Pain

The Amount Of Stuff Being Bought, Sold And Shipped Around The U.S. Hits The Lowest Level In 6 Years

Trucks - Public DomainWhen less stuff is being bought, sold and shipped around the country with each passing month, how in the world can the U.S. economy be in “good shape”?  Unlike official government statistics which are often based largely on projections, assumptions and numbers seemingly made up out of thin air, the Cass Freight index is based on real transactions conducted by real shipping companies.  And what the Cass Freight Index is telling us about the state of the U.S. economy in 2016 lines up perfectly with all of the other statistics that are clearly indicating that we have now shifted into recession mode.

If you are not familiar with the Cass Freight Index, here is a definition of the index from the official Cass website…

Since 1995, the Cass Freight Index™ has been a trusted measure of North American freight volumes and expenditures. Our monthly Cass Freight Index Report provides valuable insight into freight trends as they relate to other economic and supply chain indicators and the overall economy.

Data within the Index includes all domestic freight modes and is derived from $25 billion in freight transactions processed by Cass annually on behalf of its client base of hundreds of large shippers. These companies represent a broad sampling of industries including consumer packaged goods, food, automotive, chemical, OEM, retail and heavy equipment. Annual freight volume per organization ranges from $1 million to over $1 billion. The diversity of shippers and aggregate volume provide a statistically valid representation of North American shipping activity.

When they say “all domestic freight modes”, that includes air, rail, truck, etc.  As you are about to see, the total amount of stuff that is being bought, sold and shipped around the country by all these various methods has now been declining for 15 months in a row.

If it was just one or two months you could say that it was just an anomaly, but how in the world can anyone explain away 15 consecutive months?

Not only that, but the brand new number that just came out for May 2016 is the lowest number that we have seen for the month of May in 6 years.

Of course the number for April was the lowest number that we have seen for that month in 6 years too, and the number for March was also the lowest number that we have seen for that month in 6 years.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Below is some analysis of these numbers and a chart from Wolf Richter…

The Index is not seasonally or otherwise adjusted, so it shows strong seasonal patterns. In the chart below, the red line with black markers is for 2016. The colorful spaghetti above that line represents the years 2011 through 2015. The only month this year that was not the worst month since 2010 was February; only February 2011 was worse. That’s how bad it has gotten in the Freight sector:

Cass Freight Index - Wolfstreet

“Truck tonnage continues to slide for both linehaul and spot markets,” according to the report. And railroads are also singing the blues.

To me, these numbers are absolutely staggering.  How anyone can look at them and then attempt to claim that the U.S. economy is heading for good times is a mystery to me.

And this is especially true considering all of the other news that is pouring in.  Just today, we learned that new home sales have fallen by the most in 8 months.  If you are trying to sell your home, hopefully you will get that done very quickly, because this latest property bubble is starting to burst in a major way.

Of course there are many, many more numbers that tell us that a new U.S. economic crisis has already begun and has been going on for quite a while.  If you doubt this at all, please carefully read my previous article entitled “15 Facts About The Imploding U.S. Economy That The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want You To See“.

Today, I also came across a stunning IMF report that was just released that criticized the U.S. for our shrinking middle class and our rising levels of poverty…

A rising share of the U.S. labor force is shifting into retirement, basic infrastructure is crumbling, productivity gains are scanty, and labor markets and businesses appear less adept at reallocating human and physical capital. These growing headwinds are overlaid by pernicious secular trends in income: labor’s share of income is around 5 percent lower today than it was 15 years ago, the middle class has shrunk to its smallest size in the last 30 years, the income and wealth distribution are increasingly polarized, and poverty has risen.

If you follow my work on a regular basis, you already know that everything that the IMF said in that paragraph is true.

A little bit later in the report, the IMF shared some absolutely startling facts about the growth of poverty in this country…

There is an urgent need to tackle poverty. In the latest data, 1 in 7 Americans is living in poverty, including 1 in 5 children and 1 in 3 female-headed households. Around 40 percent of those in poverty are working.

This distressing growth in our poverty numbers has taken place during Barack Obama’s so-called “economic recovery”.

So how bad are things ultimately going to get for America’s poor now that a new economic crisis has begun?

Before I wrap up this article, I have to mention the early returns from the Brexit vote.  All day on Thursday, global news sources were reporting that the latest polls had “Remain” comfortably in the lead, and global financial markets soared on that news.

But now that the actual votes are being reported, it looks like it is going to be much, much closer than anticipated.  In fact, as I write this article “Leave” is ahead by a 54.16 percent to 45.84 percent margin.  Only a relatively small fraction of the votes have been counted so far, but global financial markets are already being spooked by these results.

If “Leave” does actually win, that is going to have enormous implications for the markets and for the future of Europe.  So let’s keep a close eye on what is happening.  If “Leave” does prove to be victorious, that will be one of the biggest things to hit Europe in decades, and I am sure that I will be posting an article about it tomorrow.

We live at a time when global events are beginning to accelerate, and there is much uncertainty in the air.  If you do not have a solid foundation on which to stand, the events of the coming months will likely shake you greatly.  I encourage everyone to start focusing on the things that really matter, because a lot of the other things that we obsess over will soon become quite insignificant.

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UPDATE: It is official – the United Kingdom has voted to leave the European Union.  They are to be greatly congratulated for declaring their independence, but without a doubt this vote is going to cause some very serious short-term economic and financial pain.  Already we have witnessed the greatest one day crash in the history of the British pound, and stock markets all over the world are crashing.  For much more, please see our latest video update…

Southern California Time Bomb: The Ground Surrounding The San Andreas Fault Is ‘Rising And Sinking’

Pacific Plate And The North American PlateIf you reside on the west coast, you are living on borrowed time.  As you will see below, stress has been building up along the San Andreas fault for more than a century, and scientists tell us that southern California is way overdue for a major earthquake.  When that stress is finally released, the U.S. Geological Survey says that we could be looking at hundreds of billions of dollars in damage.  If you follow my work regularly, then you already know that there has been unusual shaking all along the “Ring of Fire” so far in 2016.  But thankfully the west coast of the United States has been spared from a major disaster up to this point.  Unfortunately, scientists assure us that it is only a matter of time before one strikes, and that is why it is so alarming that the ground surrounding the San Andreas fault has been “rising and sinking”.  The following comes from the Los Angeles Times…

For the first time, scientists have produced a computer image showing huge sections of California rising and sinking around the San Andreas fault.

