Painful

Climate Collapse: Wind Chill Temperatures Will Hit -60 In The Midwest This Week As Global Weather Patterns Shift

The experts are telling us that the Midwest could experience the coldest weather that it has ever seen this week.  Wind chill temperatures of -40 and -50 degrees will be common throughout the region, and it is being projected that some spots will actually get hit by wind chill temperatures of up to -60 degrees.  A shift in the polar vortex is being blamed for this life-threatening weather, and we are being told to expect the coldest temperatures to arrive on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning.  But all-time records are already being set.  For example, according to Accuweather the temperature in the city of International Falls, Minnesota hit 45 below zero on Monday morning…

The coldest weather in years will put millions of people and animals throughout the midwestern United States at risk for hypothermia and frostbite to occur in minutes during the final days of January.

The deep freeze continued across the Upper Midwest on Sunday with temperatures plummeting well below zero in the morning. The low of 45 below zero F in International Falls, Minnesota, shattered the day’s record of 36 below zero F from 1966.

Please keep in mind that was not a wind chill temperature.

That was the actual temperature outside.

As the week progresses, bitterly cold temperatures will be accompanied by heavy snow and strong winds across the Midwest.  The polar jet stream has weakened, and as a result the polar vortex will “dip into parts of North America”…

The wintry onslaught will be driven by the Northern Hemisphere’s polar vortex, the pocket of cold air sitting atop the North Pole. When temperatures rise in the Arctic, the polar jet stream — the torrent of westerly winds that hold the polar vortex in place — can weaken and dip into parts of North America.

“Occasionally this ring of winds deforms or even splits, which allows the cold air to spill southward over mid latitudes — this is exactly what’s happening now,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior research scientist with Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts, in an email. “It just so happens that the lobe of cold air is located over central North America, with Chicago in the crosshairs.”

This is an extremely dangerous situation, and we will probably read about some people that underestimate the danger and end up dead.

According to weather.com, the air will be so cold that it “could lead to frostbite on exposed skin in a matter of minutes”…

This bitter cold will be accompanied by strong winds at times Tuesday through Thursday, leading to life-threatening wind chills in the Midwest that could lead to frostbite on exposed skin in a matter of minutes. A large swath of the Midwest will have wind chills in the 30s, 40s and 50s below zero by Wednesday. A few spots in Minnesota and eastern North Dakota may see wind chills in the 60s below zero.

Unless you absolutely must go out for some reason, if you live in the Midwest you should stay inside until temperatures begin to warm up again.

This weather is so unusual that even President Trump is tweeting about it…

In the beautiful Midwest, windchill temperatures are reaching minus 60 degrees, the coldest ever recorded. In coming days, expected to get even colder. People can’t last outside even for minutes. What the hell is going on with Global Waming? Please come back fast, we need you!

Now that even the president of the United States is acknowledging that this winter could be “the coldest ever recorded”, I want to remind everyone that we were warned about this months in advance…

–“Climate Chaos: Following Record Heat This Summer, Experts Are Predicting There Will Be A Nightmarishly Cold Winter”

–“November Snow In Texas? Experts Warn Decreased Solar Activity Will Shatter All Global Climate Models”

–“The Coldest And Snowiest November Ever? Here Is Why America’s Freakish Weather Is Only Going To Get Worse…”

–“A Mini Ice Age? NASA Scientist Warns That Diminished Solar Activity Could Mean The Coldest Winter In Modern Times”

–“-75 Wind Chill On Thanksgiving??? Why This Could Be The Coldest Winter In America EVER…”

I wrote article after article warning that this would happen, and now it is happening.

At this hour, schools and businesses are closed throughout North Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin as blizzard-like conditions sweep through both states.  And Chicago is bracing for what will likely be the coldest day ever in the history of the city…

After seeing a high around 34 on Monday at O’Hare International Airport, temperatures will drop to near zero before the end of the day, according to the National Weather Service. By Tuesday night, temperatures are expected to take another plunge, to 23 below zero, flirting with Chicago’s coldest temperature ever: minus 27 on Jan. 20, 1985.

Temperatures are forecast to inch up to a daytime high of about minus 14 on Wednesday — the first subzero high temperature in five years and the coldest winter high ever recorded in Chicago — before dipping, again, to about minus 21 overnight. The coldest daytime high in Chicago was minus 11 on Christmas Eve 1983.

Our planet is changing, our climate is collapsing, and this is going to put an increasing amount of strain on social order.

And we are already starting to see evidence of this.  In fact, Chicago police are telling us that in recent days people have been getting robbed of their expensive winter coats at gunpoint…

Chicago police are reporting gunpoint robberies targeting people wearing pricey Canada Goose jackets as temperatures plunge in the city.

Over the past two weeks, police say there’s been a spate of the thefts in which people wearing the luxury coats have been targeted and forced to give up the jackets. The coats can cost upward of $1,000 and are often seen on celebrities.

Six people had their Canada Goose coats stolen last week and two more were targeted Wednesday.

Unfortunately, this is only just the beginning.

