National Debt

Do You Want To Know The Truth? Infrastructure All Over America Is Crumbling At A Frightening Pace

The great tragedy that we just witnessed in Florida has shocked the entire nation, and it should be a major wake up call for all of us.  Our nation really is literally falling apart right in front of our eyes.  Just a few short months ago, at least 151 people died during a catastrophic failure of the power grid in Texas.  Thousands of water pipes burst, and billions of dollars worth of damage was done.  But most people that don’t live in Texas soon forgot all about that, and now we have another spectacular example of the rapid deterioration of the once beautiful cities that previous generations handed down to us.  According to the latest report that I have seen, nearly 100 people are still missing, and officials say that they are hearing “sounds like banging” coming from the wreckage…

Miami-Dade fire officials said rescuers have heard “what sounds like banging” from within the rubble, but not voices, as they continue to search for survivors of the Champlain Towers South collapse.

Thirty-seven people have been pulled from the structure so far, and the portions of the building that did not collapse have been evacuated. At least 99 people remain unaccounted for.

Hopefully anyone that is still alive underneath all of that rubble will soon be rescued.

What makes this tragedy much worse is that it could have been prevented.

According to USA Today, a study that was conducted last year discovered that this particular building had been “sinking at an alarming rate” since the 90s…

A Florida high rise that collapsed early Thursday was determined to be unstable a year ago, according to a researcher at Florida International University.

The building, which was constructed in 1981, has been sinking at an alarming rate since the 1990s, according to a 2020 study conducted by Shimon Wdowinski, a professor in the Department of Earth and Environment.

So they knew that this was probably going to happen, and they did nothing to stop it.

They also know that our entire economy is heading for a massive implosion, and they aren’t doing anything to stop that from happening either.

I have been writing about America’s crumbling infrastructure for many years, and now we have gotten to a point where horrible “accidents” are occurring all around us on a regular basis.

Prior to the tragedy in Florida, the sudden collapse of a bridge in Washington D.C. was making headlines all over the nation…

SIX people have been injured after a bridge in Washington DC collapsed, reports say.

Shocking pictures show that the Kenilworth bridge caved in over a highway, halting dozens of cars.

Five people were rushed to hospital and six people in total were hurt, cops said during an afternoon press conference.

If you are not familiar with that disaster, you can see footage of the aftermath right here.

None of this should be a surprise to any of us.  The ASCE has been sounding the alarm about America’s crumbling infrastructure for a very long time, but very few have been listening.  To me, these numbers are simply astounding…

The topic of improving our national infrastructure is once again front and center in Washington. For years, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has been urging policymakers to reinvest in things like waterways, bridges, energy grids, and roads. In fact, ASCE reports that 43% of America’s public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition, more than 230,000 U.S. bridges require repair and preservation work, and there is a water main break every two minutes, causing an estimated six billion gallons of treated water to be lost each day.

So now the Biden administration wants to make a big effort to patch up some of our decaying infrastructure.

That is a noble goal, but instead of using existing funds the Biden administration is proposing an enormous amount of new spending…

According to the White House, the price tag comes in at $1.2 trillion over eight years, with more than $500 billion in new spending. How the measure would be paid for was a central point in negotiations, with Republicans opposed to undoing any of the 2017 tax cuts.

The plan “makes transformational and historic investments in clean transportation infrastructure, clean water infrastructure, universal broadband infrastructure, clean power infrastructure, remediation of legacy pollution, and resilience to the changing climate,” said a White House fact sheet on the plan released Thursday.

We can’t do this.

Our politicians have already borrowed and spent trillions and trillions of dollars that we did not have over the course of the past year, and this has created very painful inflation throughout our economy.

Stealing hundreds of billions more dollars from future generations may seem like a good short-term solution, but it just makes our long-term financial problems even worse.

I am all for fixing up our infrastructure, but existing funds that are already being greatly wasted elsewhere should be diverted for that purpose.

But that isn’t going to happen.  Our politicians are absolutely addicted to spending money, and after this “infrastructure package” gets passed I am sure that they will soon come up with even more ways to flush our future down the toilet.

Every dollar that we borrow and spend now is a dollar that we will be expected to pay back later with interest.

During the past year, our politicians have been on the biggest spending binge in American history by a very wide margin, but most Americans don’t seem to care.

And the Federal Reserve has been committing economic suicide by pumping trillions upon trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system, but most Americans don’t seem to care about that either.

Our entire society is absolutely addicted to immediate gratification, and so the vast majority of the population wants our leaders to do whatever is necessary to make life better right now.

Meanwhile, the long-term outlook for our nation just gets bleaker and bleaker.

It was just a matter of time before that building in Florida fell, and it is just a matter of time before the entire U.S. economy collapses.

The whole system is crumbling all around us, but very few people are concerned enough to try to save it.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” 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 “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including 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, Twitter and Parler, 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.