The vertical movement is the result of seismic strain that will be ultimately released in a large earthquake.

The California coastline is where two enormous tectonic plates come together.  The Pacific plate and the North American plate are slowly but surely moving against one another, and this creates a tremendous amount of geological stress.  While areas on both sides of the San Andreas fault have been steadily rising and sinking as a result of this stress, there are sections of the fault itself that have remained “locked” for more than 100 years, and other sections that have remained locked for more than 300 years…

The region of the San Andreas fault between Monterey County and Imperial County hasn’t moved in a significant way in more than 150 years, and other parts of the fault have been accumulating stress for more than 300 years.

This build up of stress is extremely dangerous, because the more stress that builds up the worse the ultimate release of that stress could turn out to be.

If you look at this map from the U.S. Geological Survey, you can see all of the earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or greater that have hit California within the past seven days.  As you can see, there has been a whole lot of shaking going on…

California Earthquakes June 2015 - U.S. Geological Survey

And let us not forget that earlier this month a magnitude 5.2 earthquake struck near San Diego, and it was followed by more than 800 aftershocks.

Unfortunately, none of these quakes has relieved the stress along the San Andreas fault.  While the San Andreas fault may be the most famous of the faults in southern California, the truth is that there are many others.  And just last year the U.S. Geological Survey admitted that the probability of a “megaquake” along the west coast involving multiple faults at once was significantly greater than they had previously been projecting…

A recent report by the U.S. Geological Survey shows the inevitability of just such a quake, which is predicted to hit within the next couple of decades.

“The new likelihoods are due to the inclusion of possible multi-fault ruptures, where earthquakes are no longer confined to separate, individual faults, but can occasionally rupture multiple faults simultaneously,” lead author of the study and USGS scientist, Ned Field says. “This is a significant advancement in terms of representing a broader range of earthquakes throughout California’s complex fault system.”

But of course the San Andreas fault represents an absolutely massive threat to southern California all by itself.

Back in May, the Los Angeles Times quoted the director of the Southern California Earthquake Center as saying that the San Andreas fault is “locked, loaded and ready to roll”…

“The springs on the San Andreas system have been wound very, very tight. And the southern San Andreas fault, in particular, looks like it’s locked, loaded and ready to go,” Jordan said in the opening keynote talk.

Other sections of the San Andreas fault also are far overdue for a big quake. Further southeast of the Cajon Pass, such as in San Bernardino County, the fault has not moved substantially since an earthquake in 1812, and further southeast toward the Salton Sea, it has been relatively quiet since about 1680 to 1690.

Here’s the problem: Scientists have observed that based on the movement of tectonic plates, with the Pacific plate moving northwest of the North American plate, earthquakes should be relieving about 16 feet of accumulated plate movement every 100 years. Yet the San Andreas has not relieved stress that has been building up for more than a century.

A number of years ago, a study conducted by the U.S. Geological Survey found that just a magnitude 7.8 earthquake along the southern San Andreas fault would cause more than 1,800 deaths, 50,000 injuries and 200 billion dollars in damage.

So what would a magnitude 8 or worse quake do?

And even though the U.S. Geological Survey does not believe that parts of California will eventually fall into the ocean, it is very open about the fact that Los Angeles and San Francisco will one day “be adjacent to one another” as the Pacific plate and the North American plate slowly slip past each other…

Will California eventually fall into the ocean?

No. The San Andreas Fault System, which crosses California from the Salton Sea in the south to Cape Mendocino in the north, is the boundary between the Pacific Plate and North American Plate. The Pacific Plate is moving northwest with respect to the North American Plate at approximately 46 millimeters per year (the rate your fingernails grow). The strike-slip earthquakes on the San Andreas Fault are a result of this plate motion. The plates are moving horizontally past one another, so California is not going to fall into the ocean. However, Los Angeles and San Francisco will one day be adjacent to one another!

Meanwhile, while we are talking about southern California, I just had to mention the record-breaking heatwave and the horrific wildfires that are plaguing the region this week.  In fact, two massive wildfires that have been raging out of control threaten to combine “into one super fire”…

Two new fires raging in California could soon merge, creating one ‘super fire’, as wild blazes continue to consume thousands of acres and have already force massive evacuations.

Throughout the United States, firefighters are battling blazes of varying degrees in nine states, including California, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, Montana, Washington, Utah, Wyoming and Colorado.

The most serious of these fires have been week-old blazes in California, New Mexico and Arizona, where scorching triple-digit temperatures have stoked the flames.

Normally we don’t see wildfires of this size and intensity until the late summer or early fall.

As I constantly remind my readers, last year was the worst year for wildfires in all of U.S. history, and so far this year we are more than a million acres ahead of the pace that was set last year.

We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, wildfires, historic droughts and unusual flooding events all seem to be on the rise globally.

So is there a reason why all of this is happening, or are we just going through a time when we are experiencing an astounding string of truly bizarre coincidences?

Please feel free to tell us what you think by posting a comment below…

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Republican Operatives Launch All-Out Effort To Unbind The Delegates And Deny Trump The Nomination

Donald Trump Cube - Public DomainIf you think that Donald Trump already has the Republican nomination locked up, then you don’t understand what is going on behind the scenes.  It has long been my contention that the elite will move heaven and earth in order to keep Trump from ever setting foot in the Oval Office.  One way that they could try to do this is by attempting to deny him the nomination at the Republican convention next month.  Over the past couple of days, the Washington Post, CNN and a whole host of other mainstream news outlets have been reporting on a new “last-ditch effort” that has been launched by Republican operatives to get the Republican convention Rules Committee to unbind all of the delegates and allow them to vote however they want.  As you will see below, they can do this, and if they get enough votes they will do it.

