Real Estate Bubble

America’s Cities Are Being Turned Into Crime-Ridden War Zones, And Murder Rates Are Way Up Again In 2021

March 30, 2021March 30, 2021 by Michael

The wealthy are reveling in their giant mountains of money, but meanwhile our society is literally coming apart at the seams all around us. The stock market has been hovering near all-time record highs, and for those at the very top of the economic pyramid these may seem like the best of times. But for most Americans, the “good old days” are a long distant memory. More than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed over the past year, poverty is absolutely exploding all around us, and crime rates are shooting higher at an unprecedented rate. In fact, one study of 34 big U.S. cities found that their murder rates rose by an average of 30 percent in 2020…

A study by the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice found that murders increased by 30% across 34 large U.S. cities.

In some areas, carjackings, robberies, shootings, sexual assaults and violence have become so common that it seems like the crime literally never stops.

Unless you have a death wish, there are certain parts of Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia and Baltimore that you should never enter night or day. If you doubt me, just go wander the streets of the worst neighborhoods of those cities and see what happens to you.

This was supposed to be a year when crime rates began to return to normal, but instead they are on the rise again. One study that looked at 37 large U.S. cities found that murder rates are up by an average of 18 percent so far in 2021…

The big increase in the murder rate in the United States in 2020 has carried over to 2021.

A sample of 37 cities with data available for the first three months of this year shows murder up 18 percent relative to the same period last year.

What is truly frightening is that this is about as good as things are going to get in America from here on out.

So if murder rates are spiking this much under relatively good conditions, what will our cities look like when things get really crazy?

Some of the crimes that we are witnessing are almost too horrible for words. For example, just consider what just happened to a 12-year-old boy in Miami…

A suspect in a black car kidnapped the boy at about 2 a.m. early Saturday morning from a Miami street, according to the Miami-Dade Police Department.

He drove a few blocks, raped the boy, and then shoved him out of the car and drove off, police said.

A good Samaritan on a bike near the scene of the crime came to the boy’s rescue. He was bleeding from the head and said he had been shot.

How sick do you have to be in order to do something like that?

Sadly, I could write about nightmarish crimes such as this every single day of the week if I wanted to, because they happen constantly.

Much of the crime boom is being fueled by gangs. There are more than 100,000 gang members living in the city of Chicago alone, and a steady stream of illegal immigrants ensures that the gangs will always have an influx of new recruits.

Securing our borders would go a long way toward solving this problem, but we refuse to do that.

Just recently, a sheriff in Texas took a reporter from the Daily Mail down to “the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande”…

The crossing point is on private property where an abandoned house sits on a quiet rural street that runs parallel to the Rio Grande, about 5 miles out of town from Del Rio, Texas, 150 miles southwest of San Antonio.

Law enforcement has nicknamed it ‘Border Lawn.’

‘It’s the easiest illegal border crossing along the Rio Grande,’ Val Verde County Sheriff Joe Frank Martinez told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview.

When the river is low, immigrants can wade across the Rio Grande in about five minutes.

Authorities know that hordes of people come across the border at this spot each week, but they won’t stop it.

Of course any immigrants that are detained need to be held somewhere, and facilities at the border are already packed beyond overflowing. In particular, the infamous facility in Donna, Texas is already holding more than 10 times more migrants than it was designed to hold…

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) holding facility in Donna, Texas, is supposed to house no more than 250 migrants during the coronavirus pandemic.

On Tuesday, the tent complex was holding more than 4,100 migrants, including 3,200 unaccompanied children, according to Oscar Escamilla, a Border Patrol official in the Rio Grande Valley who briefed reporters during the first press tour of a CBP facility under President Biden.

So much of the immigration debate is focused on the unfortunate children that are being held in places such as this, but that is just a drop in the bucket.

Each week, thousands of grown men illegally cross the border without being detained at all. Many of those grown men end up in our core urban areas, and with few legitimate employment prospects available many of them turn to crime.

In an article that I published yesterday entitled “We Have Never Seen A Home Buying Frenzy Quite Like This”, I discussed the fact that we have seen a mass exodus from our core urban areas over the past year. Millions of Americans have been looking to buy homes in desirable rural and suburban locations, and this has pushed housing prices into the stratosphere.