Global seismic activity is rising, weather patterns are becoming more extreme, and a worldwide environmental collapse is already well underway.  If you have any doubts that this worldwide environmental collapse is happening, just read this excellent article by Chris Martenson.

We have been making the wrong decisions for decades, and now the consequences of those decisions are starting to catch up with us.  The clock is ticking, but most Americans are still completely and utterly clueless about what is coming.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the nation.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Advanced Social Decay: You Will Cringe When You Read What Has Been Going On Behind Closed Doors All Across America

It is difficult for me to write this article, and I will warn you in advance that some of the things in this piece are going to make you cringe.  Today, there are an increasing number of signs that the very fabric of our society is rotting away all around us.  We witnessed a very clear example of this last week when Kyrsten Sinema paraded around on the floor of the U.S. Senate looking like a hooker, but far more telling is what is going on behind closed doors all across America.  The stories that I am about to share with you barely made a blip on the news, but they should have, because they are all indications of how far our nation has fallen.

Let’s start in Colorado.  A 27-year-old man named Christopher Wayne Cleary was just arrested on terrorism charges after he threatened to shoot “as many girls as I see”…

Authorities said Christopher Wayne Cleary, of Denver, posted on his Facebook page that “Theres nothing more dangerous than man ready to die.”

“All I wanted was a girlfriend, not 1000 not a bunch of hoes not money none of that,” he wrote, according to a probable-cause statement cited by authorities. “All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me I’m 27 years old and I’ve never had a girlfriend before and I’m still a virgin, this is why I’m planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter cause I’m ready to die and all the girls the turned me down is going to make it right by killing as many girls as I see.”

Thankfully authorities were able to arrest him before he was able to carry out his threats, but the sad truth is that there are thousands upon thousands more young men out there just like him.

These young men feel like failures if they can’t get young women to sleep with them, and this message is reinforced by popular culture over and over again.

But that isn’t what “being a man” is all about.

Unfortunately, the only values that many of our young men have are the values that they have been fed by Hollywood, and Christopher Wayne Cleary was so frustrated with his inability to live up to the Hollywood ideal that he was ready to go on a mass shooting spree.

Next, let me share a story with you about a young mother in Florida.  When police recently arrived at the home of Angelica Crites, she didn’t respond.  So they entered the home and when she still didn’t respond they had to pry her bedroom door open.

But she still didn’t wake up when they did that.  In fact, it took authorities several minutes to finally wake her up.

And when they looked around the house, what they discovered was like something out of a horror movie…

There was an “overwhelming odor of ammonia and feces,” and large spider webs were along the ceilings and door frames. Food and dirt was all over the floor in the living room and dining room. A mop bucket filled with dirty water and food pieces was in the dining room, the report said.

The dining room had a large amount of trash in the corner and underneath a table to make food. The refrigerator was unsanitary with food, dirt and stains all over the inside and outside. Numerous insects were flying around the house.

The condition of her children was even worse.  They were filthy dirty and their teeth “were black and gray” from a lack of care.

On top of everything else, animal feces had literally been smeared throughout the house…

The floor leading to the bathroom had animal feces smeared on it. Mold and animal feces was in the corner of the hall by the bathroom door.

Crites and her children shared a bedroom, where there was a large pile of clothes in the corner, dirt on the floor and several red cups on a shelf containing an unknown black liquid and cigarette butts, the report said.

In her bathroom, there were several piles of animal feces on the floor and in the bathtub, and some smeared on the floor, the report said.

It is easy to criticize anyone that lives like that, but the truth is that what we are doing to ourselves as a nation is even worse.

We need to be praying for children all across America, because so many of them are living in absolutely horrific situations and they have no way to escape.

For example, consider what recently happened to one precious child in Indiana…

Back on January 14th, a young child was taken to Union Hospital.

That’s according to court documents.

Police, DCS, and emergency room staff say the child had a split tongue, several bruises, and other injuries.

That child was later transported to Riley Hospital in Indianapolis.

While there, hospital staff determined an object, most likely scissors, were used to split the child’s tongue.

How evil do you have to be to do something like that?

But this is who we have become as a nation.  And things like this happen so frequently that this story barely made a blip on the national news.

Almost everyone can put up a pretty decent facade in public, but it is the things that happen behind closed doors that define who we truly are.  And what one man in Arizona recently did is almost too sickening for words…

A nurse has been arrested in the sexual assault of an incapacitated woman who gave birth at a Phoenix nursing facility, Arizona police said Wednesday.

Nathan Sutherland, 36, was a licensed practical nurse at Hacienda Skilled Nursing Facility, where the woman gave birth.

The female patient had been in a vegetative state facility for at least 14 years after a near-drowning incident.

Some of you may be thinking that “this is just one guy”, but the truth is that there are more than 850,000 registered sex offenders in the United States today.

And that is just the people that have been caught.  Imagine how many more there are that have not been caught.

So no, this is not just “an isolated incident”.  We are a nation that is literally teeming with sexual predators.