This current effort is different from what we have seen so far during this campaign season, because it is actually being organized by the delegates themselves.  The following comes from the Washington Post…

Dozens of Republican convention delegates are hatching a new plan to block Donald Trump at this summer’s party meetings, in what has become the most organized effort so far to stop the businessman from becoming the GOP presidential nominee.

The moves come amid declining poll numbers for Trump and growing concern among Republicans that he is squandering his chance to defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton. Several controversies — including his racial attacks on a federal judge, his renewed call to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States and his support for changing the nation’s gun laws — have raised fears among Republicans that Trump is not really a conservative and is too reckless to run a successful race.

This movement is being spearheaded by a delegate from Colorado named Kendal Unruh.  She is actually a key member of the Republican convention Rules Committee, and this is very important for reasons that I will explain below.

For her, it is not about getting some other specific candidate nominated.  Rather, the entire goal is simply to stop Donald Trump…

“This literally is an ‘Anybody but Trump’ movement,” said Kendal Unruh, a Republican delegate from Colorado who is leading the campaign. “Nobody has any idea who is going to step in and be the nominee, but we’re not worried about that. We’re just doing that job to make sure that he’s not the face of our party.”

So what will it take for Unruh and her allies to be successful?

As Fox News explained, there are basically two courses of action…

To prevail, Unruh needs a majority of the 112 members of the convention rules committee, which has two delegates from each state and territory. Then, a majority of the full convention’s 2,472 delegates would have to approve.

There’s a Plan B. If Unruh can win over one-fourth support from the rules committee — just 29 delegates — the full convention must vote on her proposal. So far she’s got around 10 supporters though some prefer delaying the rule’s impact until the 2020 convention, she said.

On Thursday night, Unruh was on a conference call that included at least 30 delegates from 15 different states, and the Washington Post says that regional coordinators for this effort have been recruited “in Arizona, Iowa, Louisiana, Washington and other states.”

One individual that took part in this conference call on Thursday night told CNN that calls are pouring in from people all over the country that want to be part of this movement…

“I will tell you, about every two hours people contact me about how to join this effort,” Lonegan said. “This has never been done before, so there’s no textbook on how to do it. So we’re building an organic effort, state by state, to convince members of the Rules Committee to sign onto a rule that unbinds the delegates to vote their moral conscience.”

So could the Republican convention Rules Committee actually do this?

Could they actually unbind all of the delegates and allow them to vote however they wished?

Well, yes they actually could do this.  As Time Magazine has explained, the Republican convention Rules Committee essentially has the power to make up any rules that they want…

It has the power to review and amend all of the rules of the Republican Party, pending ratification by the full convention. If it wanted to, it could insert a rule that says only candidates with blue hair could be the party’s nominee. It’s that powerful. In a contested scenario, the Rules Committee would be ground zero for fights over who and how candidates are nominated on the floor, as well as how the convention itself is conducted.

And thanks to political wrangling by the Cruz campaign, we do know that the rules committee is dominated by delegates that are loyal to Cruz…

The convention rules committee is made up of one man and one woman from each of the 50 states, U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia. Dominated by party insiders and loyalists to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz—who aggressively worked state conventions to secure slots on the committee—it remains to be seen what the committee’s appetite would be for such a dramatic break from the existing rules.

If I was Donald Trump, I would be taking this very, very seriously.

But at this point he seems to be brushing it off …

“I have tremendous support and get the biggest crowds by far and any such move would not only be totally illegal but also a rebuke of the millions of people who feel so strongly about what I am saying,” Trump said in a statement. “People that I defeated soundly in the primaries will do anything to get a second shot — but there is no mechanism for it to happen.”

Right at this moment we still have about a month left before the convention.

So that gives those involved in the anti-Trump movement quite a bit of time to rally their forces.

The rule change that would unbind all of the delegates and free them up to “vote their consciences” has already been drafted.  Here is the text of the proposed rule change…

Preserving Delegates’ Ability to Vote Their Individual Conscience

The secretary of the national convention shall receive and faithfully announce and record each delegate’s vote in accordance with these rules. If any such delegate notifies the secretary of his or her intent to cast a vote of conscience, whether personal or religious, each such delegate shall be unbound and unconstrained by these rules on any given vote, including the first ballot for the selection of the Republican nominee for President of the United States, without the risk of challenge, sanction, or retribution by the Republican National Committee. Allowable personal reasons shall include the public disclosure of one or more grievous acts of personal conduct by a nominee candidate, including but not limited to, criminally actionable acts, acts of moral turpitude or extreme prejudice, and/or notorious public statements of support for positions that clearly oppose or contradict the policies embodied in the Republican Party’s platform as established at the national convention.

In my new book, I warn about the great political shaking that is coming to this nation, and if this rule change is even attempted at the Republican convention it would create seismic shifts in the U.S. political landscape.

Of course there is still one huge question that I have not even addressed in this article yet.

If Trump has the nomination taken away from him, who would the Republican nominee be?

Some are convinced that it would be Paul Ryan, but I believe that it would be somebody else.

