their turf and needed to pay up. The drug dealers forced the production to shut down around 4 pm but said they could resume working for a fee of $50,000.

The pair brandished a firearm and reportedly pointed it at members of the crew. After they delivered their ultimatum, the two left and said they would return a few hours later for the production’s response.

Baltimore police confirmed to The Baltimore Banner that the two men who made the threats were local drug dealers and were serious.

The moral of the story is that you should never, ever film a television show in Baltimore.

In fact, unless you are a drug dealer, a crime lord or an extremely corrupt politician that is in league with the first two groups you should probably avoid the city completely.

Of course the entire country is going downhill really fast. Our culture is systematically degenerating right in front of our eyes, and a society with a degenerate culture will inevitably collapse.

If we do not rescue our culture, there is no future for America.

I wish that more people would realize this, because time to turn things around is rapidly slipping away.

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

Their Economy Is Collapsing All Around Them As Europeans Head Into An Extremely Cold And Bitter Winter

August 29, 2022August 29, 2022 by Michael

Last winter, Europeans were looking forward to yet another year of peace and prosperity. This winter, Europeans will find themselves right in the middle of an economic collapse. It is often said that energy is the economy, and energy is going to be in very short supply in the months ahead. Thanks to the war in Ukraine and a number of other factors, energy prices in Europe have shot up to levels that would have once been unthinkable, and several European governments are already preparing to ration energy. This is going to have a tremendous impact on economic activity, and it is going to mean that this winter is going to be extremely cold and extremely bitter for millions upon millions of Europeans.

In Poland, many households usually use coal that is imported from Russia to heat their homes, but that won’t happen this year because of the war.

As a result, some desperate people are now standing in line for days just to have the opportunity to buy some coal…

According to Reuters, with Poland still basking in the late summer heat, hundreds of cars and trucks have already lined up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, as householders fearful of winter shortages wait for days and nights to stock up on heating fuel ahead of the coming cold winter in queues reminiscent of communist times.

Artur, 57, a pensioner, drove up from Swidnik, some 30 km (18 miles) from the mine in eastern Poland on Tuesday, hoping to buy several tonnes of coal for himself and his family.

“Toilets were put up today, but there’s no running water,” he said, after three nights of sleeping in his small red hatchback in a crawling queue of trucks, tractors towing trailers and private cars. “This is beyond imagination, people are sleeping in their cars. I remember the communist times but it didn’t cross my mind that we could return to something even worse.”

Would you wait in a line for several days just to get some coal for your family?

I suppose if you were desperate enough, perhaps you would.

Video footage of Polish citizens lined up for coal is so bizarre that it is difficult to believe that it is actually real.

In Poland, where coal is king, dozens are lining up at the Lubelski Wegiel Bogdanka coal mine, waiting for days and nights to stock up on heating fuel. Read more: https://t.co/jVGwSEfLam pic.twitter.com/zZV3vtzEQk

— Reuters Business (@ReutersBiz) August 27, 2022

Unfortunately, this is not a bad dream.

This is the world that we live in now.

In the UK, countless consumers will be facing financial hardship this winter as energy bills soar into the stratosphere…

Millions of households will see their energy bills rocket as the price cap is hiked to £3,549 a year, plunging many into financial hardship.

The record 80% October increase, announced by the regulator Ofgem, will see a typical default tariff customer paying an extra £1,578, laying bare the deepening cost of living crisis.

The rise follows a 54% increase in April, which saw average bills surge to £1,971 a year.

A third of all UK citizens are already having trouble paying their energy bills, and this new increase won’t even be implemented until October.

So how high will that figure be six months from now?

Will half the country be struggling to pay their energy bills at that point?

And as energy bills go higher and higher, even more people will be pushed out of the middle class.

Right now, poverty is on the rise all over Europe.

For example, just check out this video footage of people lined up for food in Italy’s wealthiest city.

