Money

The Dollar Has Entered A Death Spiral, And A Lot More Inflation Is On The Way

January 12, 2022 by Michael

Did anyone out there actually expect things to turn out differently? When the federal government kept borrowing and spending trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have, we were warned that this day was coming. And when the Federal Reserve kept pumping trillions upon trillions of fresh dollars into our financial system, we were warned that this day was coming. So why is anybody surprised by what is happening at this point? On Wednesday, it was being reported that in December the U.S. consumer price index rose at the fastest pace in nearly 40 years…

Inflation rose at the fastest pace in nearly four decades in December, as rapid price gains fueled consumer fears about the economy and sent President Biden’s approval rating tumbling.

The consumer price index rose 7% in December from a year ago, according to a new Labor Department report released Wednesday, marking the fastest increase since June 1982, when inflation hit 7.1%. The CPI – which measures a bevy of goods ranging from gasoline and health care to groceries and rents – jumped 0.5% in the one-month period from November.

They keep telling us that the consumer price index was actually increasing at a faster rate back in 1982, but whenever the corporate media makes such a claim they are not being honest.

The way that the consumer price index is calculated has been changed more than two dozen times since 1980, and every single time it has been changed the goal was to make the rate of inflation look smaller.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the consumer price index was still calculated the way it was back in 1990, the official rate of inflation would be above 10 percent right now.

And if the consumer price index was still calculated the way it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation would be above 15 percent right now.

But 7 percent sounds a whole lot better than 15 percent, doesn’t it?

We can get a better picture of what is really going on out there when we start looking at individual categories. The following category numbers were posted earlier today by Citizen Free Press…

Gasoline up 56%
Heating oil up 42%
Used cars: 37.3%
Car rental: 36%
Natural gas up 31%
Hotels: 27.6%
Beef: 18.6%
Pork: 15.1%
Furniture: 13.8%
New cars: 12%

Unfortunately, it looks like the price of gasoline will soon go even higher.

In fact, Reuters is telling us that some analysts are projecting that the price of oil could soon exceed 100 dollars a barrel…

Oil prices that rallied 50% in 2021 will power further ahead this year, some analysts predict, saying a lack of production capacity and limited investment in the sector could lift crude to $90 or even above $100 a barrel.

It takes energy to transport virtually all of the goods that we purchase on a regular basis, and so a higher price for gasoline will cause inflationary pressure throughout our entire economy.

Some companies are responding to this crisis by giving their customers less for the same price that they were charging before.

For example, if you order chicken wings from Domino’s Pizza you will only get a package of eight from now on…

Domino’s Pizza customers ordering chicken wings will soon get fewer of them for the same price.

The pizza chain said it’s cutting the number of wings in its $7.99 carry out offer from 10 pieces to just eight because of rising food and labor costs. Wings will also become an online exclusive, meaning customers can no longer order them via phone.

All around us, there is evidence that our standard of living is rapidly going down.

The cost of living is increasing much, much faster than paychecks are, and that is an extremely alarming trend. According to Zero Hedge, real average hourly earnings have now declined for 9 months in a row…

Finally, and perhaps most importantly for Main Street, real average hourly earnings fell (down 2.4% YoY) for the 9th straight month…

So the next time a politician tries to tell you to be grateful that your wages are going up or you can move to a new higher paying job, just remind him that the surge in the cost of living is outpacing wage gains, thanks to The Fed’s money-largesse and Congress’ lockdown policies and helicopter money have crushed the quality of life for millions.

In other words, most Americans are getting poorer.

Meanwhile, the appalling nationwide shortages that have erupted continue to make headlines all over the nation.

According to USA Today, the following are some of the most severe shortages that we are witnessing right now…

-Baby formula shortage

-Cream cheese shortage

-Aluminum shortage

-Cat food, dog food shortages

-Chicken tender shortage

-Lunchables shortage

-Toilet paper shortage

-Beer shortage

And it turns out that fear of Omicron has also sparked a really bad shortage of cold medicine…

Stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth area are facing cold medicine shortages as flu season picks up and the omicron variant of the coronavirus continues.

“The new toilet paper shortage,” an employee at an East Dallas pharmacy told Fox 4 of the empty shelves.

One pharmacist at a CVS location in East Dallas said that customers with symptoms appearing to be the coronavirus or flu have been buying up cold medicine and cough syrup, while others are coming in to just stock up.

So if you were thinking of stocking up on Benadryl for some reason, I would go out and grab some while you still can.

The corporate media seems absolutely stunned that our politicians in Washington and the magicians at the Federal Reserve have lost control of our economy.

But we were warned for years that what they were doing would kill the U.S. dollar, and the death spiral that we have now entered is going to become exceedingly painful.

What we are experiencing now is not just another short-term economic crisis.