Mitt Romney has certainly not hidden his disdain for Donald Trump, and right now he is quietly waiting in the wings.  If the anti-Trump forces get their way, I believe that he would be the man that ultimately walks away with the prize.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Orlando Attack Reality Check: Next Time The Terrorists May Choose To Shoot Up A Church Or A School

Stop Terrorism Hand - Public DomainIslamic terror can strike anywhere.  On Sunday, it was a gay nightclub in Orlando called Pulse, but next time it might be a church or a school.  In fact, it might be your church or your school.  As you will see below, 29-year-old Omar Mateen actually scouted Walt Disney World as a potential target before finally settling on a gay nightclub.  And not too long ago another Islamic terrorist had already made plans to shoot up a very large church in Detroit.  It is high time that we all had a reality check when it comes to Islamic terror.  The terrorists are not limiting themselves to just military and political targets.  Their goal is to create fear and panic, and they want as much media attention on their acts of violence as possible.  So if attacking a church or a school or a theme park will serve their purposes, then that is exactly what they are going to do.

The Director of the FBI says that Omar Mateen had “links to al-Qaida, Hezbollah, and the Islamic State“, and ISIS has proudly taken responsibility for this attack…

The ISIS-affiliated news agency Amaq News broadcast a claim of responsibility from ISIS for a shooting rampage at a gay nightclub in Orlando that left 50 people dead over the weekend.

The agency said the shooting was the work of an “ISIS fighter,” multiple media outlets have reported.

But we aren’t just fighting ISIS.  According to Wikipedia, there have been hundreds of Islamic terror attacks worldwide so far in 2016, and only a small percentage of them have been conducted by ISIS.

Even if ISIS were totally destroyed tomorrow, the threat of Islamic terror would remain.

There are some people out there that are downplaying the significance of this attack because of the target.  But the truth is that Mateen almost selected Walt Disney World as the target.  The following comes from People Magazine…

The gunman behind the Orlando nightclub shootings, the deadliest mass shooting in American history, recently scouted Walt Disney World as a potential target, a federal law enforcement source tells PEOPLE.

Omar Mateen and his wife, Noor Zahi Salman, visited Walt Disney World in April, the source says. Salman told federal authorities on Sunday that her husband had more recently been “scouting Downtown Disney and Pulse [nightclub] for attacks.”

Unlike the four Disney World theme parks, Downtown Disney, which was recently renamed Disney Springs, doesn’t have security and bag check before entry.

Could you imagine the carnage that kind of attack would have created?

Personally, I don’t even want to think about it.

And as I mentioned above, not too long ago another Islamic radical had actually planned to shoot up a very large church in the heart of Detroit.  21-year-old Khalil Abu-Rayyan of Dearborn Heights, Michigan actually admitted to authorities that he had purchased a gun and had intended to take it into a church that can seat up to 6,000 people on a Sunday morning and start shooting.

Abu-Rayyan also admitted to authorities that since he could not do his jihad in the Middle East, that he intended to “do my jihad over here”.  The following is an excerpt from a news report about this potential attack that was thwarted…

“I tried to shoot up a church one day,” Abu-Rayyan is quoted as saying in court records. “I don’t know the name of it, but it’s close to my job. It’s one of the biggest ones in Detroit. Ya, I had it planned out. I bought a bunch of bullets. I practiced a lot with it. I practiced reloading and unloading. But my dad searched my car one day, and he found everything. He found the gun and the bullets and a mask I was going to wear.”

Investigators didn’t name the church Abu-Rayyan allegedly eyed, but claim the property covers about two blocks less than half a mile from his work and can accommodate up to 6,000 members. He allegedly purchased a gun and told an undercover FBI employee that attacking a church would be “easy.”

“A lot of people go there. Plus people are not allowed to carry guns in church,” the affidavit quotes him as saying. “Plus it would make the news. Everybody would’ve heard. Honestly I regret not doing it. (If I) can’t go do jihad at the Middle East, I would do my jihad over here.”

These kinds of radicals are running around all over America, and over time the threat that they pose is only going to get bigger and bigger.

In fact, Mike Adams is reporting that the FBI is dealing with “over 900 ISIS terror threat leads in the United States” right at this moment…

The FBI is currently investigating over 900 ISIS terror threat leads in the United States, covering all 50 states. Yet the Obama administration has systematically shut down federal prosecutions of such groups and silenced whistleblowers who tried to warn that all this was coming.

And we do know that ISIS recently released a “kill list” of American citizens, and 8 people on that “kill list” just happen to be from Orlando, Florida…

An ISIS kill list released online Monday includes 8 residents from Orlando, Florida – the site of Sunday morning’s horrific terror attack that took the lives of more than 50 people.

The list, obtained and analyzed by Infowars, mentions what appears to be the names, addresses and emails of 8 females from the Orlando area.

Whether any of the Orlando residents listed were among the dead or injured is unknown at this time.

When are we going to start taking the threat of Islamic terror more seriously?

How many Americans have to die before we wake up?

Incredibly, Barack Obama refused to link radical Islam to the attack in Orlando during his speech to the nation in the aftermath of the shootings.  The following comes from Leo Hohmann…

President Obama refused to tie the bloody attack on a gay nightclub Sunday to Islamic terror and said “no definitive judgement” had been made on the motive.

At least 50 people are dead and 53 wounded following an attack on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, in which the shooter shouted, “Allahu Akbar!”

It was the worst act of terror on U.S. soil since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

But Obama made no mention of “Islam,” “Muslim” or “Islamic terror” in his televised address to the nation.

Talk about being in a state of denial.

We live at a time when humanity’s ability to destroy is far greater than humanity’s ability to protect, and the ideology that is fueling this wave of terror is growing in almost every country on the entire planet.

Given enough time, it is inevitable that Islamic terrorists will start hitting schools, churches, shopping malls and sporting events inside the United States.

And eventually, they will get their hands on chemical, biological and potentially even nuclear weapons.

So what we have seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg.  Meanwhile, many of our top politicians steadfastly refuse to use the phrase “Islamic terror” because it might potentially offend someone.

I don’t know about you, but I know a losing hand when I see one.  The nightmare of Islamic terror has been unleashed in this nation, and the things that we are going to see in the years ahead are going to be absolutely unthinkable.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Why Is The Weather So Crazy All Of A Sudden?