What Will You Do When Inflation Forces U.S. Households To Spend 40 Percent Of Their Incomes On Food?

Did you know that the price of corn has risen 142 percent in the last 12 months?  Of course corn is used in hundreds of different products we buy at the grocery store, and so everyone is going to feel the pain of this price increase.  But it isn’t just the price of corn that is going crazy.  We are seeing food prices shoot up dramatically all across the industry, and experts are warning that this is just the very beginning.  So if you think that food prices are bad now, just wait, because they are going to get a whole lot worse.

Typically, Americans spend approximately 10 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food.  The following comes directly from the USDA website…

In 2019, Americans spent an average of 9.5 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food—divided between food at home (4.9 percent) and food away from home (4.6 percent). Between 1960 and 1998, the average share of disposable personal income spent on total food by Americans, on average, fell from 17.0 to 10.1 percent, driven by a declining share of income spent on food at home.

Needless to say, the poorest Americans spend more of their incomes on food than the richest Americans.

According to the USDA, the poorest households spent an average of 36 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food in 2019…

As their incomes rise, households spend more money on food, but it represents a smaller overall budget share. In 2019, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,400 on food (representing 36.0 percent of income), while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,987 on food (representing 8.0 percent of income).

Needless to say, the final numbers for 2020 will be quite a bit higher, and many believe that eventually the percentage of disposable personal income that the average U.S. household spends on food will reach 40 percent.

That would mean that many poor households would end up spending well over 50 percent of their personal disposable incomes just on food.

At one time that would have been unimaginable, but now everything is changing.  As I noted above, the price of corn his increased 142 percent since this time last year…

Corn prices have jumped roughly 142% over the past year to $7.56 per bushel, the highest price seen in eight years for the crop.

A drought in Brazil and increased demand in China have put pressure on global suppliers.

In other areas we are seeing more moderate inflation, but overall we just witnessed the largest increase in food inflation “in almost nine years”…

The average prices in March of 2021 for pork chops and chicken breasts are both up more than 10% compared to March of 2020. Eggs and cheddar cheese are both up 6%.

Looking at all consumer goods as a whole, the latest inflation data in the Consumer Price Index from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the largest month-to-month increase in almost nine years.

Meanwhile, the price of lumber just continues to shoot even higher.

In New Jersey, one man says that the total cost of lumber used in building his new home will reach $70,000…

Tom McCarthy can’t finish building a home in Bergen County, New Jersey because of the lumber shortage.

“There are pieces of wood that we can’t find,” said McCarthy, a real estate broker with the Chen Agency who also builds homes with his father on the side.

McCarthy estimates the cost of lumber for the home will hit $70,000, nearly double the cost of building the exact same home in a nearby town just eight months ago.

Isn’t that nuts?

Instead of building a new home, you could try buying an existing one instead, but real estate prices in many areas have gotten completely insane.

In northern California, one house recently sold for more than a million dollars over listing price…

When a house in Berkeley sold for more than $1 million over its list price in late March 2021, it was covered in media outlets across the Bay Area, including this one.

While the Berkeley sale was particularly sensational — it sold for double its list price and received 29 offers — these individual stories are becoming more common in today’s real estate market, according to recent data and anecdotes from real estate professionals.

I never imagined that I would see such a thing happen.

But one real estate agent says that such wild bidding wars are becoming increasingly common…

And that’s especially true in the East Bay. “People are not surprised when a home goes $1 million over,” said Josh Dickinson, the founder of real estate agency Zip Code East Bay. “When my clients see a house for $1.9 million they’re almost conditioned to think it’ll go over $3 million in Piedmont or North Berkeley.”

This is what the beginning stages of hyperinflation look like, but Federal Reserve officials insist that we have nothing to be concerned about.

In fact, Eric Rosengren just told the press that the crazy inflation we are seeing now “is likely to prove temporary”…

Boston Federal Reserve President Eric Rosengren in an interview with MarketWatch on Wednesday dismissed talk of scaling back asset purchases as premature, and said temporary factors pushing up inflation this spring won’t last.

“My view is that this acceleration in the rate of price increases is likely to prove temporary,” Rosengren said Wednesday.

Do you believe him?

I don’t.

As Simon Black has pointed out, the federal government is just going to continue to borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars…

This is the big one. The US federal government is hoping to spend a whopping $11 TRILLION this year, between the regular budget, COVID stimulus already passed, and all the new legislation they’re proposing.

And it’s only May.

Obviously Uncle Sam doesn’t have the money. So they have to borrow it.

Almost everybody loved it when the federal government started sending out big, fat stimulus checks.

But you aren’t going to love it when a cart of food costs you $400 at the grocery store.

Whenever the government hands out “free money”, someone has got to pay for it, and one way we are paying for it is through higher prices.