Today, I came across another example of this phenomenon. 122 offers were made on a 1,400 square foot home that was listed for sale in Citrus Heights, California in just one weekend…

A Citrus Heights home in a quiet cul-de-sac received 122 offers in one weekend on the market.

The 1,400 square feet home has three bedrooms, two baths and a spacious backyard with a swimming pool and an asking price of $399,900.00.

Could you imagine paying $400,000 for a house that is just 1,400 square feet in size?

The real estate agent that listed this property was astounded to receive so many offers, because it wasn’t underpriced at all…

“People would think that it was underpriced. It was not underpriced. It was straight on with the comps,” said Deb Brittan, the listing agent for the property. “I had hoped, I thought, maybe if we get 20 offers that would be amazing.”

As for the couple that sold the house, they don’t need it anymore because they are moving to Idaho.

As conditions in the United States continue to deteriorate, we will continue to see people flock to rural and suburban communities at an unprecedented rate.

So if you are planning to move, I would not wait.

Millions of Americans have already been priced out of the market, and the feeding frenzy is not going to subside any time soon.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

We Have Never Seen A Home Buying Frenzy Quite Like This

March 30, 2021March 29, 2021 by Michael

Could you imagine listing your home for sale and having nearly 100 offers in just three days? This sort of thing is actually happening in hot real estate markets all over America right now. Even though we are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, we are witnessing a frenzy of home buying that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before. Of course one of the biggest reasons why this is happening is because of the utterly insane economic policies of our leaders. They have been creating, borrowing and spending money like there is no tomorrow, and that pushed M1 from 4 trillion dollars to 18 trillion dollars in just 12 months. All of that money had to go somewhere, and one place where it is showing up is in home prices in desirable rural and suburban locations around the country.

For example, a “fixer-upper” in a desirable suburban community outside of Washington D.C. was listed for sale on a recent Thursday for $275,000. On Sunday evening, 88 different offers had already been made on that property…

Ellen Coleman had never received so many offers on a house in her 15 years of selling real estate.

She listed a fixer-upper in suburban Washington, DC for $275,000 on a Thursday. By Sunday evening, she had 88 offers.

It eventually sold for $460,000, which was $185,000 above the listing price.

Isn’t that nuts?

The same thing is happening in lots of other parts of the nation too.

Down in the Austin, Texas area, one real estate agent says that “most homes are going for more than 20% over asking price”…

“Nearly every offer my clients make faces competition, and most homes are going for more than 20% over asking price,” said Austin-area Redfin agent April Miller.

She said she recently helped a client with an offer for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home listed at $515,000 and pulled out all the stops. The offer was for $100,000 over the asking price, and they waived appraisal and financing contingencies, yet still came in third out of 38 offers.

In my entire lifetime, I have never seen anything like this.

Overall, the median price of a home in the United States is up a whopping 16 percent compared to this time last year…

The median price of a home has risen 16% from last year, according to the National Association of Realtors, and they have increased even more in some regions of the country like the Northeast and West, which are both up 21% from last year.

Meanwhile, inventory has continued to linger at record lows. In February, the number of available homes for sale was down nearly 30% from a year ago.

Of course prices are not going up everywhere.

In fact, home prices are actually going down in certain core urban communities.

It isn’t just that people are looking to buy homes right now. Rather, millions of Americans have been choosing to relocate due to fear of the things that have been happening in our world.

For example, the COVID pandemic has been one of the biggest reasons for the mass exodus that we have been witnessing, and our public officials continue to drum up more fear on a daily basis. On Monday, the head of the CDC actually used the term “impending doom” to describe what she believes is ahead…

The U.S. is facing “impending doom” as daily Covid-19 cases begin to rebound once again, threatening to send more people to the hospital even as vaccinations accelerate nationwide, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Monday.

“When I first started at CDC about two months ago I made a promise to you: I would tell you the truth even if it was not the news we wanted to hear. Now is one of those times when I have to share the truth, and I have to hope and trust you will listen,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing.

And Joe Biden is begging for mask mandates to be reinstated all over the nation…

Joe Biden pleaded on Monday with Republican governors who ended mask mandates to reinstate the requirements in their states and pause reopenings as the administration goes ahead with expanding vaccine eligibility and inoculation sites.