Lastly, I want to share with you the story of Logan and Daley South.  They both wear fangs and they both drink blood, and they opened up about their relationship with their “girlfriend” Ilona on a recent episode of Extreme Love…

‘I don’t like the way blood tastes. I find it inconvenient to have to do regularly,’ Daley admits. ‘I’m someone that needs it, but I’m not a big fan of it. For Logan, it can be very sexual for him.’

Although Logan and Daley both wear fangs, they don’t need to bite into Ilona’s neck and gorge on her blood like a scene in a horror movie to feel satisfied.

In the clip, Daley uses the same tool that diabetics use to prick their fingers to draw Ilona’s blood before she and Logan begin hungrily sucking on her fingers.

If you took Americans from 200 years ago and showed them this, how do you think that they would react?

Needless to say, they would think that we have completely lost our minds.

And the sad truth is that we have definitely lost our way as a nation.  Our lack of values is producing absolutely horrific results, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the nation.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The Mainstream Media Warns America Will Be Facing An “Economic Hellscape” If The Government Shutdown Continues

Is the mainstream media overhyping the economic impact of the government shutdown for political purposes?  Of course they are.  Once upon a time the mainstream media in the United States at least attempted to maintain a facade of objectivity, but those days are long gone.  In this case, they want to stir up as much public resentment against President Trump as possible in order to try to force him to end the government shutdown.  And when NBC News breathlessly declared that the U.S. “would face an economic hellscape” if this shutdown stretches on for an extended period of time, their article quickly went viral all over the Internet.

But will it really be “an economic hellscape”?

Here are some of the things that they say we will be facing in their “doomsday scenario”…

  • 38 million low-income Americans lose food stamps
  • 6 million face an uncertain timetable for collecting tax refunds
  • 2 million without rental assistance and facing possible eviction
  • 800,000 paycheck-less federal employees plunged into dire financial straits
  • Shuttered parks and museums while overstressed airports cause tourism to tank
  • Federal court system slows to a crawl
  • Disaster relief money doesn’t get to storm-ravaged areas

Yes, things would certainly be unpleasant for a lot of people, and there would be a whole lot of anger around the country.

But such a scenario does not qualify as “an economic hellscape”.  I would encourage the folks over at NBC News to pick up a copy of The Beginning Of The End if they really want to know what the initial phases of a major economic crisis scenario could look like in this nation.

The most alarming item on their list is the fact that 38 million Americans could soon lose access to food stamps.  According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that will officially happen by the end of February…

By the end of February, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, run by the Department of Agriculture, would be out of funding — meaning almost 40 million low-income Americans could find themselves struggling to pay for food, said Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist for the accounting firm RSM US.

Things would certainly be tough for a lot of low income people, and there would be a lot more traffic at shelters and food banks, but nobody would starve to death.

The worst case scenario would be if mobs of angry people started taking to the streets and rioting in large urban areas.  That is definitely a possibility, especially if this shutdown lasts for several more months.

But for the moment, most of the focus is on the hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are not getting paychecks right now.  We are being endlessly bombarded with sob stories about how much these workers are suffering after missing one paycheck.

If people can’t handle going a couple of weeks without pay, how are they going to handle things when a real crisis erupts in this country?

With no end to the shutdown in sight, some lower paid federal workers have decided that it is time to find a new job…

Transportation Security Agency officers forced to work without knowing when their next paycheck is coming are no longer just calling in sick. Now, 18 days into the partial government shutdown, some are resigning, according to Hydrick Thomas, who heads the TSA Council on the American Federation of Government Employees.

“Every day I’m getting calls from my members about their extreme financial hardships and need for a paycheck. Some of them have already quit and many are considering quitting the federal workforce because of this shutdown,”  the official said in a statement posted to the union’s website on Tuesday.

I can’t say that I blame TSA workers too much for quitting.  It is an absolutely miserable job, and the starting salary for TSA security officers is somewhere “between $25,000 to $30,000 a year”.

Of course we don’t actually need a TSA at all.  Many of us would love to go back to the days before 9/11 when we could get on flights without having someone inspect our private areas.

Another aspect of the shutdown that is horrifying NBC News is the fact that no new beers are being approved right now…

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau is out during the shutdown. That means the federal government will not approve beer labels or process permits, which translates into no new beers.

At this moment there are literally millions of people around the world that actually have nothing to eat and no clean water to drink, and this is what we are whining about?

I have an idea.  Why don’t we shut down the “Alchohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau” permanently and let people make beer without having to get permission from the federal government first?

As I have proposed, we could save enormous amounts of money by simply shutting down useless government agencies that we do not need.

But that would make far too much common sense to work in America in 2019.  We live at a time when the American people expect the federal government to protect them from just about every potential danger that you can possibly imagine.

Look, I don’t want to seem completely unsympathetic to the plight of all of these federal workers that are being used as pawns in this game of political brinkmanship.  Because 78 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, that means that a lot of these federal workers are not going to be able to pay their bills, and that would be extremely stressful for anyone.  And at this point, thousands of federal workers have already begun filing for unemployment benefits…

More than 4,700 federal employees filed for unemployment in the last week of December, compared with 929 the week prior, according to the Department of Labor. There is no federal data available yet for the first week of January. Unemployment rules vary by state; generally the government provides benefits to eligible workers who have lost a job “through no fault of their own,” for a maximum of 26 weeks.