If you do not believe that this is a major national crisis yet, you will soon, because it won’t be too long before most of the country is loudly complaining about how nightmarish inflation has become.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” 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 “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including 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, Twitter and Parler, 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.

We Are Dangerously Close To “The Tipping Point”

Every dollar that the federal government borrows and spends puts us even closer to a day of reckoning.  Many Americans (especially those on the left) seem to think that we can endlessly spend trillions upon trillions of dollars without ever suffering any consequences.  If that was true, why hasn’t any other society in all of human history ever been able to do such a thing?  Unfortunately, the truth is that the United States is not immune to the laws of economics.  Wildly creating money and driving up our national debt to absurd heights is inevitably going to crush our economic system.  And at this point, our debt-to-GDP ratio is already higher than Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio was when the economy of that country finally collapsed…

But it’s worth noting that the US debt-to-GDP ratio—essentially a country’s debt compared to its annual economic output—was 129 percent at the end of 2020. In other words, the official US debt was nearly a third larger than the entire US economy.

That is considerably higher than Greece’s debt-to-GDP ratio in 2010, when it received a bailout from the International Monetary Fund to avoid defaulting on its obligations.

Even though we are already at such a dangerous level, the Biden administration wants Congress to pass another four trillion dollar spending package…

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Monday that he did not expect any Republican senator to support President Biden’s push for a $4 trillion spending package on infrastructure and other projects.

Biden has outlined a two-part tax and spend proposal with funding for physical infrastructure projects as well as initiatives favored by his administration, such jobs training, elderly care and universal preschool. McConnell reiterated that the $4 trillion price tag was a nonstarter for Republicans, as well as some Democrats, who favor a smaller plan directly tied to infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges.

We simply don’t have the money to do what Biden wants.

In fact, we didn’t have the money for any of the “stimulus packages” that have been passed since the start of the pandemic.

We had to borrow every single dollar that went out in the “stimulus checks”, and now Democratic lawmakers are “clamoring” for a fourth round of those checks…

Democratic lawmakers in both chambers of Congress are clamoring for a fourth round of stimulus checks to help Americans who are still struggling financially during the coronavirus pandemic.

Such a move could lift more than 7 million people out of poverty, according to a recent analysis from the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

If more money is the solution, then why don’t we send out five billion dollars to every American citizen?

That would certainly fix all of our problems, right?

Everyone would be a “billionaire”, and then life in American would be glorious.

Or not.

Sadly, the truth is that our “leaders” are systematically destroying the value of our currency and are plunging us into an abyss of debt from which our nation will never recover.

I warned that once the government started sending checks directly to the American people that it would never be enough.

At this point, people are begging for more checks even though 34 percent of all U.S. income now comes directly from the federal government…

Putting that number in perspective, in the 1950s and 1960s, transfer payment were around 7%. This number rose in the low teens starting in the mid-1970s (right after the Nixon Shock ended Bretton-Woods and closed the gold window). The number then jumped again after the financial crisis, spiking to the high teens. And now, the coronavirus has officially sent this number to a record 34%!

And that’s how creeping banana republic socialism comes at you: first slowly, then fast.

We are not on the road to socialism.

We are already there.

In fact, the U.S. has been a socialist country for quite a while now.  We may not use the term “socialist” to describe ourselves, but that is precisely what we have become.

As our system melts down right in front of our eyes, many in the financial community are trying to figure out how to protect themselves.

For example, legendary investor Sam Zell has never been very enthusiastic about gold, but now he is suddenly changing his tune…

“Obviously one of the natural reactions is to buy gold…It feels very funny because I’ve spent my career talking about why would you want to own gold? It has no income, it costs to store. And yet, when you see the debasement of the currency, you say, what am I going to hold on to?”

Other Americans are preparing for the coming meltdown in other ways.  As crime rates in our cities continue to spike, more Americans than ever before are buying guns…

The FBI conducted more than 3.5 million gun-related background checks last month, a 20% year-over-year increase from April 2020, according to the latest FBI figures released Monday.

Nearly 1.7 million of those gun background checks were specifically for gun purchases, according to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group that cross references FBI data with actual sales figures provided by gun merchants to determine how many guns are sold monthly.

NSSF spokesman Mark Oliva said the firearms industry sold more guns last month than in any April on record.

Deep in their guts, most people can feel that our society is rapidly approaching a “tipping point”.

Nobody knows the exact moment when we will have passed the point of no return, but just about everyone can sense that it is coming.

Every single day, U.S. consumers go into even more debt.

And every single day, U.S. corporations continue to binge on debt as if tomorrow is never going to arrive.

State and local governments continue to pile up record levels of debt, and the federal government is literally stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

We should be thankful that this unprecedented debt bubble has been able to persist for as long as it has, but there is no way that this party can go on forever.