‘I’m reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to reinstate the mask mandate,’ Biden said during remarks on the White House coronavirus response Monday afternoon. ‘Please, this is not politics.’

As long as Americans are afraid of the COVID pandemic, we will continue to see people relocate from urban areas with a high population density to rural and suburban areas that are more spread out.

At the same time, multitudes of Americans are also relocating from core urban areas due to all of the civil unrest that we have witnessed over the past year.

Many believed that the civil unrest would end once Joe Biden entered the White House, but that has not happened.

Instead, we continue to see violence on an almost daily basis. Here is just one recent example…

Footage captured the demonstrators spraying paint across the windshield of the man’s truck and smashing the tail lights in Salem on Sunday.

The driver, who was wearing an American flag sweatshirt, stepped out of his vehicle as he engaged with the protesters, who then appeared to mace him.

The video then shows him pulling out his gun and pointing it at the anti-fascist protesters.

He could be heard shouting: ‘Get away from me’.

Sadly, the civil unrest in our land is only going to get worse.

So that means that even more people will be fleeing our core urban areas in search of greener pastures.

But now that hyperinflation is hitting housing prices, a lot of middle class and poor people will be priced out of the market.

The wealthy and the ultra-wealthy will have no problem making offers on homes that are way over market price because they have lots of money.

But the vast majority of Americans that are living paycheck to paycheck will find that their options are now greatly limited.

This is why I have always encouraged my readers to do long-term planning well in advance. When I was growing up, I often heard the phrase “you snooze, you lose”, and today that is more true than ever.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

Middle Class Erosion: 33 Million Americans Will Not Travel During The Holidays Because They Can’t Afford To Do So

October 9, 2018October 9, 2018 by Michael

We have repeatedly been told that the U.S. economy is “booming”, but meanwhile the middle class in the United States continues to be hollowed out. The financial bubbles that the Federal Reserve has created have been a great blessing for those at the very top of the economic pyramid, but most of the country is still deeply struggling. According to one survey, 78 percent of all full-time workers in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck, and that doesn’t even include part-time workers or those that are unemployed. We have also been told that unemployment is “low”, but the real numbers tell us that there are more working age Americans without a job in 2018 than there was at any point during the last recession. Most of the people that my wife and I know are struggling, and I continually get emails from readers all over the country that are struggling. The sad truth is that the middle class is slowly but surely dying, and more people are falling into poverty with each passing day.

And we got more evidence of this fact on Tuesday. According to one new survey, 33 million Americans will not travel during the holiday season because they simply cannot afford to do so…

Wallet Hub’s Winter Travel Survey has revealed a disturbing trend: 33 million Americans won’t travel this winter because they can’t afford it.

I have been warning about the effect that rising interest rates would have on the economy, and rising rates are being blamed for this travel slowdown. The following comes from MSN…

However, Americans are still feeling the pinch of the pocketbook—part of that has to do with rising interest rates.

“U.S. consumers will be shelling out billions of dollars in extra charges they otherwise could be spending on other things such as travel,” said Mark A. Bonn, director of the resort and vacation rental management program at Florida State University. “This makes it difficult to travel now, let alone after the holiday spending has ended.”

But of course the truth is that most Americans were deeply struggling long before interest rates started to rise.

Those of us in our prime working years can try to work even harder to make ends meet, but when you are elderly and on a fixed income, there is little that can be done.

According to the Sacramento Bee, 9 million elderly Americans across the country “can’t afford to eat”, and in one of their recent articles they featured the plight of 71-year-old Floridian Janet Burke…

Burke is one of the nearly 9 million elderly people at risk of hunger in the United States. In Florida, with the highest percentage of people 60 and older, more than 750,000 elderly need food assistance, according to experts.

The problems confronting the elderly have become one of the hot topics for candidates this election year. Candidates in South Florida have pointed to the needs of the elderly as one of the key concerns voiced by voters.

More than 100 million Americans receive assistance from the government each month, but many citizens do not believe in receiving any help and so they just quietly suffer as they search for a way to make things better.