Lines to the food bank in Italy’s richest city Milan are getting very long…

Food price inflation is pushing families to the edge.

pic.twitter.com/KXsgQ3D2Yh

— Wall Street Silver (@WallStreetSilv) August 28, 2022

This sort of thing isn’t supposed to happen in Milan.

But it is happening.

And things are going to get a whole lot worse for western Europe if Russia decides to totally cut off the gas.

Already, Russia has reduced the amount of natural gas that it is supplying through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline to just 20 percent, and one German official is entirely convinced that it will soon go to zero…

Germany faces the “bitter reality” that Russia will not restore gas supplies to the country, the German economy minister said on Monday, ahead of planned halt by state energy giant Gazprom of exports to Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline.

“It won’t come back … It is the bitter reality,” Robert Habeck said in a panel with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

If that actually happens, western Europe will suffer tremendously.

The Europeans never should have allowed themselves to become so dependent on Russian gas, and now “worst case scenarios” are staring them right in the face.

France is already preparing to ration energy this winter.

So is Germany, and so are a number of other large western European nations.

But it won’t be enough just to get through this winter.

According to the prime minister of Belgium, “the next five to 10 winters will be difficult” for those living in western Europe…

The country’s prime minister, Alexander De Croo, told reporters on Monday that fellow citizens can expect that “the next five to 10 winters will be difficult” due to the country’s worsening energy crisis exacerbated by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“The development of the situation is very difficult throughout Europe,” De Croo told Belgium broadcaster VRT.

“In a number of sectors, it is really difficult to deal with those high energy prices. We are monitoring this closely, but we must be transparent: The coming months will be difficult, the coming winters will be difficult,” he added.

Yes, this is really happening.

And don’t think that you are going to get a free pass just because you are living here in the United States.

Energy bills are skyrocketing here too, and it is being reported that one out of every six homes is already behind on their utility bills…

According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, roughly 20 million households in the U.S. — one out of six homes — are behind on their utility bills.

The consequences could be dire.

“I expect a tsunami of shutoffs,” Jean Su, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, tells Bloomberg.

The worst energy crisis in modern history is here, and it is going to get a lot worse.

This is just one of the reasons why I have been so adamant about becoming more independent of the system.

Many people believed that they would always be able to depend on the power grid to bring endless cheap energy to their homes.

But now energy bills are surging to ridiculous heights, and energy use will be severely restricted all over Europe this winter.

And even top European officials are admitting that things are going to be tough for many years to come.

The writing is on the wall, and I hope that everyone can see it.

The “tipping point” that so many of us have warned about has arrived, and the months ahead are going to be exceedingly painful.

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

Why Are So Many Bad Things Happening To America In 2022?

August 28, 2022August 28, 2022 by Michael

Have you ever wondered why we just keep getting hit by one thing after another? I grew up during a time when it seemed like America was endlessly blessed, but now everything around us seems the opposite of blessed. Our economy is imploding, inflation is out of control, the housing market is starting to crash, our weather patterns have gone completely nuts, the western half of the nation is enduring the worst drought in 1,200 years, we are dealing with three major pandemics simultaneously, we are losing our proxy war with Russia in Ukraine and it looks like war with China is just around the corner, and on top of everything else our political system is failing because liberals and conservatives deeply, deeply hate one another. And if you think that there is hope on the horizon, you are going to be severely disappointed. The current crop of politicians in Washington is the worst that we have had in our entire history, and all of the “solutions” they give us just seem to make matters even worse.

This weekend, I came across a very intriguing article in the Jerusalem Post entitled “Is God punishing the United States of America?”

It was authored by a prominent businessman named Sherwin Pomerantz, and it really got me thinking.

Could it be possible that there is a common thread that connects all of the bad things that are constantly happening to us?

In his article, one of the points that Pomerantz makes is that America’s political system is coming apart at the seams right in front of our eyes…

Politically, whether people want to admit it or not, the country is in the midst of a civil war, though for the moment, not one where both sides have taken up arms, one against the other (although that, too, could eventuate).

