The Mainstream Media Says The Middle Class Isn’t Shrinking – But That Is Only Because Their Definition Includes Lots Of Poor People

If you ask the mainstream media, they will tell you that about half the country is still middle class.  In fact, a CNBC article that just came out says that “52% of American adults live in ‘middle class’ households”.  Of course that is down from 61 percent in 1971, but considering everything we have been through in recent years, that still looks pretty good.  But is it the truth?  In the end, it all comes down to how you define “the middle class”.  If I defined the middle class as anyone that makes from zero dollars to a trillion dollars a year, then 100 percent of Americans would be considered “middle class” by that definition.  So we can’t just look at the final number they give us.  Instead, we have to dig deeper and find out how they came up with the number in the first place. (Read More...)

Goldman Sachs Has Just Issued An Ominous Warning About Stock Market Chaos In October

Are we about to see U.S. financial markets go crazy?  That is what Goldman Sachs seems to think, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that great financial chaos has been unleashed during the month of October.  When the stock market crashed in October 1929, it started the worst economic depression that we have ever witnessed.  In October 1987, the largest single day percentage decline in U.S. stock market history rocked the entire planet.  And the nightmarish events of October 2008 set the stage for a “Great Recession” that we still haven’t fully recovered from.  So could it be possible that something similar may happen in October 2019?  According to CNBC, Goldman Sachs is warning that the stock market could soon “go crazy again”… (Read More...)

North America’s Bird Population Is Collapsing – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Have Been Wiped Out Since 1970

All around us, our world is literally in a state of collapse, but most people don’t seem to care.  I spend much of my time writing about the inevitable collapse of our economic and financial systems, but they are only one part of the story.  These days, millions upon millions of us are spending countless hours in this “virtual world” that we have created, and that is preventing many of us from understanding what is really going on in “the real world”.  Where I live, I can literally keep the doors wide open for hours without worrying about bugs coming in, because insect populations are disappearing at a pace that is frightening.  They are calling it “the insect apocalypse”, and some scientists are warning that they could all be gone in 100 years.  And this dramatic decline in the insect population is one of the main reasons why North America’s bird population is collapsing.  In the old days, I remember the singing of birds often greeting me in the morning, but these days I am never awakened by birds.  That might make sense if I lived right in the middle of a major city, but I don’t.  I live in a very rural location, and I do see birds out here, but not nearly as many as I would expect. (Read More...)

Why Does The Federal Reserve Keep Slamming The Panic Button Over And Over If Everything Is Okay?

What in the world is the Federal Reserve doing?  For months the Fed has been trying to publicly convince us that the U.S. economy is “strong”, and Fed Chair Jerome Powell recently unequivocally stated that “the Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession”, but the Fed’s actions tell a completely different story.  If the U.S. economy really is performing well, any economics textbook will tell you that the Fed should not be reducing interest rates.  Interest rate cuts should be saved for times when the economy is in serious trouble, and using up all of your ammunition before a downturn has begun is simply foolish.  And the Federal Reserve continues to insist that the financial system is functioning normally, but meanwhile things are spinning so wildly out of control that they felt forced to announce overnight repurchase agreement operations for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  We haven’t seen this sort of emergency intervention since the last financial crisis, but the Fed’s message to the general public is that “all is well”. (Read More...)

Major Red Flag: The Fed Shocks Everyone With An Emergency Intervention In The Repo Market For The First Time Since 2008

For the very first time since the last financial crisis, the Federal Reserve has been forced to conduct an emergency intervention in the repo market.  I know that a lot of people out there don’t know what the repo market is or how it works, and so let me start out with a very basic analogy that may help people understand what we are facing.  It doesn’t really matter how shiny your toilet is – if the pipes underneath don’t work, you are in a whole lot of trouble.  The repo market plays a critical role in our financial system, because it allows our banks to rapidly borrow money to fund their short-term needs.  But this week interest rates in the repo market started to shoot up to frightening levels, and the Federal Reserve was forced to intervene for the first time since the financial crisis of 2008.  The following comes from Yahoo News… (Read More...)

6 Of The Last 8 U.S. Recessions Were Preceded By Oil Price Spikes – Damage To Saudi Oil Industry Could Take “Months” To Repair

When the price of oil rises dramatically, that tends to be really bad for the U.S. economy.  Because we are so spread out and goods are transported over such vast distances, our economy is particularly vulnerable to oil price shocks, and that is one reason why the events that we just witnessed in the Middle East are so alarming.  According to an article that was published by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco in 2007, five of the last seven U.S. recessions that had occurred up to that time “were preceded by considerable increases in oil prices”.  Since that article was published in 2007, the recession that began in 2008 hadn’t happened yet, and of course that recession was immediately preceded by the largest oil price spike in history.  So that means that six of the last eight U.S. recessions were preceded by oil price spikes, and now we may be facing another one.  It is being reported that it may take “months” for Saudi Arabia to fully repair the damage that was done to their oil industry, and that could fundamentally alter the balance of supply and demand in the global marketplace. (Read More...)

If You Think The Price Of Oil Is Skyrocketing Now, Just Wait Until The War Starts…

In the aftermath of the most dramatic attack on Saudi oil facilities that we have ever seen, the price of oil has exploded higher.  The Wall Street Journal is calling this attack “the Big One”, and President Trump appears to be indicating that some sort of military retaliation is coming.  Needless to say, a direct military strike on Iran could spark a major war in the Middle East, and that would be absolutely devastating for the entire global economy.  Just about everything that we buy has to be moved, and moving stuff takes energy.  When the price of oil gets really high, that tends to create inflation because the price of oil is a factor in virtually everything that we buy.  In addition, a really high price for oil also tends to slow down economic activity, and this is something that we witnessed just prior to the financial crisis of 2008.  And if this crisis in the Middle East stretches over an extended period of time, it could ultimately result in a phenomenon known as “stagflation” where we have rapidly rising prices and weaker economic activity simultaneously.  The last time we experienced such a thing was in the 1970s, and nobody really remembers the U.S. economy of the 1970s favorably. (Read More...)

The Middle East War Begins: Netanyahu Warns There Is “No Other Choice But To Embark On A Wide Scale Campaign In Gaza”

With elections looming on Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning that Israel has “no other choice” other than to invade Gaza in order to overthrow the Hamas regime in power there.  In fact, the Jerusalem Post is reporting that on Friday Netanyahu said that war “could happen at any moment”.  The Prime Minister and other Israeli officials are sick and tired of rockets being constantly fired into Israel, and they have come to the conclusion that a peaceful resolution with Hamas is simply not possible.  Here in the United States many on the left will criticize Israel for taking military action, but how long would any U.S. president wait before taking military action against a terror group that was firing missiles at us?  The truth is that Israel has been exceedingly patient with the situation in Gaza, but now the time for patience has run out. (Read More...)

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