This truly is the beginning of the end for the U.S. economy, and I would recommend that you 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 Snyder and my brand new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available on Amazon.com. During this season, I would like to encourage you to send digital copies of my new book to your family and friends as gifts. That will help to support the work that I am doing, and it will help to multiply the impact of the book. 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) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. 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. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

“It’s Like A Soviet Store”: Americans Are Absolutely Horrified By Empty Shelves From Coast To Coast

January 11, 2022 by Michael

A year ago, we were promised that the Biden regime would be leading us into a new golden era of prosperity. Obviously, that has not happened. Instead, we are dealing with bare store shelves and painfully high prices from coast to coast. Many are comparing this crisis to the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s, but we didn’t have persistent shortages for months on end back then. At this point, nobody can deny what is happening. Even the Washington Post is admitting that “social media is swamped with pictures of empty grocery shelves”. The Biden administration promised to resolve our supply chain problems, but they just keep getting worse. When Fox News asked one grocery shopper about the empty shelves, he delivered a chilling response that many of us will not forget any time soon: “It’s like a Soviet store during 1981. It’s horrible.”

Prior to the pandemic, many Americans believed that it was impossible for something like this to ever happen in the United States of America.

But it is happening.

Another shopper that was interviewed by Fox News actually used the word “starving” in his response…

Larry, another D.C. shopper, told Fox News: “Whatever it is, I know they need to hurry up and get this straightened out because people will be starving. It’s going to get rough if it keeps on continuing like that.”

Multiple shoppers rattled off a litany of groceries they couldn’t find, ranging from milk to beverages to produce.

“Everything, meat, egg, dairy, certain breads were out, most vegetables, it was all fresh items,” one man said as he left a Giant grocery store.

No, nobody in this country is going to be “starving” in the near future, but without a doubt things are starting to get really crazy.

In fact, things are so bad that even CNN has been forced to admit that our store shelves are being “wiped clean”…

Grocery store shelves across America are wiped clean, and they’re staying empty as stores struggle to quickly restock everyday necessities such as milk, bread, meat, canned soups and cleaning products.

Disgruntled shoppers have unleashed their frustration on social media over the last several days, posting photos on Twitter of bare shelves at Trader Joe’s locations, Giant Foods and Publix stores, among many others.

If fear of Omicron can do this, what would our country look like during a major long-term national emergency?

You might want to start thinking about that.

Grocery chains are very much aware that a wave of “panic buying” has erupted around the nation, and so they are trying to do what they can to keep it from getting even worse…

Grocery stores certainly are aware of the empty shelves, Lempert said, and they are trying to mitigate panic buying, which only worsens it the situation.

One strategy: Fanning out products. They’re doing this by putting out both limited varieties and limited quantities of each product in an attempt to prevent hoarding and stretch out their supplies between deliveries.

But fanning out products isn’t really going to fool anyone.

We can all see what is going on, and all of the photos that are going up on social media are just going to fuel the frenzy even more.

The good news is that at least things are better in this country than they are in much of the rest of the globe.

For example, people in Cuba are now waiting up to 11 hours in line just to get some food…

“I spent almost all night here just to buy something. It is not easy, it is a big sacrifice just to be able to eat,” shopper Edelvis Miranda, 47, told AFP at a market in Havana last week.

The homemaker had taken her place in the queue at about 1:00 am, and finally left around 11 hours later, just before noon.

So be thankful for the blessings that we still have.

Hopefully we will get some short-term relief and store shelves will start to look better once this wave of Omicron fades and warmer temperatures arrive.

But nothing is going to keep inflation from continuing to spiral out of control. According to CNBC, the median income in this country has actually fallen over the past two years even as the cost of living has risen substantially…

As consumers pay more for everything from groceries to gasoline, household income is failing to keep pace with a higher overall cost of living, according to recent reports.

Over the past two years, median income fell 3% while the cost of living rose nearly 7%, due, in part, to rising housing and medical costs.

In an attempt to keep making ends meet, U.S. consumers have now gone into more debt than ever before…

The average U.S. household with debt now owes $155,622, or more than $15 trillion altogether, including debt from credit cards, mortgages, home equity lines of credit, auto loans, student loans and other household obligations — up 6.2% from a year ago.

In America today, most people are just barely scraping by from month to month.

Living paycheck to paycheck is not a good place to be, but that is reality for the vast majority of our population.

So when economic conditions get extremely bad in this country, most Americans are not going to have any sort of a financial cushion to fall back on.

And since the vast majority of our population is not “prepping” in any way, shape or form, any sort of long-term food shortage would get exceedingly painful very, very quickly.

For years, I have been encouraging my readers to make common sense preparations for the time when economic chaos would rock our nation.

Now that time has arrived, and most of our fellow citizens are completely and utterly unprepared for what is happening.

But if you think that this is the worst that can happen to us, just wait, because the truth is that what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

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

As Store Shelves Get Barer, Food Industry Insiders Are Warning That Supplies Will Get Even Tighter In The Weeks Ahead

January 10, 2022January 10, 2022 by Michael

It is happening again. In December, Joe Biden stood in front of the American people and boldly declared that he had defeated the supply chain crisis, but of course that wasn’t true. There have been persistent shortages for months on end, and now fear of Omicron is taking things to an entirely new level once again. On Monday, the hashtag #BareShelvesBiden was trending on Twitter, and that is because shelves are alarmingly bare in supermarkets from coast to coast. We are being told that these shortages are only “temporary”, but of course that was what we were told when nationwide shortages first began to pop up all the way back in early 2020.