Sadly, he is right on target.

There is so much politically-motivated hatred in our country today. Liberals deeply hate conservatives and conservatives deeply hate liberals. It would seem that it is only a matter of time before the entire system shatters.

On another note, Pomerantz believes that it is no coincidence that our weather patterns have gone totally haywire and that our nation is being constantly hit by natural disaster after natural disaster…

Then there is the weather. On average, the US experiences fewer than 1,500 tornadoes a year. Through June, there have already been 940 reported tornadoes there, which means the country is on track to see 2,000 or more, a 33% increase year-on-year.

The nightly news out of the US for the past few months shows tens of millions of people under extreme weather risk every day, often in three different areas of the country simultaneously (upper Midwest, East coast and the Southeast region). In the west, a long period of drought has been drying up reservoirs and spawning massive forest fires. National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) statistics show that as of July 5, 34,478 fires have already burned 4,582,301 acres. This is above the 10-year average of 27,346 fires, and twice the average of 2,026,917 acres burned. The odd thing is that very little of this occurs just north of the US in Canada, or just south in Mexico. It all seems to be centered in the US.

I did find it odd that Pomerantz only briefly mentioned the drought, because it is actually a really big deal.

At this moment, the western half of the nation is in the midst of the worst multi-year megadrought that the region has experienced in 1,200 years, and this is having an absolutely devastating impact on agricultural production.

For example, we are now being warned that a very serious shortage of tomatoes could soon be coming…

As endless supply chain-related food shortages force people to adjust their grocery lists, another essential ingredient is becoming scarce. Along with avocados, cream cheese, chickpeas, and olive oil, the supply of tomatoes has started to dwindle. But this time it’s California’s catastrophic drought conditions denying farmers the water needed to grow the versatile vegetable that’s to blame. Due to the shortage, the price of byproducts like ketchup, salsa, and spaghetti sauce has started to surge.

Speaking about the tomato shortage, Head of the California Tomato Growers Association Mike Montana said the golden state desperately needs rain. “We are getting to a point where we don’t have inventory left to keep fulfilling the market demand,” he told Bloomberg News. California, which grows a quarter of the world’s tomatoes, is in the middle of a historic drought that has stoked massive wildfires while drying up reservoirs. It has also become a major threat to the agriculture industry.

When I was growing up, I never once imagined that there could ever be a shortage of tomatoes in this country.

But things have changed, and life in the U.S. will never again be like it was when I was a little boy.

Although to be honest I am having flashbacks to the 1970s with all of the inflation we are witnessing right now.

In fact, if the inflation rate was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would be higher than anything that we experienced during the Jimmy Carter era.

Over the past couple of years, our politicians in Washington have gone on the most dramatic borrowing and spending binge in human history, and the “experts” at the Federal Reserve pumped trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system.

Of course that was going to cause inflation, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.

I really like how Steve Bannon recently summed up what we are now facing…

Every time you get a paycheck you’re falling behind because of inflation. Your real wages, sixteen months in a row (now let me think, how long has the Biden Administration been around here – about 18 months). Every month since they’ve been here real wages are down.

Ok so you’re losing, your treadmill, you’re losing every day in your wages and now the little bit of equity you have in the world, the little bit of net worth you’ve got in the world, the bottom’s fallen out on that.

Ok. You are screwed. Let me be blunt. Let me do some Harvard Business School math for you – You’re screwed.

The Federal Reserve is recklessly hiking interest rates in a desperate attempt to battle inflation, but everyone knew that this would inevitably cause a housing crash.

And as I pointed out last week, a housing crash has already begun.