But the mainstream media is blowing things way out of proportion when they start using phrases such as “economic hellscape”.

Yes, this shutdown is going to cause some significant pain for a lot of people, but it is definitely not the end of the world.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

 

78 Percent Of Americans Are Living Paycheck To Paycheck – Including Many Government Workers Affected By The Shutdown

In just a few days, this will officially be the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, and there is no end in sight.  President Trump is pledging that he will not sign any spending bill unless it includes funding for a border wall, and the Democrats are promising their supporters that they will never agree to a single penny for a wall.  This could be the confrontation that ends up defining Trump’s presidency, and whoever backs down now is going to look incredibly weak.  But the longer this shutdown lasts, the more painful things are going to become for the hundreds of thousands of federal workers that are going without pay, and for the hundreds of thousands of workers that are employed by government contractors that rely on business from the federal government.

You should never play a game of chicken with somebody that is crazier than you are.  In this case, it looks like both sides fully expect the other party to blink first, but the truth is that neither side is likely to yield any time soon.

So the days ahead are likely to be exceedingly painful for most federal workers, because just like the population as a whole, most of them are living paycheck to paycheck.

In fact, one survey found that 78 percent of American workers are currently living paycheck to paycheck…

Government workers are far from alone in feeling stressed about not getting paid. Nearly 80 percent of American workers (78 percent) say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a 2017 report by employment website CareerBuilder. Women are particularly vulnerable: 81 percent of them report living paycheck to paycheck, compared with 75 percent of men.

As I have repeatedly stressed, living paycheck to paycheck is something that you do not want to do if at all possible.  When you live paycheck to paycheck, you are just one major disaster away from financial ruin.  For example, if somebody in your family has a major accident or a significant medical emergency, it can quickly render you completely destitute.

That same survey also discovered that 70 percent of all workers are currently in debt…

Just more than 70 percent of all respondents say that they’re in debt, and a quarter of workers say they weren’t able to make ends meet at the end of every month of the past year.

If you are scrambling to make debt payments every month and you have no financial cushion to fall back on, then you have no room for error, and that is where most Americans find themselves today.

So for most federal workers, this government shutdown is not just an inconvenience.

According to Professor Paul Light, somewhere around 800,000 government workers are currently going without pay…

The shutdown has left approximately 800,000 federal workers in financial limbo. Around 420,000 “essential” employees are working without pay, while another 380,000 have been ordered to stay home, according to calculations provided to CNBC by Paul Light, a professor of public service at New York University.

Of course the mainstream media is going to be filled with sob stories from these workers for as long as this shutdown lasts.  For instance, CNN recently profiled the plight of TSA security officer Jessica Caraballo…

The partial government shutdown that began December 22 left Caraballo and 420,000 other federal workers across the country forced to work without a paycheck. Two weeks have passed and dozens of families like the Caraballos have put their lives on hold.

“Rent is due, light bill, gas bill, my car bill is due the 26th,” Caraballo said. “I already got my last paycheck and there’s no paycheck to come.”

“I don’t know when we would be able to celebrate birthdays, when we would be able to get ahead,” she added. “This is a pushback.”

Without a doubt things are tough right now for families like the Caraballos, but what will they do when a real national emergency strikes?

As we watch all the chaos that a minor disruption has created, it should cause all of us to realize that any sort of a major disruption could be extremely catastrophic for most of the country.

The vast majority of us are deeply, deeply dependent on the system.  That is fine and dandy as long as the system is functioning well, but what if someday it stops functioning altogether?

For the moment, many government workers can just pile up more debt to get through this short-term crisis.  Of course many of them are already drowning in debt, and we just learned that U.S. consumer borrowing was up another 22 billion dollars during the month of November.

However, if this shutdown lasts for another month or two, the mood of this nation is going to get quite sour, and that will especially be true once the food stamp benefits run out…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees SNAP at the federal level, is one of the agencies unfunded during the partial government shutdown. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue announced Tuesday that SNAP would be funded through February, thanks to the funding bill that expired on Dec. 22, which included a provision allowing federal agencies to make obligated payments to support certain programs for 30 days after its expiration date.

Can you imagine the uproar that we would see if 38 million people were suddenly cut off from food stamps?

I think that the left is counting on that as negotiating leverage if they need it.

At this point we do not know how the political gridlock in Washington will end.  Today, President Trump walked out of a meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi when Pelosi told him point blank that there will be no money for a wall.  At this point there does not seem to be any room for a compromise, and it will be politically disastrous for either side to back down now.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of government workers are going to be hurting, and the pain will intensify with each passing day.

Get Prepared NowAbout the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.  His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News.  From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites.  If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so.  The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

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

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

Our incomes have stagnated as the cost of living has soared, and the middle class has experienced steady erosion as a result.  But despite all that, 68 percent of all Americans still consider themselves to be “middle class”…

That’s according to new data from Northwestern Mutual’s 2018 Planning & Progress Study, which found that 68 percent of Americans consider themselves middle-class, down 2 percent from last year. However, because of the fuzziness of the definition, far more Americans consider themselves middle-class than technically qualify based on income.