Crazy Weather - Public DomainAll over the planet, global weather patterns have gone completely nuts.  Just over the past few days we have seen “life threatening” heatwaves, extremely dangerous wildfires, vicious tornadoes and unprecedented flooding – and that is just in the United States.  And of course this is just the continuation of a trend that stretches back to last year, when extremely weird weather created “apocalyptic-like conditions” in many areas around the world.  So why is this happening?  For decades, we could count on weather patterns falling within fairly predictable parameters, but now that is completely changing all of a sudden.  All over the globe we are seeing things happen that we have never seen happen before, and the weather just seems to get even more crazy with each passing month.

Just consider what has been going on the past few days.  Let’s start with the “life threatening” heatwave that is currently hammering the west coast…

The West Coast is in the grip of a ‘life threatening’ triple-digit heatwave that is set to continue well into next week, raising the risk of wildfires.

The National Weather Service has issued excessive heat warnings for southeastern California, southern Nevada, western and southern Arizona, western Oregon and far southwest Washington.

From Oregon to Nevada temperatures are set to top 100F tomorrow and into Monday, with Phoenix, Arizona, predicted to top out at 116F.

These are temperatures that you might expect to see in July or August, but right now summer has not even officially begun yet.

And as the article quoted above noted, these extremely high temperatures bring with them a much higher risk of wildfires.  In fact, firefighters in southern California are currently fighting a horrible fire that is raging wildly out of control and that has already forced thousands of people (including Kim Kardashian and Kanye West) out of their homes…

A massive brush fire Saturday in the Calabasas area forced mandatory evacuations as rapid flames consumed 516 acres and threatened 3,000 homes, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said.

“This is a fast-moving, dangerous fire,” Los Angeles County Fire Chief Dennis Cross said. “It’s hard for people to see where this fire is because of the dense canopy and the canyons.”

If you follow my work closely, you already know that 2015 was the worst year for wildfires in all of U.S. history.

More acres burned in the U.S. last year than we had ever seen before.

And so far this year, we are more than a million acres ahead of the pace set last year.

Meanwhile, CNN is reporting that this “is the second year in a row that Texas has been hit by 500-year floods“…

“It could just be really bad luck,” said CNN Senior Meteorologist Brandon Miller. “A 500-year flood doesn’t mean you will go 500 years between them. It just means it is such an extreme event that the odds of it happening are very low, therefore it only happens on average every 500 years.

“It just so happens that parts of Texas have seen them now in back-to-back years, and maybe even twice this year. The odds of that happening are infinitesimally small.”

In a recent article, I noted that the United States has now been hit by 10 major flooding events since the end of last September.

Never before in U.S. history have we ever seen so many major floods in such a compressed period of time.

And the hits just keep on coming.  On Sunday, the east coast was bracing for a series of storms which appeared poised to produce very high winds, severe thunderstorms and even possibly some tornadoes.  The following comes from the Daily Mail…

The East Coast is braced for an incoming storm that could see up to seventeen million people hit with tropical rain, thunderstorms and even tornadoes.

People from New York through North Carolina could be affected, as thunderstorms were expected to blast winds up to 55 miles per hour later on Sunday.

The Governors Ball in New York City was cancelled for safety reasons after organizers saw the forecast for lightning.

And on top of everything else, Florida is about to be hit by tropical storm Colin.

But don’t worry, because all of this is perfectly “normal”, right?

Across the Atlantic, Europe is also dealing with some extremely crazy weather.  Major flooding is being reported all over the continent, and the French just experienced their wettest month since 1886…

Segments of France’s border with Belgium received six-week’s worth of rain in under 24 hours earlier this week, causing widespread flooding across the country. May has been the country’s rainiest month since 1886, Radio France Internationale says.

As a result of that rain, French meteorologists expect the already-swollen Seine in Paris to peak at 6.5 meters (21 feet) above its usual level on Friday. The Louvre is closed due to flooding concerns, and workers have been busy moving priceless works of art as a precautionary measure.

On the other side of the planet, many areas of India have been dealing with an unprecedented heatwave.  On Thursday, May 19th, the all-time record for the highest temperature ever recorded in India was broken.  And this was part of a crippling heatwave that pushed temperatures in northern India “above 104 degrees for weeks”…

A severe heat wave warning is in place for much of India through Saturday. Temperatures in northern India have risen above 104 degrees for weeks, the BBC reported. The weather has killed hundreds of people and destroyed crops in more than 13 states, the Associated Press reported.

If this happened where you live, you could just go inside and turn on the air conditioning.

But most of those people do not have air conditioning, and that is why hundreds of them have been dying.

At the exact same time when the crust of our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, our weather is starting to become really crazy too.

Some people are going to dismiss all of this as just a bizarre series of coincidences, others will want to blame “global warming”, and yet others will see all of this as a sign that Jesus is coming back soon.

But what is truly frightening to consider is this…

What if our weather just keeps getting crazier and crazier?

If our weather continues to spiral out of control, it is inevitable that there will be major famines, widespread riots and tremendous political unrest all over the planet.

Is our world equipped to be able to handle seven billion people going absolutely nuts all at once?

Let us hope and pray for weather patterns to begin to return to normal, because I don’t think that we are.

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

Bill Kristol Announces That ‘There Will Be An Independent Candidate’ To Sabotage Donald Trump

Idea Follow Question - Public DomainIt has long been my contention that the elite are more than willing to do whatever they have to do to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.  There are many forms that this could take, and one potential option just became a little bit clearer.  On Sunday, the founder and editor of the Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol, announced on Twitter that there “will be an independent candidate–an impressive one, with a strong team and a real chance.”  Kristol has very, very deep ties to the Republican elite, and so this is certainly not an idle threat.  At this point we do not know who the candidate will be, but some of the names that have been mentioned include Mitt Romney, John Kasich, Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse and billionaire Mark Cuban.  Of course dividing the conservative vote would be suicidal and would virtually ensure a victory for Hillary Clinton in November.  So why would Kristol and other Republican elitists want to do this?