Unfortunately, food industry experts are warning us that supplies are going to get even tighter in the weeks to come. For example, the following is what billionaire John Catsimatidis just told Fox News…

“Omicron is taking its toll at different levels of the supply chain, whether it’s the warehouses, whether it’s the selectors, the drivers the loaders – and as they call in sick there are interruptions in the system,” Catsimatidis told Todd Piro during an appearance on “Fox & Friends First.”

Catsimatidis went on to say that many of these interruptions will continue over the next 6 weeks as the COVID-19 variant impacts the labor market. The United Refining Company owner added that the Northeast in particular is seeing the price of various products, including eggs, poultry, and beef, go up because of low supply and high demand.

That sounds rather ominous.

Of course he is not alone. Egg Innovations CEO John Bruunquell is specifically warning that current conditions are likely to prevent his industry from supplying enough eggs to the general population…

Meanwhile, Egg Innovations CEO John Bruunquell, who acquired the first U.S. patent for reduced fat and cholesterol eggs, echoed Catsimatidis’ sentiment on “Fox & Friends” with co-host Ainsley Earhardt, warning that an uptick in demand coinciding with labor, freight and vendor issues may soon hamper egg supply.

So if shelves that normally hold meat and eggs are already bare in your area, they may be staying that way for a while.

And if the shelves that normally hold meat and eggs are not bare in your area, you may want to grab what you can while you still have the opportunity to do so. The shortages are escalating, and shelves appear to be getting emptier with each passing hour. According to Zero Hedge, Americans from coast to coast have been posting photographs of bare shelves on social media…

Before Christmas eve, President Biden declared his administration’s efforts to eliminate supply-chain bottlenecks ahead of the holiday season had succeeded. Ten days into the new year, we can firmly say that is not the case.

The hashtag “BareShelvesBiden” has been trending on Twitter for the last 24 hours. The hashtag ranked on Twitter’s most trending list as of late Sunday evening.

People from around the country tweeted pictures and videos of bare supermarket shelves as Biden’s Supply Chain Disruptions Task Force fails to address pandemic-induced disruptions.

In recent months I have been writing a lot of articles about this supply chain crisis, but even I didn’t anticipate that things would be this bad in early 2022.

Outside Annapolis, Maryland today pic.twitter.com/hJrQylV2ns

— BB_RN (@bbisback_4) January 9, 2022

Apocalypse now pic.twitter.com/j48ALuYtoQ

— Kayla Tausche (@kaylatausche) January 9, 2022

If we simply had enough workers to do all of the jobs that needed to be done, that would go a long way toward resolving this crisis.

In industry after industry, vast numbers of workers seem to have “disappeared” from the system, and this is causing a whole host of problems. For instance, FedEx is warning that a lack of staff will result in significant delays…

FedEx Corp warned on Friday that rising cases of Omicron variant has caused staff shortage and delay in shipments transported on aircraft.

“The explosive surge of the COVID-19 Omicron variant has caused a temporary shortage of available crew members and operational staff,” the company said.

I don’t know why FedEx is using the word “temporary”, because they have been operating without enough people for many months.

Of course it is just human nature to want to put a positive spin on things. So many people out there want to believe that the future is going to be brighter, because the last couple of years have really stunk.

In fact, just check out the words that Americans used when one recent survey asked them to describe 2021…

Among the words volunteered in response to the open-ended question to describe 2021 in a single word:

1. Awful/terrible/bad/sucked – 23%

2. Chaos/confusing/turmoil – 12%

3. Challenging/hard/rough – 11%

4. Disaster/train wreck/catastrophe – 6%

4. (Tied) Okay/good – 6%

Looking ahead, our economy is now the number one thing that Americans are concerned about…

The U.S. economy is the top priority for Americans, with inflation worries rising and pandemic-related fears waning, a poll released Monday showed.

Sixty-eight percent of Americans mention the economy in some way when asked an open-ended question about the top five priorities for the government to work on in 2022, according to a year-end poll taken by the Associated Press. Just 37 percent cited the virus, down from 53 percent a year earlier.

The American people want the supply chain crisis to be resolved, they want inflation to go back down, and they want life to return to the way that it used to be.

Unfortunately, none of those things are going to happen.

It has become exceedingly clear that our health authorities are completely incapable of defeating the pandemic, and it has also become exceedingly clear that our leaders in Washington are completely incapable of fixing the economy.

And if you think that things are bad now, just wait until we get a few more years down the road. Virtually everything that Joe Biden and his minions do makes things even worse, and we still have at least three more years of either him or Kamala Harris in the White House.

If you are waiting for the government to pull us out of this mess, you are going to be waiting an awfully long time.

Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and it would take a miracle of epic proportions to turn things around now.