Today, I would like to share with you a testimony from someone that has been there. My good friend Daisy Luther knows what it is like to barely survive from month to month, and the way that she described those struggles in one of her most recent articles was extremely poignant…

Let’s talk about poverty.

I don’t mean the kind you’re talking about when your friends invite you to go shopping or for a night out and you say, “No, I can’t. I’m poor right now.”

I don’t mean the situation when you’d like to get a nicer car but decide you should just stick to the one you have because you don’t have a few thousand for a down payment.

I don’t mean the scene at the grocery store when you decide to get ground beef instead of steak.

I’m talking about when you have already done the weird mismatched meals from your pantry that are made up of cooked rice, stale crackers, and a can of peaches, and you’ve moved on to wondering what on earth you’re going to feed your kids.

Or when you get an eviction notice for non-payment of rent, a shut-off notice for your utilities, and a repo notice for your car and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about any of those notices because there IS NO MONEY.

If you’ve never been this level of broke, I’m very glad.

I have been this broke. I know that it is soul-destroying when no matter how hard you work, how many part-time jobs you squeeze in, and how much you cut, you simply don’t make enough money to survive in the world today.

If the U.S. economy really is “booming”, then why are millions upon millions of American families struggling like this?

Sadly, it is because the truth is that the U.S. economy is not “booming”, and we continue to get more indications that another major economic downturn is imminent.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Blueprints have been proposed that would mean much better days ahead for America, but most Americans seem quite content with the status quo.

Most Americans seem to want corrupt politicians in Washington, a Federal Reserve system that is bankrupting future generations, an exploding national debt, a deeply oppressive system of taxation and a bloated national government that is becoming more monstrous with each passing day.

In this day and age, “liberty” and “freedom” are seen as antiquated concepts that are standing in the way of “progress”, and more government always seems to be the “solution” that is proposed whenever any crisis arises.

If we truly want to turn America around, we need to return to the values and the principles that once made this nation so great, and right now that simply is not happening…

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 Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots. It is a premium-members only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically. The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

The American Dream Is Getting Smaller, And The Reason Why Is Painfully Obvious…

September 2, 2018 by Michael

Over the past decade, an unprecedented stock market boom has created thousands upon thousands of new millionaires, and yet the middle class in America has continued to shrink. How is that even possible? At one time the United States had the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the planet, but now the gap between the wealthy and the poor is the largest that it has been since the 1920s. Our economy has been creating lots of new millionaires, but at the exact same time we have seen homelessness spiral out of control in our major cities. Today, being part of the middle class is like playing a really bizarre game of musical chairs. Each month when the music stops playing, those of us still in the middle class desperately hope that we are not among the ones that slip out of the middle class and into poverty. Well over 100 million Americans receive money or benefits from the federal government each month, and that includes approximately 40 percent of all families with children. We are losing our ability to take care of ourselves, and that has frightening implications for the future of our society.

One of the primary reasons why our system doesn’t work for everyone is because virtually everything has been financialized. In other words, from the cradle to the grave the entire system has been designed to get you into debt so that the fruits of your labor can be funneled to the top of the pyramid and make somebody else wealthier. The following comes from an excellent Marketwatch article entitled “The American Dream is getting smaller”…

More worrying, perhaps: 33% of those surveyed said they think that dream is disappearing. Why? They have too much debt. “Americans believe financial security is at the core of the American Dream, but it is alarming that so many think it is beyond their reach,” said Mike Fanning, head of MassMutual U.S.

Almost everyone that will read this article will have debt. In America today, we are trained to go into debt for just about everything.

If you want a college education, you go into debt.

If you want a vehicle, you go into debt.

If you want a home, you go into debt.

If you want that nice new pair of shoes, you don’t have to wait for it. Just go into more debt.

As a result, most Americans are currently up to their necks in red ink…

Some 64% of those surveyed said they have a mortgage, 56% said they had credit-card debt and 26% said they have student-loan debt. Many surveyed said they don’t feel financially secure. More than a quarter said they wish they had better control of their finances.

You would have thought that we would have learned from the very hard lessons that the crisis of 2008 taught us.