That is a very good question, and it goes to the very core of how the game of politics is played in America today.

The truth is that the elite are accustomed to being in control of both parties, and that is why things never seem to change very much no matter who is elected.

But this time someone that the elite do not control has miraculously captured the Republican nomination, and this scares them to death.

So now the mission is to destroy the Trump candidacy at all costs, even if that means having the Republican elite sabotage the Republican nominee.

I wasn’t sure if they were actually going to pull the trigger on a major third party candidate, but Bill Kristol now says that this is absolutely going to happen…

Of course Donald Trump was horrified when he learned of what Kristol had said.  He responded with a series of very angry tweets…

I would be upset too.  For the Republican elite to purposely sabotage Trump and throw the election to Hillary Clinton is seemingly insane.  This is something that Ben Carson commented on during a recent interview with Fox News…

Former 2016 candidate and Trump backer Ben Carson, speaking Monday on Fox News, echoed Trump’s warnings and invoked the 1992 presidential race as an example.

“A quarter of a century ago, another Clinton was running for the White House, and it was the entrance of a third-party candidate, Ross Perot, that made it possible for him to win,” Carson said. “Wouldn’t it be ironic if the same thing happened this time?”

Of course Kristol and the others that he is working with know precisely what they are doing.

There is no way in the world that Romney, Sasse, Kasich or Cuban could win.  But that wouldn’t be the goal anyway.  The goal would simply be to deny five or ten percent of the vote to Trump so that Hillary would win in a landslide.

At one time it seemed like such sabotage would not be necessary, but now polls have begun to shift and the elite are beginning to panic.  Here is one example of how the numbers have shifted…

That data and recent events suggest that Wall Street, which currently prefers former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to real estate mogul Donald Trump, may not get the president it wants. According to the Iowa Electronic Markets, a prediction online betting platform, the probability that we’ll see a Democrat take the White House in 2016 is shrinking fast.

“The Democratic candidate was all but a certainty to win the presidency less than a month ago—it was at 74 percent and it’s down to 58 percent today,” said Hickey.

In a head to head matchup, there is a very real possibility that Trump could defeat Clinton.  So that is why the elite feel that they have to make a move.

But we probably will not find out the identity of the third party candidate until some time in June at the earliest.  In fact, a source that is involved in this third party effort told CBS News “not to expect an announcement for a couple of weeks.”

So for the moment, we will wait.

But without a doubt, there appears to be a unique opportunity for a third party candidate in this election cycle.  A whole host of recent polls and surveys have shown that the American people are not pleased with either party at this point and that most Americans would like to see an alternative choice to either Clinton or Trump.  The following comes from the New York Times…

The survey also found evidence of overwhelming interest in the presidential contest, although less than a quarter of Americans say they’re excited about it.

Worse, 55 percent of Americans, including 60 percent of Republicans and 53 percent of Democrats, say they feel helpless about the 2016 election. And two-thirds of Americans under 30 report feeling helpless.

“I am despondent,” said Cserbak. “I wouldn’t say I feel totally helpless. I do have a vote.”

Of course no matter who runs as a third party candidate, there is no way in the world that individual will win.  Any third party candidate will simply play the role of spoiler, and will throw the election one way or the other.

I understand that a lot of people out there are very excited about Trump.  And it would be very nice to think that the American people could actually elect a president that is not controlled by the elite.

But that is not how the real world works, and over the next several months we are going to get a very clear lesson in power politics.

If necessary, the elite will move heaven and earth if that is what it takes to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.  Anyone that would suggest otherwise simply doesn’t understand how the game is played.

Rail Traffic Depression: 292 Union Pacific Engines Are Sitting In The Arizona Desert Doing Nothing

Union Pacific Engines - Google EarthWe continue to get more evidence that the U.S. economy has entered a major downturn.  Just last week, I wrote about how U.S. GDP growth numbers have been declining for three quarters in a row, and previously I wrote about how corporate defaults have surged to their highest level since the last financial crisis.  Well, now we are getting some very depressing numbers from the rail industry.  As you will see below, U.S. rail traffic was down more than 11 percent from a year ago in April.  That is an absolutely catastrophic number, and the U.S. rail industry is feeling an enormous amount of pain right now.  This also tells us that “the real economy” is really slowing down, because less stuff is being shipped by rail all over the nation.

One of the economic commentators that I have really come to respect is Wolf Richter of WolfStreet.com.  He has a really sharp eye for what is really going on in the economy and in the financial world, and I find myself quoting him more and more as time goes by.  If you have not checked out his site yet, I very much encourage you to do so.

On Wednesday, he posted a very alarming article about what is happening to our rail industry.  The kinds of numbers that we have been seeing recently are the kinds of numbers that we would expect if an economic depression was starting.  The following is an excerpt from that article…

Total US rail traffic in April plunged 11.8% from a year ago, the Association of American Railroads reported today. Carloads of bulk commodities such as coal, oil, grains, and chemicals plummeted 16.1% to 944,339 units.

The coal industry is in a horrible condition and cannot compete with US natural gas at current prices. Coal-fired power plants are being retired. Demand for steam coal is plunging. Major US coal miners – even the largest one – are now bankrupt. So in April, carloads of coal plummeted 40% from the already beaten-down levels a year ago.

Because rail traffic is down so dramatically, many operators have large numbers of engines that are just sitting around collecting dust.  In his article, Wolf Richter shared photographs from Google Earth that show some of the 292 Union Pacific engines that are sitting in the middle of the Arizona desert doing absolutely nothing.  The following is one of those photographs…

Union Pacific Engines - Google Earth

As Wolf Richter pointed out, it costs a lot of money for these engines to just sit there doing nothing…

These engines are expensive pieces of equipment. When they just sit there, not pulling trains, they become “overcapacity,” and they get very expensive. Then there are engineers and other personnel who suddenly become unproductive. Some of them have already been laid off or are getting laid off.