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

BREAKDOWN: Basic Services And Supply Chains Are Rapidly Breaking Down All Over The Globe

January 9, 2022January 9, 2022 by Michael

I warned you that things would get even worse in 2022, and that is exactly what is happening. Throughout the latter stages of 2022, I documented how basic services were breaking down all across the country, but this was a trend that was largely ignored by the mainstream media until now. Fear of the Omicron variant has taken things to an entirely new level, and at this point things have gotten so bad that even the mainstream media is full of stories about this crisis. For example, over the weekend this was one of the Drudge Report’s main headlines: “NATIONWIDE BREAKDOWN OF SERVICES”. The following is an excerpt from that story…

Ambulances in Kansas speed toward hospitals then suddenly change direction because hospitals are full. Employee shortages in New York City cause delays in trash and subway services and diminish the ranks of firefighters and emergency workers. Airport officials shut down security checkpoints at the biggest terminal in Phoenix and schools across the nation struggle to find teachers for their classrooms.

The current explosion of omicron-fueled coronavirus infections in the U.S. is causing a breakdown in basic functions and services — the latest illustration of how COVID-19 keeps upending life more than two years into the pandemic.

This is happening almost everywhere, and it is deeply affecting industry after industry.

Last week, I wrote about how one man in St. Louis had to wait 10 hours for an ambulance to show up.

I still can’t get over that.

And once people get to our hospitals, often they can’t get treated in a timely manner because there aren’t enough workers. Of course hospitals are trying to hire as fast as they can, but finding qualified people is extremely difficult these days. For example, one hospital in Nebraska has been advertising for an ultrasound technician for six months and still has not received one single application…

Troy Bruntz runs Community Hospital, a 25-bed critical access facility in McCook, Nebraska. He’s been trying to recruit a third ultrasound technician for at least six months without getting a single application.

For lower-level positions, the hospital competes with the local Walmart store, where wages are rising. He monitors the pay offered by the retailer as well as the other large local employers, a hose manufacturer and an irrigation equipment supplier.

Isn’t that nuts?

There are more than 10 million open jobs in the United States today, but the U.S. economy only added 199,000 workers during the month of December…

The US economy added 199,000 jobs in December, the Labor Department reported Friday. That was the fewest jobs added in any month of 2021.

That was a major disappointment: Economists had forecast jobs growth of double that number.

So how could forecasts be so off again?

In the old days, adding 199,000 workers would have barely kept up with population growth.

But we can’t really talk about “population growth” these days, can we?

Our hospitals are being absolutely overwhelmed with the sick and the dying, but most of those same hospitals are now severely undermanned thanks to Biden’s absurd mandate for healthcare workers.

As a result, members of the National Guard are being forced to serve hospital duty in quite a few states…

An incoming tide of patients is slowly drowning UMass Memorial Medical Center, and the US military’s National Guard is working to plug the gaps. In wave after daily wave, the emergency crews pull up to the ambulance bay, dropping off patients for which there is no room.

“It’s just the perfect storm for a nightmare here in the emergency department,” says Dr. Eric Dickson, the CEO of the hospital and an emergency physician.

So if you show up at your local emergency room because you are dying, you may get “treated” by a member of the National Guard with no medical training whatsoever.

Meanwhile, our nightmarish supply chain crisis just continues to escalate.

In the waning days of 2021, optimists assured us that the computer chip shortage would soon go away, but the numbers are telling us that it has gotten even worse. In fact, the wait time for chip delivery is now the longest that it has ever been…

Delivery times for chips jumped in December, signaling the semiconductor shortage is worsening into the new year, according to research by Susquehanna Financial Group.

On average, lead times increased six days to approximately 25.8 weeks last month compared with November. This is the longest wait time since the firm began monitoring the data in 2017.

And thanks to fear of Omicron, we are starting to see very alarming shortages of meat and eggs at supermarkets from coast to coast…

SEVERAL American supermarkets are reporting incidents of “bare shelves” as fears grow over an imminent meat and egg shortage amid a surge in Omicron cases.

Food chains have been one of the first to be disrupted by the new super strain as workers fall ill and productivity drops.

If you are a “meat and potatoes” kind of person, I have some more bad news for you.

It turns out that there is a “growing global potato shortage” too…

There’s a growing global potato shortage — a real problem for a planet addicted to french fries and chips.

A number of popular items, including marmite and cream cheese, have faced scarcities amid supply chain disruptions wrought by the coronavirus pandemic and extreme weather. Potatoes are the latest to join the list, becoming unevenly available in some countries and fast-food chains because of a confluence of factors.

I tried to warn everyone that this was coming. If you don’t want a spoiler about where all of this is eventually headed, then definitely don’t read my latest book.

The economic optimists assured us that the shortages would be gone by 2022, but instead we are starting to see truly bizarre things happen.

In Norway, the military is actually issuing used underwear to the troops because shortages have become so intense…

Coronavirus supply chain issues have hit fuel supplies, led to shortages of masks, vaccines and electronic components, and snarled up holiday gift deliveries. In Britain, truck driver shortages led to fears last summer of pubs running dry.

Now, Norway’s military is facing a supply shortage that is particularly personal: New recruits are being asked to wear previously used undergarments – including socks, bras and underwear – returned by conscripts after they complete their service.

Doesn’t that sound fun?