But instead, we have been on the greatest debt binge in American history in recent years. Here is more from the Marketwatch article…

It makes sense that debt is on Americans’ minds. Collectively, Americans have more than $1 trillion in credit-card debt, according to the Federal Reserve. They have another $1.5 trillion in student loans, up from $1.1 trillion in 2013. Motor vehicle loans are now topping $1.1 trillion, up from $878.5 billion in 2013. And they have another nearly $15 trillion in mortgage debt outstanding.

That is one huge pile of debt.

We criticize the federal government for running up 21 trillion dollars in debt, and rightly so, but American consumers have been almost as irresponsible on an individual basis.

As long as you are drowning in debt, you will never become wealthy. In order to build wealth, you have got to spend less than you earn, but most Americans never learn basic fundamentals such as this in our rapidly failing system of public education.

Many Americans long to become financially independent, but they don’t understand that our system is rigged against them. The entire game is all about keeping consumers on that debt wheel endlessly chasing that piece of proverbial cheese until it is too late.

Getting out of debt is one of the biggest steps that you can take to give yourself more freedom, and hopefully this article will inspire many to do just that.

To end this article today, I would like to share 14 facts about how the middle class in America is shrinking that I shared in a previous article…

#1 78 million Americans are participating in the “gig economy” because full-time jobs just don’t pay enough to make ends meet these days.

#2 In 2011, the average home price was 3.56 times the average yearly salary in the United States. But by the time 2017 was finished, the average home price was 4.73 times the average yearly salary in the United States.

#3 In 1980, the average American worker’s debt was 1.96 times larger than his or her monthly salary. Today, that number has ballooned to 5.00.

#4 In the United States today, 66 percent of all jobs pay less than 20 dollars an hour.

#5 102 million working age Americans do not have a job right now. That number is higher than it was at any point during the last recession.

#6 Earnings for low-skill jobs have stayed very flat for the last 40 years.

#7 Americans have been spending more money than they make for 28 months in a row.

#8 In the United States today, the average young adult with student loan debt has a negative net worth.

#9 At this point, the average American household is nearly $140,000 in debt.

#10 Poverty rates in U.S. suburbs “have increased by 50 percent since 1990”.

#11 Almost 51 million U.S. households “can’t afford basics like rent and food”.

#12 The bottom 40 percent of all U.S. households bring home just 11.4 percent of all income.

#13 According to the Federal Reserve, 4 out of 10 Americans do not have enough money to cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing the money or selling something they own.

#14 22 percent of all Americans cannot pay all of their bills in a typical month.

This article originally appeared on The Economic Collapse Blog. 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.

As The Wealthy Flock To The Major Cities On Both Coasts, Poverty And Suicide Soar In Rural Areas

August 21, 2018August 21, 2018 by Michael

America is increasingly becoming a divided nation. Those with money are flocking to the major cities on both coasts, while many of those that don’t are fleeing to rural areas. As a result, economic conditions can look vastly different depending on where you live. In large cities on the east and west coasts that have been heavily “gentrified”, it can seem like times have never been better. Alternatively, there are certain areas in rural America where it feels like we are in the midst of a horrifying economic depression that never seems to end. Some elitists derisively refer to the rural areas between the east and west coasts as “flyover country”, and they have little sympathy for the struggles of rural Americans. But those struggles are very real, and in this article you will see that poverty and suicide rates are soaring in non-urban parts of the country.

A new study that was just released contains some hard data about the “income sorting” that is going on nationwide. According to CBS News, the study found that those that are moving into expensive cities make much more money than those that are leaving, and conversely those that are moving into poorer cities make much less than those that are leaving for greener pastures…

America’s wealthy households are increasingly moving to coastal cities on both sides of the country, but those with more modest incomes are either relocating to or being pushed into the nation’s Rust Belt, according to a new study.

That’s creating “income sorting” across the country, with expensive cities like Los Angeles, New York and Seattle drawing wealthier residents. For instance, Americans who move to San Francisco earn nearly $13,000 more than those who move away, the study found. Conversely, those who are moving into less expensive inland cities such as Detroit or Pittsburgh earn up to $5,000 less than those who are leaving.