All over the world, similar numbers are coming in.  For example, the Baltic Dry Index fell 30 more points on Wednesday after falling 21 on Tuesday.  Global trade is really, really slowing down during the early portion of 2016.  What this means on a practical level is that a lot less stuff is being bought, sold and shipped around the planet.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for authorities to deny that a new global recession has begun, and at this moment we are only in the very early chapters of this new crisis.

Another thing that I watch very closely is the velocity of money.  When an economy is healthy, people feel pretty good about things and money tends to circulate fairly rapidly.  For example, I may buy something from you, then you may buy something from someone else, etc.

But when times get tough, people tend to hold on to their money more tightly, and that is why the velocity of money goes down when recessions hit.  In the chart below, the shaded areas represent recessions, and you can see that the velocity of money has declined during every single recession in the post-World War II era…

M2 Velocity Of Money

During the last recession, the velocity of money declined precipitously, and that makes perfect sense.  But then a funny thing happened.  There was a slight bump up once the recession was over, but then it turned down again and it has kept going down ever since.

In fact, the velocity of money has now dropped to an all-time low.  The velocity of M2 just recently dipped below 1.5 for the first time ever.

This is not a sign of an “economic recovery”.  What this tells us is that our economy is very, very sick.

And we can see evidence of this sickness all around us.  For instance, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that homelessness in Los Angeles increased by 11 percent last year, and this marked the fourth year in a row that homelessness in the city has increased…

Homelessness rose 11% in the city of Los Angeles and 5.7% in the county last year despite an intensive federal push that slashed the county ranks of homeless veterans by nearly a third, according to a report released Wednesday.

The increase marks the fourth consecutive year of rising homelessness in L.A., as local officials struggle to identify funding for billion-dollar plans they approved to solve the nation’s most intractable homeless problem.

Let us also not forget that about half the country is basically flat broke at this point.

Just recently, the Federal Reserve found that 47 percent of all Americans could not pay an unexpected $400 emergency room bill without selling something or borrowing the money from somewhere.

With numbers such as these being reported, how in the world can anyone possibly claim that the U.S. economy is in good shape?

It boggles the mind, and yet there are people out there that would actually have you believe that everything is just fine.

The current occupant of the White House is one of them.

With each passing month, the real economy is getting even worse.  We may not have slipped into a full-blown economic depression just yet, but it is coming.

For now, let us be thankful for whatever remains of our debt-fueled prosperity, because we don’t deserve the massively inflated standard of living that we have been enjoying.

We have been consuming far more than we produce for decades, but it won’t last for much longer.  And when those days are gone for good, we will mourn them bitterly.

The End Of America?: 13 Catastrophic Events Which Could Soon Lead To An American Apocalypse

Apocalyptic - Public DomainIs the strongest and most powerful nation on the planet headed for an apocalypse which will bring it to its knees?  We live in a world that is becoming increasingly unstable, and apocalyptic themes have become very common in books, movies, television shows and video games.  It is almost as if there is an unconscious understanding on a societal level that something very big and very bad is coming, even if the vast majority of the population cannot specifically identify what that is going to be.  Last week, the Global Challenges Foundation released a new report entitled “Global Catastrophic Risks 2016” in which they discussed various apocalyptic events that they believe could wipe out more than 10 percent of the population of our planet, and they warned that these types of events “are more likely than we intuitively think”…

Sebastian Farquhar, director at the Global Priorities Project, told the Press Association: “There are some things that are on the horizon, things that probably won’t happen in any one year but could happen, which could completely reshape our world and do so in a really devastating and disastrous way.

“History teaches us that many of these things are more likely than we intuitively think. Many of these risks are changing and growing as technologies change and grow and reshape our world. But there are also things we can do about the risks.”

According to this new report, we are five times more likely to die from the various apocalyptic catastrophes that they analyzed than we are from a car accident.

In this article, I want to discuss some of the most important threats that they analyzed, in addition to adding some of my own to the list.  But first I want to mention that I do not believe that the Global Challenges Foundation is correct to identify climate change as one of the most significant catastrophic threats that humanity is facing.  Our climate has always been changing, and I do believe that we will see wild climate shifts in the years ahead.  However, human activity plays an exceedingly small role in all of this, and there is not very much that we can do to prevent what is going to happen either.  Most of the climate change that we are going to see in our future is going to be as a result of other catastrophes in this list, so I have not included it as a separate item.

With that being said, let’s quickly examine some of the potential threats identified by the Global Challenges Foundation…

Supervolcanoes

In various locations around the globe, there are gigantic supervolcanoes which could dramatically change the course of human history in a single moment by erupting.  In the United States, the Yellowstone supervolcano is becoming increasingly active, and a full-blown eruption could potentially be up to 2,000 times more powerful than the eruption of Mount St. Helens back in 1980.  As I mentioned the other day, major metropolitan areas such as Salt Lake City and Denver would be essentially destroyed, food production in this country would be virtually wiped out, and a “volcanic winter” would cool global temperatures by up to 20 degrees for up to several years.

Asteroids And Comets

This is something that the Obama administration is actually quite concerned about.  During his tenure, NASA has established a “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” that is in charge of tracking giant space rocks, and NASA is working to develop a method to destroy incoming asteroids using nuclear weapons.

Scientists admit that they only know about a small fraction of the near-Earth objects that are actually out there, and we get hit “by surprise” all the time.  If we were to get hit at just the right place by a very large object, like say just off the east coast of the United States, the consequences would almost be too horrible for words.

Today, 39 percent of all Americans live in counties that directly border a shoreline, and most of those people are along the east coast.  According to the University of California at Santa Cruz website, if a huge asteroid did slam into the Atlantic Ocean, it could potentially produce a 400 foot high tsunami that would sweep inland for many, many miles and kill millions upon millions of Americans in the process.