Unfortunately, if you are in the military you have to do what you are told to do.

Of course our politicians seem to think that they can treat all of us like we are in the military these days.

They just keep imposing more rules, more restrictions and more mandates.

And the more they clamp down, the more our society is going to break down.

2022 is certainly off to an inauspicious start, and the weeks ahead certainly do not look very promising 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.***

This Is What Happens When Millions Of Workers Disappear From The System…

January 6, 2022 by Michael

We were warned that this would happen. In 2021, millions of Americans either quit their jobs or were forced out of their positions because of various mandates that were implemented all over the country. And as I discussed earlier this week, countless other workers either died or became incapacitated last year. As a result, our society is descending into a state of utter chaos and basic services are breaking down all around us.

Let me give you a perfect illustration of what I am talking about. On Sunday, a man in St. Louis called 911 because his brother needed to go to the hospital, and it took 10 hours for the ambulance to get there…

A St. Louis man said it took 10 hours for an ambulance to arrive to help his brother who fell ill Sunday afternoon.

Jesse Shaw said his older brother, Wilbert, is now in the hospital fighting for his life. Shaw said his brother woke up in so much pain, he couldn’t move.

If I called 911 and it took an ambulance 10 minutes to come, I would be greatly upset.

Can you imagine waiting for 10 hours?

That is crazy.

When Shaw asked about the delay, he was told that they simply didn’t have any vehicles available…

Shaw said he rushed over to his brother’s apartment and called 911 around 2:00 p.m. He was hoping to see an ambulance soon after that but ended up waiting for hours.

“An hour passed. Two hours passed. Three hours passed,” Shaw said. “I called back just to make sure. Maybe they had the wrong address or something. They said they had the right address, but just didn’t have any vehicles available at the moment.”

I am sure that St. Louis had plenty of empty ambulances just sitting around doing nothing.

It is just that they didn’t have enough workers to operate them.

Sadly, some people that actually get to the hospital on time end up dying in our emergency rooms. A few days ago, one of my readers emailed me about what is happening in her area, and she said that I could share this with all of you…

Hi Michael, I hope you are well. Just wanted to share experience where I work. I have worked for the same doctor for over 30 years and I work next to Hospital. 2 people died in waiting room in past week of the ER!. The wait is 12 to 24 hours. My neighbor was stuck in ER for 3 days because of no beds.

A 12 hour wait in an emergency room is inexcusable.

But this is what happens when you force thousands upon thousands of hospital workers out of their jobs in the middle of a major national health crisis.

Of course every industry is being hit hard by the trends that we are witnessing, and it is getting worse with each passing month.

4.5 million more Americans quit their jobs in November, and Mike Rowe is warning that “every single American” will be affected as multitudes of highly qualified people leave their posts…

FOX Business personality and “How America Works” narrator Mike Rowe cautioned that “every single American” will feel the effects from the record number of U.S. workers quitting their jobs.

He is right.

When basic services break down, we all suffer.

According to Rowe, he has “never seen anything like this”…

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Rowe noted. “I’ve heard from the energy industry, the flooring industry… the restaurant industry, the cable and broadband industry, they are all struggling with the same basic problem.”

I have never seen anything like this either.

But I specifically warned that this was coming.

I warned my readers repeatedly that all of these absurd mandates would cause widespread chaos, and that is exactly how it is playing out.

So what is the federal government going to do about this crisis?

Well, apparently yet another “stimulus package” is being prepared…

The Washington Post’s Tony Romm first reported that lawmakers from both parties were in talks about potentially proposing to pump billions into businesses, including hard-hit ones like restaurants. The Post reported that Sens. Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, and Roger Wicker, a Mississippi Republican — who are reportedly leading the talks — had put together a $68 billion proposal in December.

“We started with restaurants but we’re prepared to expand it if we can have the necessary support,” Cardin told reporters on Wednesday. “There’s other industries that have legitimate concerns.”

Throwing more money at the problem won’t bring back the workers that were sent packing because of the mandates.

And throwing more money at the problem certainly won’t bring the workers that have died back from the dead.

But it will cause more inflation.

As I have detailed over and over again in recent months, the price of just about everything is shooting up dramatically.

Unfortunately, our big spending politicians just can’t help themselves. Whenever they hear about a new problem, their solution is always to pile on more debt and more spending.

Some of the biggest companies in America have already announced huge price increases for 2022, and this is just the beginning.

So things are only going to get worse for the millions of U.S. families that are financially stressed because of rising inflation.

According to a study that was recently released, the average American now worries about their finances “six times a day”…

Budgets are tighter for millions of people with 2022 in full swing. Being money-conscious is nothing new for many of us, but new research shows the average American worries about their finances six times a day.

The poll of 2,000 adults to uncover how people feel about their finances also finds millennials are more focused on their finances than any other generation.

The level of worry is only going to increase as the cost of living continues to rise much faster than paychecks do.

And of course all of this is setting the stage for the sort of horrific inflationary meltdown that I have long warned about.

If you want to know who is responsible for this giant economic mess, it is our “leaders” in Washington.

Their policies created the worker shortage that we are now facing.