Soon it will end, and that means that our current way of life will soon come to an end as well.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” 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 “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including 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, Twitter and Parler, 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.

So This Is How The U.S. Dollar Dies…

Our leaders are killing the U.S. dollar, and it is being done to thunderous applause.  The House and the Senate have now both passed the 1.9 trillion dollar “COVID relief bill”, and it will go to Joe Biden’s desk for his signature.  Of course we don’t actually have 1.9 trillion dollars to spend on yet another “COVID relief” package.  In fact, we don’t even have one dollar to spend on another “COVID relief” package.  Every single dollar that is spent will have to be borrowed, and that will soon push our national debt beyond the 30 trillion dollar mark.  Sadly, our politicians seem convinced that giant mountains of dollars can be printed, borrowed and spent indefinitely without any repercussions, and most Americans fully support what they are doing.  In fact, one recent poll found that a whopping 78 percent of all Americans support more stimulus checks…

A huge majority of Americans, including nearly two-thirds of Republicans, support the $1,400 stimulus checks President Biden is calling for, and his full $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal also has strong public backing, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.

The poll found that 78 percent of Americans supported the stimulus checks, including 90 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans — suggesting that Republicans in Congress who want to reduce the checks to $1,000 are out of step with their constituents on this issue.

If you are in that 78 percent, you are wrong.

Yes, it is nice to get a big, fat government check in the mail.  But in the process we are rapidly destroying our currency, and what we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

Previous COVID relief bills have had wide bipartisan support, but this one passed almost entirely along party lines…

The final vote Saturday in the Senate was 50-49 with all Republicans voting against the measure and all members of the Senate Democratic caucus supporting it. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, was not present for the vote. In the House, it didn’t earn a single Republican vote in the two times the bill came to a vote.

Biden ran on his ability to broker bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill, drawing on his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president. Republicans have viewed the bill as a betrayal of the bipartisanship Biden embraced and spoke of during his campaign.

This is being called a “big win” for Biden, and when Pelosi announced that the bill had passed the House she did a little “shimmy“…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the 220-211 vote result from the chair, prompting the bill’s supporters to burst into applause. Just a single Democrat voted against it.

Her glee at the outcome was evident even though she had a mask on. She executed what her daughter Christine called a ‘shimmy’ as she gaveled down the vote in a chamber where a five-vote majority gave her very little wiggle room.

After the vote was over, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy referred to the COVID relief package as “socialism”…

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., described it as a “laundry list of leftwing priorities” that “do not meet the needs of American families.”

“It is very liberal,” he said. “They called this the most progressive piece of legislation in history. For those who are watching, progressive means socialism.”

He is right, but I just wish that he would have figured that out several COVID relief packages ago.

Because the truth is that what we have already done to our currency is absolutely nightmarish.  The following is the latest M1 chart from the Federal Reserve…

Thanks to our wild spending politicians and unprecedented intervention in the financial markets by the Federal Reserve, we have now entered an era of hyperinflation.

It took from the founding of the United States to 2020 for M1 to get to 4 trillion dollars.

And then it took about one year for M1 to go from 4 trillion dollars to 18 trillion dollars.

This is utter madness.

Of course the chart above doesn’t even reflect the impact that this new COVID relief package will have.  Another 1.9 trillion dollars is about to be poured into the system, and that will make things even worse.

Needless to say, most Wall Street investors are absolutely thrilled that another tsunami of money is coming.  One recent poll found that “37% of Main Street investors” plan to pour stimulus money directly into the Wall Street casino…

A recent Deutsche Bank survey found that 37% of Main Street investors, some of who could be members of the Reddit community, will plow a “large chunk” of stimulus money, about $170 billion, “directly into equities.”

These small but mighty investors have gained notoriety in recent months, creating volatility and heavy volume in a number of heavily shorted stocks, such as GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.

That should be very good news for stocks, but of course a major “trigger event” could crash the market at any time.

So we will have to wait and see how all of this plays out.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden just announced that he will unveil “the next phase” of his administration’s response to the pandemic on Thursday…

Just hours after the House passed the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion stimulus package (which will unleash another wave of “stimmies” that will inevitably find their way into millions of Robinhood and other discount brokerage accounts), President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he would unveil “the next phase” of the US COVID-19 response on Thursday, which is also the one-year anniversary of the first COVID-inspired lockdowns in the US.

Even if more stimulus checks are not involved, any new programs that Biden announces will cost money, and that involve more borrowing.

We are printing, borrowing and spending our way into oblivion, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame.

As I was preparing to write this article, I just kept thinking of the scene from one of the Star Wars movies where Emperor Palpatine announces that the Republic will be reorganized as “the first Galactic Empire”, and the Senate erupts in applause.

Our Republic is dying too, and our politicians are gleefully murdering the reserve currency of the entire planet.