This July, new home sales were about 30 percent lower than they were last July…

The plunge in home sales is just stunning. Sales of new single-family houses collapsed by 12.6% in July from the already beaten-down levels in June, and by nearly 30% from July last year, to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 511,000 houses, the lowest since January 2016, and well below the lockdown lows, according to data from the Census Bureau today.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

If the Fed keeps raising rates, things will get far worse.

Meanwhile, we find ourselves battling three major pandemics all at once.

Despite everything that our health authorities have done, COVID is still with us and will be with us for many years to come.

If that wasn’t bad enough, a bird flu pandemic has erupted this year which has resulted in tens of millions of our chickens and turkeys being wiped out.

On top of that, a new monkeypox outbreak continues to spread at an exponential rate all over the planet.

Is it just some sort of a bizarre coincidence that we are now facing three major pestilences simultaneously?

Of course this article would not be complete unless I talked about the war.

We are now deeply involved in a proxy war with Russia in Ukraine, and it is not going very well.

And if both sides continue to escalate matters, we could eventually find ourselves in a nuclear conflict with Russia which would have the potential to ultimately kill billions of people.

In addition, the warmongers in the Biden administration have also brought us to the brink of a war with China. More U.S. politicians keep flying over to Taiwan, and at some point the Chinese are going to decide that they simply cannot take any more provocations.

Also, it is just a matter of time before Iran and Israel go to war. And once that happens, the U.S. will inevitably decide to intervene.

In this article, I have covered war, plagues, economic collapse and natural disasters among other things.

Could it be possible that all of these things are happening at this specific moment in human history for a reason?

And could it be possible that we were warned in advance that all of these things would be coming?

My hope is that this article will get people thinking.

All of human history has been building up to a grand crescendo, and we get to be here for it.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of the population has no idea what is ahead, and so most of them are going to be absolutely blind-sided by the cataclysmic events that are rapidly coming our way.

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

Is The 1008 Point Stock Market Crash A Sign That Another 2008 Is Coming?

August 26, 2022August 26, 2022 by Michael

In 2008, we experienced a nightmarish financial crisis that was felt in every corner of the globe. Is such an event about to happen again? On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged 1,008 points as panic swept through Wall Street in the aftermath of Jerome Powell’s dramatic speech in Wyoming. Powell made it exceedingly clear that interest rates are going to continue to go up, and that deeply alarmed investors. Some very vocal influencers in the financial community had been anticipating that the interest rate hikes would be ending soon, but now Powell has completely dashed those hopes. Wall Street is going to have to finally face reality in the weeks ahead, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

When I heard that the Dow had fallen 1,008 points on Friday, the last two digits immediately stood out to me.

We all remember what happened the last time a year ended in “08”.

Could this be a sign that another 2008 is coming?

Before you dismiss such a notion, there are other times when a stock market crash has seemed to have been a sign of things to come.

For example, on September 29th, 2008 the entire world was stunned when the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 777 points. That was a new all-time record, and fear swept through Wall Street like wildfire. The following comes from a CBS News report that was published in the immediate aftermath of that market crash…

Wall Street watched Washington with shock and fear as the bailout package flamed out on Capital Hill.

And as that $700 billion financial rescue plan went down, the Dow went down like a sub, hurtling the Dow Jones industrials down nearly 780 points in its largest one-day point drop ever, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason.

“Nobody could believe it,” said Ted Weisberg of Seaport Securities. “The fact that it did not get done is just mind-boggling.” The result on Wall Street was a history-making 777-point nosedive. The Nasdaq plunged almost 10 percent.

Many thought that it was rather odd that the stock market would fall 777 points just as a 7 year Shemitah cycle was ending and a new 7 year Shemitah cycle was beginning.

Rosh Hashanah started on the evening of September 29th, 2008, and all throughout history we have seen really big things happen on or around the times of major Biblical festivals.

Ultimately, the weeks following September 29th, 2008 were some of the most difficult that we have ever seen for Wall Street. A great financial crisis shook the entire planet, and the U.S. economy plunged into what would become known as “the Great Recession”.