And their policies created the rampant inflation that we now see all around us.

In 2022, I am sure that they will find even more ways to royally mess things up.

We are starting to reap what we have sown, and it isn’t going to get any easier 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.***

They Are Hypocrites That Preach ‘Tolerance’ For Everyone – Except For The Groups That They Really, Really Hate

January 5, 2022January 5, 2022 by Michael

If you are a global leader, millions upon millions of people are deeply affected by the public statements that you make. So when you are in such a position, it is absolutely imperative to be incredibly careful with your words. Unfortunately, prominent politicians all over the globe are increasingly spewing hatred for certain groups even as they pretend to be champions for “tolerance”. When ordinary citizens hear such hateful statements, many of them inevitably come to the conclusion that it is okay to hate those groups too. Nearly a century ago, the Germans gave us a prime example of where this sort of hatred can ultimately lead, and we never want such a thing to ever happen again.

Let me give you an example of what I am talking about. In a recent interview with a French newspaper, Emmanuel Macron referred to the unvaccinated as “non-citizens”, and he stated that it was his goal “to piss them off”…

Macron made the comments in an interview with the Le Parisien newspaper, noting “As for the non-vaccinated, I really want to piss them off. And we will continue to do this, to the end. This is the strategy.”

What a terrible thing to say.

So precisely how does he plan to “piss them off”?

Well, he apparently intends to limit the ability of unvaccinated people to live a normal life “as much as possible”…

He further vowed to keep “putting pressure on the unvaccinated by limiting, as much as possible, their access to activities in social life.”

What do you think would happen if Macron made that statement about a racial minority or the LGBT community?

But because it is open season on the unvaccinated, Macron can get away with saying whatever he wants about them.

And this is a signal to the rest of the citizens of France that they are free to hate the unvaccinated as well.

Of course Macron is far from alone.

Last year, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said things that were even worse about the unvaccinated…

“They don’t believe in science/progress and are very often misogynistic and racist….This leads us, as a leader and as a country, to make a choice: Do we tolerate these people?”

Really?

There is absolutely no evidence that the unvaccinated are any more “racist” than the general population of Canada.

But this is what you do when you deeply hate a particular group of people. You demonize them so that others will hate them as well.

You can almost feel the hate coming through in Trudeau’s words. Canada was once known as a mecca of politeness, but under Trudeau it is being transformed into an incredibly hateful place.

Of course it is perfectly okay for Trudeau to deeply disagree with the unvaccinated, and it is perfectly okay for the unvaccinated to deeply disagree with Trudeau. “Tolerance” does not require that we agree with everyone. In fact, we can fundamentally disagree with others on just about everything and still “tolerate” them.

Personally, I believe that we are called to go far beyond just “tolerance”. In fact, as I have warned repeatedly, if we don’t learn to love one another we are simply not going to make it as a society.

But we can love others and still deeply disagree with the bad things that they do.

And that includes when those that we disagree with choose to be incredibly hypocritical. Democrats in Congress love to tout the virtues of masks and mandates, but many of them also love to vacation in the state of Florida…

Democratic congressman Eric Swalwell appears to be following in the footsteps of fellow liberal Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by taking a trip to mask-and mandate-free Florida – just days after lashing out at Republicans for ‘prolonging’ the coronavirus pandemic.

The California Democrat has repeatedly accused conservative lawmakers of being responsible for the ongoing covid wave and last week blamed the GOP for ‘canceled vacations’ and for having to wear ‘masks everywhere’ again just before the new year.

Since Swalwell is so “pro-mask”, he surely must have kept his mask on the entire time he was vacationing in Florida, right?

Actually, he didn’t. In fact, he was photographed having quite a wonderful time without a mask at a luxury hotel in Miami…

But Swalwell, himself was apparently able to go ahead with his holiday travel plans and ditch his mask just days later, when he was spotted hanging out at the posh Loews Miami Beach Hotel.

So does this mean that we should hate Swalwell, AOC, Joe Biden and the other hypocritical politicians in Washington?

No.

I know that it isn’t easy, but we need to love everyone, and that even includes our Congress critters.

But does that mean that we should accept the way that they are behaving?

Of course not.

Those that are responsible for destroying our society should be held accountable for their actions.

But we can hold our leaders accountable for what they have done without hating them.

Let me try to end this article on a different note.

Earlier today, I learned that one of the main ways that authorities around the nation are now tracking the spread of COVID is by testing raw sewage. The following comes from NBC News…

With at-home Covid-19 tests in high demand and their efficacy in question, health departments from California to Massachusetts are turning to sewage samples to get a better idea of how much the coronavirus is spreading through communities and what might be in store for health care systems.

Apparently officials believe that they can determine a community’s positivity rate and average viral load simply from wastewater samples…

Recent wastewater samples in Houston, for example, show that there has been a sharp increase in the amount of the coronavirus detected in the city’s sewage. As of Dec. 20, Houston’s viral load, or the amount of virus found in samples, was at 546 percent compared to July 6, 2020, and the positivity rate was at 14 percent, according to the city Health Department’s wastewater dashboard. The viral load is up from 142 percent last week and 76 percent the previous week.