This is not going to end well, but you already knew that.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” 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 “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including 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, Twitter and Parler, 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.

Does Anyone Even Care That The U.S. National Debt Will Soon Cross The 30 Trillion Dollar Mark?

I didn’t think that this would happen.  A few years ago when the U.S. national debt crossed the 20 trillion dollar mark, I didn’t think that it would ever get to 30 trillion.  But at this moment the U.S. national debt is around 28 trillion dollars, and our politicians in Washington are about to pass a 1.9 trillion dollar “relief bill”.  We are going to have to borrow every single dollar that we spend in that bill, and that will be on top of all of the “normal” borrowing that we are already doing.  So by the end of 2021, the U.S. national debt will cross the 30 trillion dollar mark.  I am sitting here searching for words that will do justice to how foolish this is, but I can’t seem to find any.  We are literally in the process of committing national financial suicide, but fewer Americans seem to care about budget issues than ever before.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP declined to 20.93 trillion dollars in 2020.

So once our national debt crosses the 30 trillion dollar mark, our debt to GDP ratio will be surging toward 150 percent.

That is madness.

But most Americans are greatly in favor of the 1.9 trillion dollar COVID “relief bill” that is currently going through Congress, because it includes more direct “stimulus payments” to the American people.

Of course most of the money in the bill is not going directly to the American people.  In fact, one analysis found that direct payments only account for about 35 percent of all money allocated…

About 22% of the total bill comes from the $422 billion set aside for $1,400-per-person stimulus checks. Another 13% ($246 billion) is for extending additional unemployment funding of $400 a week.

And that was before Joe Biden and moderate Democrats in the Senate agreed to dramatically reduce the number of Americans that will qualify for payments…

President Joe Biden has agreed to a compromise with moderate Democrats to narrow the income eligibility for the next round of $1,400 stimulus checks that are included in a bill the Senate is expected to take up this week, a Democratic source told CNN Wednesday.

That means 7 million fewer families will receive a partial payment than would have under the House version of the bill, according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton Budget Model. The new proposal will completely cut off those who earn more than $160,000 a year and individuals who earn more than $80,000 a year.

Much of the money in the “relief bill” is actually going to go to “pork projects” that are favored by prominent Democrats.  Here are just a few examples…

PolitiFact rated “Mostly True” a claim from conservative Stand for America that the bill contains unrelated projects. Examples cited in that fact check included a $1.5 million bridge connecting New York and Canada; a $100 million underground rail project in Silicon Valley; $480 million for Native American language preservation and maintenance; and $50 million in environmental justice grants.

It looks like some of those “pork projects” won’t make it into the final version of the bill that gets signed by Biden, but there will still be billions upon billions of dollars of wasteful spending.

But what does a billion dollars matter anyway, right?

After all, a stack of a billion one dollar bills would only be about a half mile high…

If you were to stack $100 bills on top of each other, one million dollars would be around the three feet mark – about the height of a chair or a toddler.

And if you keep stacking the $100 bills, eventually past the peak of the world’s tallest building, going a little over half-a-mile into the air, this would be one billion dollars.

A trillion dollars is another matter.

In order to get to a trillion dollars, you would need a stack of one dollar bills that would go beyond the orbit of the International Space Station…

This would have you stacking $100 bills into the stratosphere and past the International Space Station. You would have to stack these bills 631 miles above Earth’s crust. That would equal one trillion dollars. Now imagine 28 stacks of 631 mile-high $100 bills.

That’s America’s debt.

We are trapped in an endless debt spiral that has accelerated greatly over the past couple of years.

The only way to keep the game going is to keep creating, borrowing and spending more money, and in the process we are literally wiping out the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

Thomas Jefferson tried to warn us about the dangers of a large national debt…

I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared…. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt…. We must make our choice between economy and liberty or profusion and servitude…. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and our comforts, in our labors and in our amusements…. If we can prevent the Government from wasting the labors of the people, under the pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.

But even though we were the wealthiest and most prosperous nation on the entire planet, we just couldn’t help ourselves.

We just had to keep spending money that belonged to our children and our grandchildren, and now we have accumulated the greatest mountain of debt in the history of humanity.

Jefferson understood that government debt was a way for one generation to steal money from other generations…

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”

Since Barack Obama first entered the White House, we have been stealing more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

Just think about that.

What we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

Of course if we stay on the path that we are currently on, there won’t be an America at all.

Can someone out there explain to me how this story can possibly end well?

I have been asking versions of that question for years, and nobody has ever risen to the challenge.

That is because it is obvious to everyone that our story is going to end tragically.

In our insatiable greed, we are systematically destroying the United States of America, and we should be utterly ashamed of ourselves.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” 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 “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including 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, Twitter and Parler, 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.