Natural Pandemics

The flu pandemic of 1918 killed approximately 50,000,000 people worldwide, and scientists assure us that it will happen again one day.

Yes, we have come a long way in fighting disease, but as we learned during the recent Ebola outbreak, a really nasty virus can grip the entire world with fear in a very short period of time.

Engineered Pandemics

This is probably even a bigger threat than natural pandemics, because now we have the technology to genetically alter naturally occurring diseases and make them even stronger.

Whether it is on purpose or by accident, it is only a matter of time before a genetically-modified superbug gets released into the general population, and when that day arrives it may make all previous pandemics look like a Sunday picnic.

Artificial Intelligence

Could someday entities that we have created turn on us and start killing us?

Some might refer to this as “the Terminator scenario”, and it is becoming more realistic with each passing day as our technological capabilities continue to increase at an exponential rate.

Geoengineering

The human race now has the capability to purposely modify the weather, and this means that we also have the capability to do a tremendous amount of damage.

Have you ever looked up and noticed long white trails criss-crossing the sky?  This is being done on purpose, and when they spray chemicals into our atmosphere it could have some very severe long-term consequences that the authorities may not be anticipating.

Nuclear War

Back during the Cold War, most Americans would have probably named this as the number one catastrophic threat facing America, but these days most people tend to believe that “the Cold War” is over.

So nobody has really objected while the U.S. strategic nuclear arsenal has been reduced by about 95 percent, and Barack Obama insists that he would like to reduce it even further.

Meanwhile, both the Russians and the Chinese are rapidly modernizing their nuclear forces, and they both have developed hypersonic glide vehicles that can defeat any missile defense system that the U.S. can put up.

Our relationship with Russia has already gone down the tubes, and our relationship with China is rapidly deteriorating.  In fact, China just rejected a request for the USS John C. Stennis to make a routine port call at Hong Kong.  Most Americans assume that a war with either one of them is impossible, but the truth is that we may find ourselves in a conflict with both of them at the same time eventually.

The catastrophic threats above were ones that were mentioned in the report from the Global Challenges Foundation.  Below are some additional items that I would like to add to the list…

Islamic Terror

It isn’t just ISIS that we need to be concerned about.  Islamic terror is exploding all over the planet, and according to Wikipedia there have already been 95 such attacks globally so far in 2016.

Up until now, they have been killing us with guns and bombs, but what happens when they inevitably get their hands on chemical, biological or nuclear weapons?

Terror attacks using weapons of mass destruction could literally turn our society completely upside down virtually overnight, and it is only a matter of time until this starts happening.

Power Grid Failure

Someday you may wake up and discover that the power grid has totally failed.  Just try to imagine a world without any lights, cell phones, computers, televisions, ATMs, heating and cooling systems, credit card readers, gas pumps, cash registers, refrigerators or hospital equipment.  A massive electromagnetic pulse, either from the sun or as the result of a nuclear blast, could instantly plunge society back into the 1800s.

The EMP Commission spent years studying this, and they told Congress back in 20o8 that up to 90 percent of the U.S. population could be dead within one year of such an event due to starvation, disease and the breakdown of society.  So this is a threat that people better start taking seriously.

Cyberwar

World War III will not be fought like previous wars, and the Internet is one area where we are particularly vulnerable.  The Chinese, the Russians and the North Koreans have all been working very hard to develop their cyberwarfare capabilities, and I was recently told by someone that has deep connections inside the U.S. intelligence community that our power grid could be taken down with just the push of a button.  That is how easy it would be.

With each passing year, we are all becoming more and more dependent on the Internet.  So what would our lives be like if it was suddenly gone?

That is something to think about.

Economic Collapse

If you want to watch society melt down right in front of your eyes, just take away all of the goodies.  On The Economic Collapse Blog I have written more than a million words about the coming economic problems in this country.  We got a very small taste of what is approaching in 2008 and 2009, and yet most people do not seem to have taken that warning seriously.  Since that time, our long-term economic and financial problems have grown far more dire, and now the early chapters of a new economic crisis are unfolding right in front of our eyes, and yet still most people don’t seem to be alarmed.

If you want to see how devastating an economic collapse can be on a nation, just pick up a history book and start reading about the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Unfortunately, what we are heading for is going to be a whole lot worse than that.

Civil Unrest & Martial Law

As the economy collapses and other things on this list start happening, people are going to be absolutely freaking out.  A whole host of polls and surveys have shown that anger and frustration have been building up to unprecedented levels in this country, and at some point there is going to be a huge explosion.

Desperate people do desperate things, and we got small previews of what is coming in Ferguson and in Baltimore.  Violent crime rates are already rising in our major cities, and many among the elite are getting out while the getting is good.  In fact, 3,000 millionaires left the city of Chicago last year alone.

Of course whenever civil unrest erupts, the government responds by trying to regain control, and eventually things are going to get so bad in this nation that we will start to see martial law imposed in various areas.  We saw a little bit of this in Ferguson and in Baltimore, but that was nothing compared to what we will eventually experience.

Catastrophic Earthquakes

A historic earthquake along the New Madrid fault seismic zone, the Cascadia Subduction zone or any of the major faults in California could affect millions of lives, cause hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, and literally change the geography of our continent.

Personally, I believe that those of us that are fortunate enough to live long enough will witness historic earthquakes in all of those areas, and scientists assure us that all three zones are way overdue for major seismic events.

Even if just one of the catastrophic events that I have discussed above were to take place, it would completely change society.

Unfortunately, I believe that we are entering an era of history in which a “perfect storm” that consists of a confluence of these catastrophic events will shake this nation to the core.

So what do you think?

Do you agree or disagree?

Please feel free to add your voice to the discussion by posting a comment below…

*About the author: Michael Snyder is the founder and publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog. Michael’s controversial new book about Bible prophecy entitled “The Rapture Verdict” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.*

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