In reality, the middle class now makes up just over 50 percent of the total U.S. population, according to a recent report from Pew Research Center, which used 2016 data. That’s compared to 61 percent in 1971.

So according to that survey, somewhere around 18 percent of all Americans wrongly believe that they belong to the middle class.

There are 325 million people living in the United States today, and so we are potentially talking about 58 million people that think that they are middle class but really aren’t.

Other surveys have come up with similar numbers.  For example, one recent survey discovered that 22 percent of non-middle income Americans identified themselves as middle income…

Overall, 22 percent of the non-middle-income Americans surveyed incorrectly classified themselves as middle income. The majority of those people are actually lower-income, with approximately 19 percent of the low-income Americans surveyed defining themselves as middle income. Only approximately 2 percent of upper-income Americans mistakenly defined themselves as middle income.

Of course even if someone can be defined as “middle income” does not necessarily mean that things are going well.

Today, most Americans are living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.  Living on the edge financially can be a constant source of stress, and it can easily start taking over your entire life.  To illustrate this point, I would like to share with you a short excerpt from a recent article by Lauren Wellbank…

Like so many Americans, we struggle to get by each and every month. The compounding interest we rack up by always being a breath away from being broke plays a large role in that. We pay interest on purchases that we can’t afford to pay out of pocket in the moment (like our electric bill when my pay was short last month), and then we pay late fees when we have to take advantage of that grace period. Our monthly payments never go down because we can’t get out in front of any of it.

All of this has a psychological and emotional impact. I’m constantly running our budget through my mind, trying to reassure myself that the numbers will work out this month. I’m never not thinking about money. I dread going to the store or having to buy gas because each purchase moves us closer back down to that zero balance. The anxiety over our finances never goes away.

Have you ever been there?

Perhaps you are there right now.  If so, you are definitely not alone.  Most American families are deeply struggling, and it is getting worse with each passing year.

Meanwhile, the folks at the very top of the pyramid have been thriving.  In fact, one study discovered that the gap between the wealthy and the poor in the United States is the largest that it has been since the 1920s.

We truly are living in a “new Gilded Age”, and the biggest winners have been those in the “top 0.1 percent”.  The following comes from Matthew Stewart…

It is in fact the top 0.1 percent who have been the big winners in the growing concentration of wealth over the past half century. According to the UC Berkeley economists Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, the 160,000 or so households in that group held 22 percent of America’s wealth in 2012, up from 10 percent in 1963. If you’re looking for the kind of money that can buy elections, you’ll find it inside the top 0.1 percent alone.

It has been said that money cannot buy happiness, and that is true.

But without a doubt the numbers show that there are some tremendous disadvantages to being poor.  Here is more from Stewart…

Obesity, diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, and liver disease are all two to three times more common in individuals who have a family income of less than $35,000 than in those who have a family income greater than $100,000. Among low-educated, middle-aged whites, the death rate in the United States—alone in the developed world—increased in the first decade and a half of the 21st century. Driving the trend is the rapid growth in what the Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton call “deaths of despair”—suicides and alcohol- and drug-related deaths.

Unfortunately, economic conditions are starting to deteriorate once again, and it is those at the bottom of the totem poll that are going to feel the pain first.

The period of relative stability that we had been enjoying is rapidly ending, and just about everyone can see that hard times are ahead of us.

A new survey of corporate CFOs was just released that contains some eye-popping numbers.  It turns out that 49 percent of them believe that a recession will start by the end of next year, and a whopping 82 percent of them believe that a recession will have started by the end of 2020…

Considering that major corporations have been busy shedding workers, it follows that corporate finance leaders see a U.S. recession ahead. Evidence of a slowing economy has been popping up, including recent large-scale cuts in head count by U.S. corporations such as General Motors and Verizon.

Eighty-two percent of chief financial officers polled believe a recession will have started by the end 2020, and nearly 49 percent think the downturn will arrive sometime next year, according to the Duke University/CFO Global Business Outlook, released Wednesday.

This is yet another example of the major psychological shift that is taking place in our nation.  The overwhelming consensus is that economic activity is going to slow down, and it won’t be people with millions of dollars in their bank accounts that will be suffering.

No, once again it will mostly be people that are barely getting by that will be losing their jobs and their homes, and nobody is going to come riding to their rescue.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Psychological Bubble That Has Been Propping Up The U.S. Economy Is Starting To Implode

Optimism can be a very powerful thing.  For a long time Americans believed that things would get better, and that caused them to take action to make things better, and that actually resulted in things moving in a positive direction.  But now things have abruptly shifted.  In late 2018, an increasing number of Americans believe that an economic downturn is coming, and they are taking actions consistent with that belief.  As a result, they are actually helping to produce the result that they fear.  And without a doubt, any rational person should be able to see that signs that the U.S. economy is slowing down are all around us.  So it isn’t as if those that are preparing for the worst are being irrational.  It is just that when large numbers of people all start to move in the same direction, it has a very powerful effect.  We witnessed this in the stock market in recent years when people just kept buying stocks even though they were massively overvalued.  The collective belief that there was money to be made in the stock market became a self-fulfilling prophecy which pushed stock prices up to absurd heights.  But now that process is beginning to reverse as well, and ultimately the unwinding of that bubble will be quite painful.