Now That Universal Basic Income Checks Have Started, The American People Will Go Mad If They Don’t Continue

We crossed a line that should have never been crossed when we sent “stimulus payments” directly to the American people during the very early stages of the COVID pandemic.  Even many Republicans that supported the measure acknowledged that what they were doing was pure socialism, but they defended the payments by insisting that we were in the middle of a major national emergency.  At the time, I warned that once the government started issuing such checks, the American people would always keep demanding more.  When it was announced that the latest round of “stimulus payments” would only be $600 per person, angry activists vandalized Nancy Pelosi’s house.  Of course they got Mitch McConnell’s house too.  In both cases, the vandals made it exceedingly clear that they wanted more government money.

Sadly, it wasn’t just a handful of activists that went ballistic.  Literally millions of enraged Americans posted angry messages on social media that expressed how “insulting” the $600 figure was.

But prior to this pandemic, the U.S. government had never sent out “universal basic income” checks in the entire history of our country.

So you would think that most people should be grateful for an extra $600, but instead there was a tremendous amount of rage.

President Trump wanted the payments raised to $2000 and many Democrats did as well.  But Republicans still had control of the Senate, and Mitch McConnell initially blocked that effort.

But now Democrats will shortly have control of the White House, the Senate and the House of Representatives, and one of the first things they plan to do is to deliver $2,000 checks to the American people…

Even while $600 stimulus checks are being deposited in tens of millions of bank accounts, congressional Democrats are laying the groundwork for even greater stimulus payments, which some call “survival checks.” As Senate democratic leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently said, “One of the first things that I want to do when our new senators are seated is deliver the $2,000 checks to the American families.” With Democrats preparing to take power in Washington, a critical question will be whether such survival checks will be one-time payments or recur each month “for the duration of the pandemic,” as Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) and others have suggested.

That may pacify the socialist mobs for a month or two, but eventually they will be back for even more payments.

As the voices get angrier and angrier, do you think that anyone in Washington will be willing to stand up and say no?

The incoming Vice-President, Kamala Harris, previously proposed giving out monthly $2,000 checks for the duration of this pandemic…

Recurring monthly $2,000 checks would mirror the payments proposed in the “Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act” that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris (D-CA) introduced in the Senate in May 2020.

If you are married with three kids, you would have gotten $10,000 every month under her plan.

Considering where we are as a society today, I think that most Americans would have been very eager to sign up for that.

Of course the price tag for such a plan would be nightmarish.  It would have been approximately $600 billion every month, and that would mean that it would add more than 7 trillion dollars to our national debt over the course of an entire year.

But since we are liquidating the Republic anyway, who really cares?

Harris insisted that her plan would end once the crisis was over.

Other politicians, however, are ready to start giving citizens “universal basic income” checks on a permanent basis starting right now.  For example, Andrew Yang is making this the signature promise of his campaign as he runs for mayor of New York City…

Former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang has officially started his run to succeed Bill de Blasio as Mayor of New York City with a call for a universal basic income for half-a-million of the city’s poorest residents.

Yang insists that by giving everyone free money every month he can “eradicate poverty” in NYC…

“We can eradicate extreme poverty in New York City,” Yang said. “If you put just a little money in their hands it can actually be what keeps them in their home and, again, avoids them hitting city services that are incredibly expensive.”

That sounds good, but who is he going to tax in order to pay for it?

After all, hundreds of thousands of wealthy people already left the city during 2020.

The truth is that it is a pipe dream, but that pipe dream is going to win him a whole lot of votes.

Benjamin Franklin once made the following statement…

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

Sadly, we have now reached that point.

And this comes at a time when tens of millions of Americans are in desperate need because the real economy continues to implode all around us.

For example, we just learned that Christopher & Banks has gone belly up…

Apparel retailer Christopher & Banks, which caters to women over 40, is the latest clothing chain to file for bankruptcy protection amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Minneapolis-based company announced Thursday it filed for Chapter 11 in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. Christopher & Banks said in a news release it “expects to close a significant portion, if not all, of its brick-and-mortar stores.”

Thousands of businesses have been dying every month.  As I discussed the other day, the U.S. has lost more than 110,000 restaurants alone.

And to make sure that most of the businesses that have died can never possibly make a comeback, Joe Biden wants to institute “a national minimum wage of $15 an hour”.

Promising people more money is a great way to win elections, but at the end of the day someone always has to pay.

As the U.S. economy continues to come apart at the seams, finding sources of tax revenue will become increasingly difficult.

Perhaps the big tech companies can step up and offer to dramatically enlarge their contributions to the U.S. Treasury.

After all, they were quite instrumental in giving control of the federal government to the Democrats, and so you would think they should be quite willing to help pay for their promises.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” 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 “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including 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, Twitter and Parler, 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.