I don’t know about you, but all of this sounds like a load of crap to me.

As Omicron continues to spread, the level of fear all over the globe is only going to increase.

And as Yoda once astutely observed, fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate.

We have gotten to a point where prominent leaders all over the planet are openly spewing their hatred for the unvaccinated everywhere they go, and the mainstream media is totally letting them get away with it.

That makes this a very dangerous time for the unvaccinated, because history has shown where this sort of unbridled hatred can ultimately take us.

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

All Over America, An Unprecedented Shortage Of Workers Is Forcing Businesses To Shut Down

January 4, 2022January 4, 2022 by Michael

From coast to coast, we are seeing businesses close because they simply cannot find enough workers. In the entire history of the United States, we have never seen anything like this happen before. In fact, prior to this pandemic we had a chronic problem with unemployment that stretched back for decades. Economists insisted that our economy would never be able to produce enough jobs for everyone, but they were wrong. Today, there are more than 10 million open positions in this country and employers are literally begging for people to come to work. Fierce competition for good workers has become extremely intense, and this is one of the factors that is causing millions of Americans to quit their current jobs each month. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the numbers for the month of November…

A record 4.5 million Americans voluntarily left their jobs in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This pushed the quits rate to 3%, matching the high from September.

Workers were most likely to quit their jobs in the hospitality industry, which had by far the highest quits rate at 6.1% in November, as well as those in health care. The numbers in transportation, warehousing and utilities also increased.

Day after day, I am coming across stories about how our worker shortage is really hurting small businesses in this country.

Many small businesses operate on extremely thin margins, and so they just can’t afford to dramatically raise wages all of a sudden. In Nebraska, one restaurant that has been around for 46 years has been forced to close for good “because they simply can’t find enough people to work”…

This week, Wilkinson and his wife, Kathy, decided to close the restaurant after a nearly five-decade run because they simply can’t find enough people to work.

“That was the final straw,” said Jim Wilkinson, 71.

Thousands of other small businesses find themselves in the same situation.

But it isn’t just small businesses that are suffering.

At this point, even some of the biggest corporations in the U.S. can’t find enough workers. At the end of December, I was absolutely shocked to learn that Apple had closed every single one of their stores in New York “due to a staffing shortage”…

Apple has shuttered all 16 of its stores in New York due to a staffing shortage as Omicron variant tears through the state and triggers companies to implement their own de facto lockdowns.

The Big Apple remains the epicenter for the third wave of the virus in the U.S. brought on by the highly-contagious Omicron variation.

We can certainly survive without Apple stores, but there are other institutions where a lack of staff can literally be a matter of life or death.

Let me try to illustrate what I am talking about. The following is a list of five recent Becker’s stories about hospitals that are either closing or reducing services due to a lack of workers…

1. Advocate Aurora temporarily closes 3 urgent care facilities, cites staff shortages

2. NIH hospital to postpone surgeries as COVID-19 sidelines staff

3. Indiana hospital to close OB department

4. Staffing forced closure of 154 Massachusetts mental health beds in last 10 months, report finds

5. Mercyhealth applies to end inpatient care at Illinois hospital

Before the pandemic, this sort of thing didn’t happen.

We always had more than enough workers, and it seemed like it would always be that way.

So where did all of the workers go?

Well, as I detailed yesterday, they are dying in very large numbers.

And many others are now incapacitated.

Since the beginning of 2021, Americans have been dying in staggering numbers, and right now our hospitals are absolutely overflowing with victims that have developed very serious health problems.

With the talent pool of available workers steadily “thinning out”, many businesses are starting to come up with very creative solutions. For example, some hotels in California are now utilizing robots…

Hotels, like restaurants, have been hard pressed to provide attentive service due to staffing shortages during the pandemic.

In Silicon Valley, robots are filling the gap to the surprise and delight of guests.

This may sound very strange, but this is apparently where things are headed.

Today, if you stay at the Radisson in Sunnyvale, a robot may come to your door if you order a soft drink…

This is how the Radisson Sunnyvale is dealing with staffing shortages – A guest would like a soft drink delivered to the room. In the past, someone from the front desk or sometimes even the general manager might step up. Now, this robot, designed by Savioke in Campbell, will handle the task.

And we are being told that this is just the beginning.

It is being projected that a whopping 20 million manufacturing jobs will be done by robots by the year 2030…

According to one report by CNBC News, Robots could take over 20 million manufacturing jobs around the world by 2030, economists claimed Wednesday. According to a new study from Oxford Economics, within the next 11 years there could be 14 million robots put to work in China alone.

So perhaps the elite don’t really need the millions of workers that seem to have gone “missing”.

Perhaps they can just get robots to replace them all.

Our world has become such a bizarre place, and I have a feeling that it will soon become even weirder.

If you have been waiting for everything to “return to normal”, you can stop waiting, because it simply is not going to happen.

Our society is being transformed at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking, and global events are only going to accelerate even further as we hurtle through the early stages of 2022.

