Two-Thirds Of Americans Think That They Are Middle Class – But Millions Of Them Are Dead Wrong

The middle class has been steadily shrinking, but most Americans still believe that they are a part of it.  Perhaps this is due at least in part to the egalitarian values which have been pounded into our heads for most of our lives.  Very few Americans would have the gall to define themselves as “upper class”, and I have never met anyone that would describe themselves as “lower class”.  In place of “lower class”, many politicians now like to use the much more politically correct term “working class”, but a more apt description might be “the working poor”.  Today, half of all American workers make less than $30,533 a year, and you certainly cannot support a middle class lifestyle for a family with children on that kind of income. (Read More...)

U.S. Debt Poised To Hit The $22 Trillion Mark As “Storm Clouds” Indicate “We Could Have Another Financial Crisis”

The rapidly exploding U.S. national debt is about to cross another critical threshold.  According to the U.S. Treasury, the debt of the federal government is currently sitting at $21,854,296,172,540.94, and at our current pace we will likely hit the $22 trillion mark next month.  This is a horrifying national crisis, and yet nothing is being done about it.  When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2008, the U.S. was $10.6 trillion in debt, and so that means that we have added 11.2 trillion dollars of new debt to that total in less than 11 years.  Needless to say, it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt for more than a decade.  But instead of getting our insatiable appetite for debt under control, Congress is actually accelerating our spending.  At this point, there is no possible scenario in which this story ends well. (Read More...)

The Rise And Fall Of Netflix: Here Are 5 Reasons Why Netflix Stock Is Crashing As The Company Heads For Oblivion

Netflix originally had a truly disruptive business model and they fundamentally changed the way that Americans consume media, but now they are heading for the same fate as Blockbuster.  For years, Netflix was really the only game in town, but now content costs are spiraling out of control and new competitors with even deeper pockets threaten to become the dominant players in the industry.  Of course Netflix is not going to die overnight, but the writing is on the wall.  In fact, Netflix stock has already been crashing over the last several months as investors have begun to realize that the future is not bright for the company.  Back in the middle of the summer, the stock price peaked at $423.21, and as I write this article it is currently at $269.70.  That is an astounding collapse, and here are 5 reasons why Netflix is headed for so much trouble… (Read More...)

Sabotage: The Deep State Has Destroyed Trump’s Chances Of A Trade Deal With China, And The Stock Market Is Tanking As A Result

Somebody out there apparently does not want President Trump to make a trade deal with China.  Just after U.S. and Chinese officials agreed to suspend the implementation of new tariffs for 90 days, one of China’s most important tech executives was literally kidnapped as she was changing planes in Canada.  Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was simply on her way to Mexico, but at the urging of U.S. authorities the Canadians grabbed her and are refusing to let her go.  Reportedly, the plan is to extradite her to the United States where she will apparently face charges relating to Huawei’s evasion of U.S. sanctions against Iran.  When Trump was negotiating face to face with the Chinese, he was not aware that this was taking place.  So now all of Trump’s hard work is out the window, and our relations with the Chinese are probably the worst that they have been since the Korean War. (Read More...)

“Panic-like selling” grips Wall Street as the economic numbers point to “a lot of unpleasant things that nobody wants to admit”

Fear is spreading like wildfire on Wall Street, and on Friday we witnessed yet another wave of panic selling.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell another 559 points, closing at 24,389.  Previously I had warned that once we solidly broke through 25,000 that it could trigger an avalanche of panic selling, and that is precisely what has happened.  The Dow is now down more than 9 percent from the peak in early October, but the S&P 500 is doing even worse.  The S&P 500 is now down 10.2 percent from the September peak, and that means that it is officially in correction territory.  It has now been two solid months, and the sell-off on Wall Street shows no signs of abating. (Read More...)

U.S. Accused Of “A Declaration Of War” Against China As The Stock Market Teeters On The Precipice Of Disaster

Things are sure getting wild on Wall Street.  On Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average plummeted almost 800 points before roaring back and recovering nearly all of those losses.  The Dow closed just 79 points lower for the day, and if you only looked at the final number you would be tempted to believe that there is not much reason for concern.  But these wild swings up and down are precisely what we witnessed back in 2008, and they are a sign that the stock market is literally teetering on the precipice of disaster.  And it almost certainly would have been a historically bad day for stocks on Thursday if not for a very well-timed article in the Wall Street Journal.  Once news broke that the Federal Reserve is considering “a wait-and-see approach to rate hikes”, stock prices immediately began to rebound… (Read More...)

The Mainstream Media Declares That This Is “The Worst Time In Decades To Make Money In The Markets”

It looks like the turmoil for the financial markets is going to continue to get worse, and the mainstream media is really starting to freak out.  Just a few months ago, they were continuously using the word “booming” to describe the state of the U.S. economy and they were assuring us that the stock market was going to continue to go up.  But after a couple of really bad months, there has been a dramatic psychological shift.  Instead of telling us that everything is going to be great, now the mainstream media is starting to sound just like The Economic Collapse Blog.  For example, Bloomberg just posted an article with this rather startling headline: “It’s the worst time in decades to make money in the markets”… (Read More...)

Somebody Pressed The Panic Button On Wall Street – Bank Stocks And Tech Stocks Crash As The Yield Curve Inverts

Stocks aren’t supposed to crash in December.  Most of the time we see a nice “Santa Claus rally” to close out the year, and so what happened on Tuesday is definitely extremely unusual.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 799 points, which was the fourth largest single day point decline in stock market history.  In fact, there was not a single day during the entire financial crisis of 2008 when the Dow dropped by as many points as it did on Tuesday.  Many believed that this “stock market correction” would be limited to October, but then it stretched into November, and now it has extended into the “safe month” of December.  What in the world is going on out there? (Read More...)

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