One of the consequences of this phenomenon is that real estate prices are wildly different depending on where you live. As wealthy people have steadily migrated into expensive cities such as New York and San Francisco, this has pushed housing prices into the stratosphere…

The trend may not only hurt poorer residents who are forced out, but also the rich Americans who move to coastal cities. Well-off residents who move to already expensive cities like San Francisco are bidding up real estate prices until property becomes unaffordable for all but the very richest families. Many end up renting — until that, too, becomes unaffordable.

The California real estate bubble has reached dizzying heights in recent years. Earlier today, I came across an article about a rancher in Marin County that has reluctantly decided to sell his ranch, and he seemed quite sad about it.

So what made him decide to pull the trigger?

Well, the ranch that he once paid $40,000 for is now worth a cool 5 million dollars…

Mark Pasternak is a Marin County-based rancher who produces specialty meat products for local shoppers and some of the toniest restaurants in the Bay Area. He bought his 75-acre Devil’s Gulch Ranch in western Marin County back in 1971 for $550 an acre and has been raising pigs, sheep, rabbits and poultry ever since. The farm is a fixture in the local community, so it shocked many when Pasternak announced the ranch is for sale.

He said he’s selling because of the jump in value. The land around his has already been snapped up by wealthy people for private ranches with large homes. The property Pasternak paid less than $40,000 for is now worth about $5 million.

Meanwhile, things continue to go from bad to worse in many rural parts of the country.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly one out of every four children in rural America is living in poverty…

According to estimates by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, nearly a quarter of children growing up in rural America were poor in 2016, compared to slightly more than 20 percent in urban areas.

It was a southwestern state, Arizona, according to the report, that had the highest rural child rate of any state, with 36 percent.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the report found the highest concentrations of child poverty, overall, in the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia and on Native American reservations.

These days, most of the good jobs are concentrated in the major cities. Small businesses and family farms have traditionally been the lifeblood of rural communities, but our “modern economy” has not been kind to small businesses and family farms.

In rural America, times are tough, and that is one of the reasons why the suicide rate is much, much higher in rural areas than it is in the large cities. The following comes from CNN…

The suicide rate in rural America is 45% greater than in large urban areas, according to a study released last fall by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A more recent CDC report said Montana’s suicide rate leads the nation, coming in at nearly twice the national average. A third long-touted CDC study, currently under review, listed farming in the occupational group, along with fishing and forestry, with the highest rate of suicide deaths.

That occupational study was based on 2012 data, when farming was strong and approaching its peak in 2013, says Jennifer Fahy, communications director for the nonprofit Farm Aid. Farmers’ net income has fallen 50% since 2013 and is expected to drop to a 12-year low this year, the US Department of Agriculture reports.

If things are this bad now, what will it be like when economic conditions really begin to deteriorate?

We live at a time when the gap between the wealthy and the poor is exploding, and this is putting a tremendous amount of strain on our society. At one time the wealthy lived in the “good parts” of our major cities and the poor lived in the “bad parts”, but now the poor are being completely forced out of our expensive cities on a massive scale.

It is most definitely a tale of two Americas, and I don’t think that it is going to have a happy ending.

Bubbles, Bubbles Everywhere

July 8, 2014July 8, 2014 by Michael

Is there any doubt that we are living in a bubble economy? At this moment in the United States we are simultaneously experiencing a stock market bubble, a government debt bubble, a corporate bond bubble, a bubble in San Francisco real estate, a farmland bubble, a derivatives bubble and a student loan debt bubble. And of course similar things could be said about most of the rest of the planet as well. In fact, the total amount of government debt around the world has risen by about 40 percent just since the last recession. But it is never sustainable when asset prices and debt levels increase much faster than the overall level of economic growth. History has shown us that all financial bubbles eventually burst. And when these current financial bubbles in America burst, the pain is going to be absolutely enormous.

You know that things are getting perilous when even the New York Times starts pointing out financial bubbles everywhere. The following is a short excerpt from a recent NotQuant article…

The New York Times points out that just about everything on Earth is expensive by historical standards. And then asks the seemingly obvious question: Does that make it a bubble?

Welcome to the Everything Boom — and, quite possibly, the Everything Bubble. Around the world, nearly every asset class is expensive by historical standards. Stocks and bonds; emerging markets and advanced economies; urban office towers and Iowa farmland; you name it, and it is trading at prices that are high by historical standards relative to fundamentals. The inverse of that is relatively low returns for investors.