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

Has The Mystery Been Solved? We Just Got Some New Numbers That Nobody Can Deny

January 3, 2022January 3, 2022 by Michael

For months, I have been writing about one of the greatest mysteries that has emerged over the past year. Both in the United States and around the globe, millions of workers seem to have completely disappeared from the system. I wrote major articles about this in September, in October and in December. When this first started happening, it greatly puzzled me, but thanks to some deeply alarming new numbers things are starting to become a lot clearer. Unfortunately, the news is not good.

Just before the pandemic, 152 million Americans were employed, and we have never come close to returning to that level. In fact, despite the fact that companies all over America are absolutely desperate to hire anyone with a pulse, the number of Americans that are employed is sitting at just 148 million. There are literally “help wanted signs” everywhere that you look, and stores are starting to shut down all over the country due to a lack of staff.

We have never seen anything like this in all of U.S. history, but it isn’t just happening here.

As I have documented in previous articles, we have also been witnessing simultaneous worker shortages in major industrialized nations all over the planet.

So why is this happening?

Well, it appears that at least part of the answer is that working-age people are dying at an unprecedented rate…

The head of Indianapolis-based insurance company OneAmerica said the death rate is up a stunning 40% from pre-pandemic levels among working-age people.

“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business – not just at OneAmerica,” the company’s CEO Scott Davison said during an online news conference this week. “The data is consistent across every player in that business.”

When I first read that I was absolutely stunned.

I knew that things were bad, but I didn’t know that they were that bad.

According to Davison, the number of deaths that we are witnessing “is just unheard of”…

Davison said the increase in deaths represents “huge, huge numbers,” and that’s it’s not elderly people who are dying, but “primarily working-age people 18 to 64” who are the employees of companies that have group life insurance plans through OneAmerica.

“And what we saw just in third quarter, we’re seeing it continue into fourth quarter, is that death rates are up 40% over what they were pre-pandemic,” he said.

“Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, a three-sigma or a one-in-200-year catastrophe would be 10% increase over pre-pandemic,” he said. “So 40% is just unheard of.”

The pandemic is certainly a factor, but the article that I just quoted clearly states that “most of the claims for deaths being filed are not classified as COVID-19 deaths”.

Wow.

OneAmerica is not a minor player in the life insurance industry. It brings in about 2 billion dollars in revenue annually, and it has been around for more than 140 years…

OneAmerica is a major insurance company located in Indianapolis with annual revenue of around $2 billion and total assets of around $74 billion. This is not a fly-by-night internet “insurance” company. OneAmerica is the real deal, selling both individual and group life insurance, and it has data and actuarial tables that go back 145 years. It’s also a progressive company that boasts about “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” right on its home page. In other words, it’s not some “scary” right-wing reactionary firm.

So nobody can dispute the credibility of these numbers.

And the president of the Indiana Hospital Association has publicly stated that numbers from hospitals all over his state back up what Davison is saying…

At the same news conference where Davison spoke, Brian Tabor, the president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said that hospitals across the state are being flooded with patients “with many different conditions,” saying “unfortunately, the average Hoosiers’ health has declined during the pandemic.”

In a follow-up call, he said he did not have a breakdown showing why so many people in the state are being hospitalized – for what conditions or ailments. But he said the extraordinarily high death rate quoted by Davison matched what hospitals in the state are seeing.

This isn’t just another news story.

This is a complete and utter bombshell.

If you don’t want to agree with me, perhaps you will agree with one of the most respected medical experts in the entire country. The following comes from his article about these shocking new numbers from Indiana…

AT A MINIMUM, based on my reading, one has to conclude that if this report holds and is confirmed by others in the dry world of life insurance actuaries, we have both a huge human tragedy and a profound public policy failure of the US Government and US HHS system to serve and protect the citizens that pay for this “service”.

We have gotten to a point where there is no excuse for not seeing the truth.

Policymakers all over the world need to immediately reverse course, but of course they aren’t going to do that.

There is way too much money at stake.

Any doubt about how evil our system has become has been completely removed, and anyone that continues to support such a deeply corrupt system is willingly choosing to side with evil.

Before I end this article, I want to remind everyone that the leading cause of death worldwide actually has nothing to do with the pandemic at all…

Abortion was the leading cause of death globally in 2021, with nearly 43 million unborn babies killed in the womb, according to data provided by Worldometer.

As of noon on December 31, 2021, there were 42.6 million abortions performed in the course of the year, Worldometer revealed, while 8.2 million people died from cancer, 5 million from smoking, 1.7 million of HIV/AIDS, 1.3 million from traffic fatalities, and 1 million from suicide.

According to Worldometer, 5.4 million people have died from COVID since the pandemic first began.

But since Roe v. Wade was decided in 1971, more than 1,500,000,000 babies have been murdered in the womb all over the planet.

Our culture has truly become “a culture of death”, and in the end we are going to reap what we have sown.

I know that my articles can seem “harsh”, but nobody can deny the harsh reality that vast numbers of people are dying all around us.

2020 was a nightmarish year, 2021 was really bad too, and now the stage is set for “2020 too”.

The year ahead is really going to be horrifying, but most of you already knew that.

***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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