Over the past couple of years the dominant economic narrative that the mainstream media was pushing was that the U.S. economy was “booming”, and this encouraged businesses to expand and consumers to go out and spend money.

But now the dominant economic narrative has changed, and businesses are starting to take actions that are consistent with the new narrative.  In the retail industry, if executives truly believed we would see an economic boom in the years ahead they would be expanding, but instead stores are being closed at a record pace…

Mall and shopping center owners across the U.S. are preparing to be hit by more store closures, following a brutal year that included department store chains like Bon-Ton and Sears going bankrupt, Toys R Us liquidating and even Walmart shutting dozens of its club stores.

Now, a slew of specialty retailers like Gap and L Brands are getting serious about downsizing, which will leave more vacant storefronts within malls until landlords are able to replace tenants.

As a result of these store closings, large numbers of workers will be without jobs, vendors will not be receiving orders and mall owners will be without tenants.

In other words, economic activity will slow down.

Another sector where there has been a major psychological shift is in the real estate industry.  Home prices have been falling all over the nation, and this includes markets that were once extremely hot such as San Francisco…

In San Francisco, the number of homes with a price cut in October nearly doubled, to 238 from 124 last October, according to data from Realtor.com.

That’s nothing compared to Santa Clara County, where the number of price cuts rose to 818 last month, more than six times last year’s number. Santa Clara County had been one of the nation’s hottest markets this year, and the Bay Area’s price appreciation leader until September.

“Clearly, there is a market shift,” said Rich Bennett, a Zephyr agent in San Francisco.

If homeowners believed that this dip was just temporary and that home prices would start surging again next year as the U.S. economy thrives, it would be quite foolish of them to slash their prices like this.

In some cases, home prices are being reduced by hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Why throw all of that money away if the market is going to bounce back shortly?

Over in the auto industry, there has also been a noticeable psychological shift.

If the U.S. economy was going to be doing extremely well in the years ahead, the major automakers should all be gearing up for record sales.

But instead, General Motors just shut a bunch of factories and laid off 14,000 workers, and Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas is projecting that Ford will soon be laying off large numbers of employees…

“We estimate a large portion of Ford’s restructuring actions will be focused on Ford Europe, a business we currently value at negative $7 billion,” Jonas wrote. “But we also expect a significant restructuring effort in North America, involving significant numbers of both salaried and hourly UAW and CAW workers.”

Ford’s 70,000 salaried employees have been told they face unspecified job losses by the middle of next year as the automaker works through an “organizational redesign” aimed at creating a white-collar workforce “designed for speed,” according to Karen Hampton, a spokeswoman.

“These actions will come largely outside of North America,” Hampton said of Ford’s restructuring. “All of this work is ongoing and publishing a job-reduction figure at this point would be pure speculation.”

Shifting gears, let’s talk about agriculture.

If farmers believed that the trade war was just temporary and that things would soon swing back in their favor, many of them would keep trying to hold on for as long as they possibly could.

But instead, farm bankruptcies are absolutely surging…

A total of 84 farms in the upper Midwest filed for bankruptcy between July 2017 and June 2018, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. That’s more than double the number of Chapter 12 filings during the same period in 2013 and 2014 in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Montana, reported Vox.

Farms that produce corn, soybeans, milk, and beef were all suffering due to low global demand and low prices before the trade war, according to economists, but president Trump’s trade war is making the problem even worse by exacerbating the weaknesses in the American economy. China has retaliated against the tariffs by slapping billions of dollars worth of tariffs on United States agriculture exports in response to Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products. Other countries, including Canada, have also added duties to US agriculture products in response to Trump’s tariffs on all imported steel and aluminum.

Most Americans want to have hope, but when they look at our economic situation all they see is a very bleak future.

And in some parts of the nation, there still hasn’t been any sort of a “recovery” from the last recession.  For example, a recent Bloomberg article took a hard look at what conditions are currently like in eastern Kentucky…

Tiffany Hensley’s drive home takes her through some picturesque scenery, and an ugly economy.

“The first thing you see when you get down here is beauty,” says Hensley, midway through her shift at a diner in the rolling hills of eastern Kentucky. “But then you get to looking around. It’s real rough.’’

Of course eastern Kentucky is far from alone.  Yes, coastal cities such as San Francisco and New York have prospered in recent years, but rural communities all across America have been deeply suffering.

And now economic conditions are deteriorating once again nationally, and things are about to get a whole lot tougher for everyone.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Now That Facebook, YouTube And Apple Have Come For Alex Jones, Guess Who They Are Coming For Next?