5 More Signs That The Global Economy Is Careening Toward A Recession

The global economy is already in the worst distress that we have seen since 2008, and it appears that the global slowdown is actually picking up pace as we head into 2020.  And this is happening even though central banks around the world have been cutting interest rates and pumping massive amounts of money into their respective financial systems.  The central bankers appear to be losing control, and it certainly wouldn’t take much of a push for this new crisis to evolve into a complete and utter nightmare.  The U.S. economy hasn’t been hit quite as hard as economies in Asia and Europe have been, but without a doubt things are slowing down here too.  Corporate earnings have been falling quarter after quarter, auto loan delinquencies just hit a record high, the Cass Freight Index has declined for 11 consecutive months, and we just witnessed the largest drop for U.S. industrial production since 2009.  Everywhere around us there is bad economic news, but most Americans are still completely oblivious to what is happening.

In this article, I am going to share even more evidence that a global economic slowdown has already begun.  When you add these numbers to all of the other numbers that I have been sharing in recent weeks, it becomes impossible to deny that something major is taking place.

The following are 5 more signs that the global economy is careening toward a recession…

#1 It is being projected that global auto sales will be down approximately 4 percent this year.  According to CNN, this will be the second consecutive year that global auto sales have fallen…

With only a month left in the year, global auto sales are on track for a 3.1 million drop, about 4%, for the year, according to Fitch. That would be the biggest decline since 2008, when the financial crisis hit, and the second year in a row that sales have fallen. Fitch expects worldwide car sales to total 77.5 million in 2019.

#2 Global trade just keeps falling.  According to Zero Hedge, total global trade has now declined on a year over year basis for four months in a row…

Global trade on a YoY basis contracted by 1.1% in September, marking the fourth consecutive YoY declines and the most extended period of subdued trade since the financial crisis in 2009.

The CPB said supply chain disruptions between the US and China, due mostly to the trade war, were the most significant drag on international trade volumes. US volumes fell 2.1% in September MoM. Though in China, imports plunged 6.9% MoM.

As you can see from those first two examples, we keep witnessing things happen that we haven’t seen since the last financial crisis.  Over the past few months, I have used phrases such as “since 2008” and “since 2009” over and over again.  We literally have not seen economic numbers this bad since the last recession, and we are still in the very early phases of this new downturn.

And in some cases, the numbers are actually even worse than anything that we saw during the last recession, and that brings us to our next sign…

#3 Chinese industrial profits just fell by the largest percentage ever recorded…

China Industrial Enterprises total profits collapsed in October to CNY427.5bn from CNY575.6bn in September – a 9.9% YoY plunge, the biggest drop on record.

In fact, China’s Industrial sector has seen annual declines in its profits for 4 of the last 6 months.

The trade war has hit the Chinese economy really hard, but it doesn’t look like a trade deal will happen any time soon.

#4 U.S. consumer confidence has now fallen for four months in a row…

Consumer confidence dipped for a fourth straight month in November as economic conditions weaken toward the end of 2019, data released Tuesday by The Conference Board shows.

The board’s consumer confidence index dipped to 125.5 this month. That’s down from 126.1 in October. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected the index to rise to 126.6.

This wasn’t supposed to happen, and if it keeps happening that is going to have important implications for the 2020 election.

#5 Even the wealthy are cutting back on their spending.  According to Yahoo Finance, this is a continuation of a trend that we have been seeing for the past three quarters…

Spending by the top 10% fell 1% in the second quarter from the same period last year, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by Moody’s Analytics. And a four-quarter average of outlays by the high earners has slipped on an annual basis the past three quarters, marking the first such declines since the Great Recession of 2007-09.

In recent years, global central banks have engaged in unprecedented intervention in an attempt to stave off another crisis, and for a while their efforts appeared to be successful.

But just because the coming crisis was delayed does not mean that it was canceled.

In fact, over the past few years our long-term financial problems have actually gotten a lot worse.  We are facing the biggest debt bubble in the history of the planet, global financial markets are more primed for a crash than they have ever been before, and civil unrest is breaking out all over the world.  The stage is certainly set for “the perfect storm” that I keep talking about, and most Americans have absolutely no idea what is coming.

In all the time that I have been writing about the global economy, things have never looked more ominous then they do right now.

So buckle up and hold on tight, because it certainly looks like we are in for a very bumpy ride in the months ahead.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of 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 have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. 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. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. 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.

Black Friday Is Coming, And 48 Million Americans Still Have Holiday Debt From Last Year

The biggest shopping day of the year is almost here, and marketers are working hard trying to extract as much money from U.S. consumers as possible.  Unfortunately, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get consumers to open up their wallets, because many of them are already drowning in debt.  As a society, we have been trained to think of this as “the happiest time of the year”, and for many Americans the most important part of the holiday season is opening presents on Christmas morning.  So there is a tremendous amount of pressure to spend a lot of money on presents, but this often leads to high levels of credit card debt.  In fact, a survey that was just released discovered that 48 million Americans “are still paying off credit card debt from last holiday season”…

The holidays can be hard: cooking elaborate meals, facing frigid temperatures, making travel plans that please everyone.