7 years later, there was another stock market crash in 2015. It was immensely painful at the time, but not a lot of people remember it today.

Now another 7 years have passed, and it appears that we are on the verge of yet another major panic on Wall Street.

Interestingly, another cycle seems to be repeating as well.

As I discussed the other day, this is the 14th anniversary of the housing crash of 2008.

But what most people don’t remember is that there was another housing crash 14 years before that in 1994.

And if you go back 14 years before that, you will find that the U.S. housing market was crashing in 1980.

Now the U.S. housing market is crashing again, and this one could turn out to be the most painful of them all.

If the Federal Reserve would just stop raising interest rates, we may have had a shot at avoiding a complete collapse of the housing bubble.

But that isn’t going to happen, and Jerome Powell made that exceptionally clear on Friday morning…

In a keynote speech at the Federal Reserve’s annual Jackson Hole Economic Symposium Friday morning, Powell said that the path to reducing inflation would not be quick or easy, adding that the task, “requires using our tools forcefully to bring demand and supply into better balance.”

“Using our tools forcefully”?

That doesn’t sound good at all.

And during his speech he actually seemed to promise that “some pain” would be coming for U.S. households and U.S. businesses…

“While higher interest rates, slower growth and softer labor market conditions will bring down inflation, they will also bring some pain to households and businesses,” he said. “These are the unfortunate costs of reducing inflation. But a failure to restore price stability would mean far greater pain.”

Even with four consecutive interest rate hikes, including two back-to-back 75-basis-point increases, Powell stressed that the Fed is not in a place to “stop or pause” — an unwelcome sign for investors who were predicting a rate cut next year.

So more interest rate hikes are coming.

Will it be a half a percentage point next month or will it be three-quarters of a point once again?

Only time will tell, but either choice will accelerate the collapse of the housing market and will bring even more pain for Wall Street.

Something that I will be watching very closely is the derivatives market. As Alasdair Macleod recently explained, the derivatives bubble has expanded to a size that is almost unimaginable…

By far the largest problem in a period of credit contraction is to be found in over-the-counter derivatives. These are unlisted contractual agreements between counterparties, including commodity contracts, credit default swaps, equity linked contracts, foreign exchange derivatives, and interest rate derivatives. According to the BIS’s database, in December 2021 the notional amounts outstanding of all contracts was $610 trillion. These positions are the total of seventy dealers’ returns in twelve jurisdictions, capturing an estimated 94% of the total covered in the BIS’s triannual survey, suggesting that the true total outstanding is closer to $650 trillion.

Once this derivatives bubble finally bursts, it will be an event that will be absolutely cataclysmic for the global financial system.

I have been specifically warning about the dangers posed by the derivatives bubble for many years, and it is only a matter of time before it comes crashing down.

Unfortunately, what Jerome Powell and his minions at the Fed are doing threatens to greatly destabilize financial markets.

Wall Street is not prepared for an interest rate shock, and I believe that Fed officials are making a tragic policy error.

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

European Natural Gas Prices Are 6 Times Higher Than Last Year, And This Is Sparking Widespread Civil Unrest All Over Europe

August 25, 2022August 25, 2022 by Michael

This is going to be a bitterly cold winter for a whole lot of people. In particular, things are likely to get really uncomfortable in Europe. Soaring energy prices and concern about potential shortages are causing anxiety all over the continent, and widespread protests have already started to take place. The cost of living has become extremely painful for those on the bottom of the economic food chain, and people want their governments to do something. Of course this is what always happens when nations embrace socialism. There is an expectation that those in charge will solve any and every problem, but this time around the limitations of the socialists running Europe will become very clear.

Thanks to the war in Ukraine and a number of other factors, the price of natural gas in Europe is now approximately six times higher than it was last year…

European natural gas prices are taking a breather amid further signs that soaring energy costs are crippling economic output, heaping pressure on politicians to resolve the crisis with winter just a few months away.