August 6th was one of darkest days in the history of the Internet.  When I learned that Facebook, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, Pinterest and others had colluded to take down content from Alex Jones all on the same day, I knew exactly what was happening.  They timed their attack so that it would hit the press at the beginning of the weekly news cycle on Monday so that their purge would have maximum societal impact.  And the fact that there was such overt collusion was obviously meant to send a message.  We were supposed to understand that if they can do this to Alex Jones, they can do it to any of us, and so we better shut up and fall in line.  I can’t even begin to tell you how sick I feel right now.  The big tech giants have made it abundantly clear how they feel about all of us, and there is no future for alternative points of view on any of their platforms.

The current purge of conservative voices has been going on for months, but this is the biggest bombshell by far.  The following excerpt from a Los Angeles Times article is a typical example of how the mainstream media covered this story…

Major technology companies including Apple, Facebook and YouTube deleted years of content from conservative conspiracy theorist Alex Jones and his Infowars platforms over allegations of hate speech, a sudden clampdown that is fueling the growing debate over how big technology companies choose to censor.

The move was unusual for its sweep and speed, suggesting a new assertiveness by technology companies that in the past have worked to avoid alienating conservatives, who often assert that left-leaning Silicon Valley is biased against them. The removals appeared to be prompted by more users flagging Infowars content for policy violations.

In addition to the “big three”, Spotify and Pinterest pulled down content from Infowars as well, and there is no way that this could have been done simultaneously unless it was planned well in advance.  Lawyers have to be consulted, CEOs have to give their approval, etc.  This was a cold-blooded move that was carefully calculated down to the finest details.

So is there anything that conservatives can do?

Well, Mike Adams has suggested that these tech companies could be prosecuted for conspiracy…

This coordinated, illegal censorship is clear proof of an organized criminal racket being conducted by the tech giants. The RICO Act allows for federal prosecution of such criminal conspiracy.

The internet Dark Ages has now descended upon us, where radical left-wing tech giants run by deranged, mentally ill communists will decide whether your content qualifies as “hate speech.” What is hate speech? It’s anything uttered by a conservative.

I think that he is theoretically correct, but I doubt that it will ever actually happen.

Right now, the global elite do not have control of the White House, but they have discovered a powerful new weapon in the tech companies.  They are trying to use this new weapon to smash Alex Jones and other top conservative voices, and they are doing it with a tyrannical flair that is absolutely frightening.  I think that it was quite appropriate that the official WikiLeaks Twitter account made a parallel between this purge and an old Star Wars movie…

The empire strikes back: Apple, Spotify, Facebook and Google/Youtube all purge Infowars/Alex Jones. Yes, Infowars has frequent nonsense, but also a state power critique. Which publisher in the world with millions of subscribers is next to be wiped out for cultural transgression?

And it is quite noteworthy that this comes almost exactly three months before the mid-term elections.

Do you think that is just a coincidence?

After all of the uproar about “election interference”, now the big tech companies are overtly doing it very publicly and in a way that nobody can misunderstand.

The biggest reason why they are lashing out at Alex Jones, Mike Adams and a whole host of other top conservative voices is because Donald Trump never would have gotten elected without them.  I guess they figure that if they can start silencing some of those voices that they can turn future elections in their favor.

If it was just a few conservative voices that were being censored, that would be one thing.  But the truth is that hundreds and hundreds of conservatives have had Facebook pages taken down, YouTube accounts terminated and Twitter accounts shadowbanned.  I won’t repeat all of the information that I have previously published on this topic in this article.  Instead, if you would like to learn more I would recommend checking out some of my previous articles…

-“This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet”

-“Governments And Social Media Companies Are Collaborating To Censor Anyone That Would Dare To Question Mainstream Media Narratives”

-“The Big Social Media Companies Are Being Used As A Weapon To Advance The Agenda Of The New World Order”

-“The Censorship Is Real – EndOfTheAmericanDream.com Is Being Completely Blocked By Library Internet Filters”

In the end, this is not about Alex Jones.

This is about a once free society that is becoming more Orwellian with each passing day.

Now that they have come for Alex Jones, they aren’t going to stop.

It might not be tomorrow, but eventually they are going to come for you.

I would like to end this article with a few words from Dr. Michael Brown’s excellent article about all of this censorship…

Let me repeat what I said in my earlier article about Infowars: Whether you’re an Infowars fan or you find their work distasteful, their potential removal from YouTube should concern you.

Otherwise, soon enough, we’ll have our own version of Martin Niemöller’s famous poem, which will now sound something like this:

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.

Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out­—because I found them obnoxious.

Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.

Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Wild And Unprecedented Price Fluctuations Are Causing Financial Chaos For U.S. Businesses

In every war there is a high price to pay, and this trade war will not be any different.  The normal flow of goods and services around the globe is being severely disrupted, and even though this trade war has barely just begun, it is already having an enormous impact on the U.S. economy.  Even if we ultimately win this trade war and the Trump administration is able to achieve all of the goals that it is targeting, there will still be a great cost in the short-term.  We are going to see businesses fail, we are going to see workers get laid off, and global economic activity will inevitably contract.  Heck, at this point even Fox News is calling this trade war “economic suicide”.  We live at a time when a delicately balanced formula of economic factors allows us to live a debt-fueled standard of living that is far beyond what we actually deserve.  Now we are messing with that formula, and the consequences are likely to be far more severe than most Americans are anticipating.