Overspending, however, is too easy. In fact, about 48 million Americans are still paying off credit card debt from last holiday season, according to a NerdWallet survey conducted by The Harris Poll.

Sadly, some of those consumers will end up paying the credit card companies more than twice what those Christmas presents originally cost, and it can be exceedingly difficult to ever get ahead when you are trapped in a seemingly endless cycle of debt.

So why do people do it?

Well, according to one financial therapist many Americans are chasing an “emotional experience” this time of the year…

Gift-buying requires money, time and energy when you may already feel overwhelmed, says Los Angeles-based financial therapist Amanda Clayman. During the holidays, “we’re chasing a sort of emotional experience,” she says. Think: the love and happiness of a Hallmark movie.

But feelings of grief or longing may be more realistic. “This is a sad and lonely time for many people,” says Sarah Newcomb, behavioral economist for Morningstar. Shopping (for anything or everything) can be a convenient coping mechanism.

We want what we see on television, but what we see on television is not real.

In the end, many Americans leave the holiday season feeling deeply disappointed, because what they were chasing was just an illusion.

Yes, some wealthy families will literally have hundreds of presents under their Christmas trees this holiday season, but most American families are deeply struggling these days.

In fact, over two million of us are actually living without basic necessities such as “running water or indoor plumbing”.  The following comes from Daisy Luther…

A new report says that more than 2 million Americans in West Virginia, Alabama, Texas and the Navajo Nation Reservation in the Southwest are living without clean running water or indoor plumbing. They’re drinking from polluted streams. They’re carrying buckets of the same water home for washing. They’re urinating and defecating outside with no wastewater treatment.

The gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow, and at this point the wealthiest 0.1 percent of all Americans now have as much wealth as the poorest 90 percent of all Americans combined.

Let that sink in for a moment.

That is a recipe for societal disaster, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

A big reason for this is because the Federal Reserve has been artificially pumping up the financial markets, and on Monday stocks hit yet another all-time high…

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite hit all-time closing highs as they rose 0.8% to 3,133.64 and 1.3% to 8,632.49, respectively. Both indexes also notched intraday records. The Dow Jones Industrial Average also had a record close, gaining 190.85 points, or 0.5% to 28,066.47.

President Donald Trump tweeted about the record, saying: “Enjoy!”

But what most Americans don’t understand is that 84 percent of all stock market wealth is owned by the wealthiest 10 percent of all Americans.

Of course the stock market bubble won’t last indefinitely.  We are already in an earnings recession, and that earnings recession is expected to continue in the fourth quarter…

Earnings in the S&P 500 index SPX, +0.75%  are now projected to decline 1.51% in the fourth quarter from the year before, according to a FactSet computation of analysts’ average forecasts for individual companies. An earnings recession is defined as two quarters or more of consecutive year-over-year declines, and earnings for S&P 500 components dipped in the first two quarters of 2019 and are all but certain to do so again in the third quarter — with nearly 95% of calendar third-quarter reports posted, earnings have dropped 2.34%, the biggest decline so far this year.

And about 75 percent of the time, an earnings recession leads into a full-blown recession for the economy as a whole…

Three-fourths (75%) of earnings recessions since World War II have morphed into economic recessions, said CFRA Chief Investment Strategist Sam Stovall, who told Market Watch that he has been “scratching his head” trying to reconcile analyst pessimism around earnings with continued stock-market rallies.

So the truth is that those that are celebrating what the stock market is doing are not likely to be celebrating for too much longer.

And every day we continue to get more bad news from the real economy.  For example, we just learned that the largest maker of truck engines in the United States will be laying off about 2,000 workers…

Those market trends are now impacting Cummins, a Columbus, Ind., manufacturer of heavy equipment. It’s the largest manufacturer of Class 8 truck engines, claiming a 38.3% market share in 2018 over competitors like Daimler and Volvo/Mack.

Cummins spokesperson Jon Mills confirmed to Business Insider that the company, which employs some 62,610 globally, will reduce its global workforce by about 2,000. Those layoffs will be complete by the first quarter of 2020, he said.

As a “perfect storm” overtakes America, many believe that this will be the last “normal” holiday season that Americans will be able to enjoy.

It has become exceedingly clear that very hard times are coming, and quite a few experts believe that the crisis that is ahead will be even worse than what we experienced in 2008.

So enjoy the time that you are able to spend with your family and friends over the coming weeks, because major changes are already starting to happen, and our nation will soon be dealing with one major headache after another.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of 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 have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. 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. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. 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.

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