Benchmark futures retreated after settling at a record high on Monday. Prices are still about six times higher than they were at this time last year, with the panic spreading across nations ahead of peak winter demand.

Needless to say, many in Europe are being completely stunned by the size of their energy bills, and a massive backlash has been brewing.

In fact, we are already starting to see very large protests in a number of different countries…

British grassroots group “Don’t Pay UK” is calling for people to boycott energy bills from Oct. 1, while the trade union-backed “Enough is Enough” campaign kicked off a series of rallies and actions in mid-August calling for pay rises, rent caps, cheaper energy and food, and taxes on the rich.

A worsening cost-of-living crisis across Europe has already seen workers in France, Spain and Belgium go out on strike in the public transport, health and aviation sectors, pushing for higher wages to help them cope with rocketing inflation.

But this is just the beginning.

As supplies get even tighter this winter, energy costs are only going to go higher.

And a lot of officials in Europe are extremely concerned about the potential for shortages and blackouts.

Even now, this energy crisis is forcing some big companies to significantly curtail activity…

The list of industries that are curbing output is growing. Poland’s biggest chemicals company, Grupa Azoty SA, has stopped making some of its key products and trimmed production of ammonia because of record gas prices, it said in a statement on Tuesday.

Unless the war in Ukraine comes to a speedy conclusion, this crisis is not going away any time soon.

So the people of Europe are going to be asked to make additional sacrifices in the months ahead. This week, French President Emmanuel Macron actually used the phrase “end of abundance” to describe what citizens of his country would soon be facing…

Emmanuel Macron has warned the French they are facing sacrifices and what he called the “end of abundance”, at his government’s first cabinet meeting after the summer holidays.

The president, speaking before ministers at the Élysée, said the country was at a “tipping point” and faced a difficult winter and a new era of instability caused by climate change and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Based on the anger that we are already witnessing, I don’t think that the people of Europe are going to handle the “end of abundance” too well.

Meanwhile, energy prices in the U.S. continue to skyrocket as well. At this point, the price of natural gas in the U.S. has risen more than 150 percent in 2022…

U.S. natural gas prices briefly hurdled $10 per million British thermal units (BTUs) on Tuesday, the highest since 2008. They are up more than 150% this year.

Approximately half the population uses natural gas to heat their homes.

So this is really troubling news.

Energy bills in this country are going to be absolutely obscene this winter, and we have already reached a point where about one out of every 6 of us are behind on our 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.

In state after state, the percentage of customers that are behind on their energy bills just continues to go higher and higher. Here are a couple of examples…

California’s PG&E Corp. has seen a more than 40% jump since February 2020 in the number of residential customers behind on payments. For New Jersey’s Public Service Enterprise Group, the total is up more than 30% for customers at least 90 days late—and that’s just since March.

If things are this bad already, what will the numbers look like if energy bills go up another 50 percent or more this winter?

We are being warned that a “tsunami of shutoffs” is coming, and that is not an exaggeration at all.

In both the United States and Europe, there are going to be millions upon millions of people that cannot afford to heat their homes.

And when there are vast numbers of people that cannot even afford to pay for the essentials, that is a recipe for civil unrest.

According to one professor that tracks these things, we have already seen approximately 10,000 protests of an economic nature around the world since last November…

Whichever route they choose, the coming winter is set to be plagued by social unrest, warned Naomi Hossain, a professor of development politics at the American University in Washington D.C. who is studying energy, fuel and food riots.

At a conservative estimate, 10,000 such protests have taken place worldwide since last November, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation – with more expected in an uncertain future.

For years, I have been relentlessly warning that unprecedented civil unrest would be coming.

Now it is here, and it is only going to get worse.

I would very much encourage you to do what you can to become more independent from the power grid.

Energy bills are headed to heights that would have once been unimaginable, and this is going to cause excruciating pain all over the western world.

***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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