Let’s start by talking about steel and aluminum.  One of the chief goals of the tariffs was to help the steel and aluminum industries, and thanks to those tariffs we have seen the price of U.S. steel rise 36 percent since the beginning of 2018…

For instance, US steel and aluminum prices have soared since the imposition of tariffs. US midwest hot-rolled coil steel price, the US steel price benchmark, soared 36% between the start of the year and the start of July. This in turn causes prices of goods made with the metal to rise.

That is good news for the U.S. economy, right?

Actually, it isn’t.

Every product that uses steel and aluminum is now going to cost more.

In many cases, a lot more.

For instance, one grill company is reporting that they have had to raise prices “by almost $350 per grill”…

Middleby Residential, a California-based company that makes Lynx grills, told the Dallas Morning News that even though the company uses US steel, the recent price pressures have driven up costs by almost $350 per grill.

Do you want to pay an extra $350 for your next grill?

Retail prices for washer and dryers are surging as well.  They have increased by 20 percent compared to a year ago, and that is because prices for raw materials are skyrocketing…

Whirlpool Corp trimmed its full-year profit outlook as it booked a large charge on its European operations and said it wouldn’t be able to offset the effect of steel tariffs with higher prices for consumers.

The company said Monday it now expects to pay about $350 million more this year from rising raw-material costs as it faces “a very challenging cost environment.”

Anybody that purchases any products that contain steel and/or aluminum will be feeling these prices increases.

And any business that uses steel and/or aluminum on a regular basis is going to be feeling an enormous amount of pain.  For example, the largest nail company in America is already laying off workers…

When President Trump imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel imports last month, America’s largest nail manufacturer had little choice but to raise its prices. Mid Continent Nail Corporation quickly lost 50 percent of its orders as customers opted for cheaper suppliers. Within weeks, the firm had to lay off 60 workers. Up to 200 more might lose their jobs by the end of this month.

All over the country, companies are going to be forced to either raise prices, fire workers or move production facilities out of the United States.

Meanwhile, farmers all over America are facing a different problem.  Thanks to a massive decline in demand from China (thanks to tariffs that they have hit us with), prices are plummeting and warehouses are filling up with food that doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Every year, the U.S. usually imports about 14 billion dollars worth of soybeans to China, and I covered the plight of soybean farmers in a previous article.  But of course soybean farmers are far from alone.  It is being reported that more than 2.5 billion pounds of meat and poultry products that have been produced by our farmers is being stockpiled in cold-storage warehouses.  To help the agricultural community, President Trump announced 12 billion dollars in aid to farmers on Tuesday…

As President Donald Trump embarks on a multistate tour through parts of the country hit heavily by trade battles, his administration said Tuesday it will direct $12 billion to farmers whose harvests have been hurt by tariffs.

But the idea faced immediate criticism from Republicans on Capitol Hill.

Responding to farm groups and the Republican discontent, administration officials said they have been working since April on a short-term plan to shore up slipping prices for soybeans, pork and other crops hit with retaliatory tariffs from China.

Sure, this will help farmers get through the trade war in the short-term, but isn’t this exactly the kind of big government socialism that we are always railing against?

And who is going to bail out the real estate industry?

CNBC is reporting that home sales fell a whopping 11.8 percent year over year in southern California last month…

Southern California home sales hit the brakes in June, falling to the lowest reading for the month in four years. Sales of both new and existing houses and condominiums dropped 11.8 percent year over year, as prices shot up to a record high, according to CoreLogic. The report covers Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties.

And do you know who has been fueling the extremely hot real estate market on the west coast?

The Chinese.

At one time they were buying up everything in sight, but now they have become net sellers of U.S. real estate.

And there are rumblings that we could soon see some sort of “national boycott” of American goods in China.  The following comes from Zero Hedge…

The survey found that 54 percent of 2,000 respondents in 300 cities across China would “probably” or “definitely” stop buying US-branded goods “in the event of a trade war”. Just 13 percent said they would not.

The remaining 33 percent said they were unsure or did not at present buy US branded goods, according to the survey, conducted for FT Confidential Research (FTCR), a research unit at the Financial Times.

The survey was carried out between June 27 and July 10, mostly before the US imposed 25 percent tariffs on $34bn of Chinese goods on July 6. The move elicited an immediate tit-for-tat response from Beijing.

Of course something similar could be tried in the United States, but most Americans simply do not care if a product comes from China or not.  They are simply going to buy the cheapest stuff no matter what anyone tells them to do.

Look, I very much understand that we have been sending businesses and jobs overseas for a very long time.  I have been writing about this for years, and something had to be done.

But trying to fight trade wars with virtually everyone else on the planet simultaneously is madness, and the consequences for the U.S. economy are going to cause all of us an immense amount of pain.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

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