“Quite possibly?” We’re not sure what definition of the word “bubble” they’re using. But in our book when the price of literally everything blasts upwards, obliterating the previous ceilings of historical benchmarks, it’s a pretty good indication that you’re in a bubble.

Of course when most people think of financial bubbles the very first thing they think of is the stock market. And without a doubt we are in a stock market bubble right now. The Dow has risen more than 10,000 points since the depths of the last recession. And it is nearly 3,000 points higher than it was at the peak of the last stock market bubble in 2007 when our economy was far stronger than it is now…

But of course these stock prices do not reflect economic reality in any way whatsoever. Our economy has not even come close to recovering to the level it was at prior to the last financial crisis, and yet thanks to massive Federal Reserve money printing stock prices have soared to unprecedented heights.

At some point a massive correction is coming. No stock market bubble lasts forever. For a whole bunch of technical reasons why serious market turmoil is on the horizon, please see a recent Forbes article entitled “These 23 Charts Prove That Stocks Are Heading For A Devastating Crash“.

The bubbles in the financial markets have become so glaring that even the central bankers are starting to warn us about them. For example, just consider what the Bank for International Settlements is saying…

The Bank for International Settlements has warned that “euphoric” financial markets have become detached from the reality of a lingering post-crisis malaise, as it called for governments to ditch policies that risk stoking unsustainable asset booms.

While the global economy is struggling to escape the shadow of the crisis of 2007-09, capital markets are “extraordinarily buoyant”, the Basel-based bank said, in part because of the ultra-low monetary policy being pursued around the world. Leading central banks should not fall into the trap of raising rates “too slowly and too late”, the BIS said, calling for policy makers to halt the steady rise in debt burdens around the world and embark on reforms to boost productivity.

In its annual report, the BIS also warned of the risks brewing in emerging markets, setting out early warning indicators of possible banking crises in a number of jurisdictions, including most notably China.

“Particularly for countries in the late stages of financial booms, the trade-off is now between the risk of bringing forward the downward leg of the cycle and that of suffering a bigger bust later on,” it said.

Sadly, just like in 2007, most people are choosing not to listen to these warnings.

Another very troubling bubble that is brewing is the massive bubble of consumer credit in the United States. According to the Wall Street Journal, consumer credit in the United States increased at a 7.4 percent annual rate in May…

The Federal Reserve reported Tuesday that consumer credit—consumer loans excluding real estate debt—in May increased at an annual rate of 7.4% to a record $3.195 trillion. Most of that gain came from a 9.3% increase in nonrevolving credit, the bulk of which is accounted for by auto and student loans. Revolving credit, which is primarily credit-card debt, expanded at a more muted 2.5% rate after jumping 12.3% in May.

That might be okay if our paychecks were increasing at a 7.4% annual rate, but that is not the case at all. In fact, median household income in America has gone down for five years in a row. As the quality of our jobs goes down the drain, our paychecks are shrinking even as our bills go up. This is putting an incredible amount of stress on tens of millions of American families.

And when you look at the overall debt bubble in this country, things become even more frightening.

In a previous article, I shared a chart which shows the incredible growth of total debt in the United States. Over the past 40 years, it has gone from about 2.2 trillion dollars to nearly 60 trillion dollars…

Is this sustainable?

Of course not.

None of these financial bubbles are.

It is not a question of “if” they will burst. It is only a question of “when”.

And some believe that we are rapidly approaching that point. In fact, Marc Faber believes that we are seeing signs that it may be starting to happen already…

It’s the question investors everywhere are wrestling with: Are asset prices in a bubble, or do they simply reflect the fact that the global economy is growing once again?

For Marc Faber, editor of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, the answer is clear. In fact, he says the bubble may already be bursting.

“I think it’s a colossal bubble in all asset prices, and eventually it will burst, and maybe it has begun to burst already,” Faber said Tuesday on CNBC’s ‘Futures Now‘ as the S&P 500 lost ground for the second-straight session.

So what do you think?

How much time do you believe that we have before these bubbles start to burst?

Please feel free to share your thoughts by posting a comment below…

12 Signs That Spain Is Shifting Gears From Recession To Depression

July 23, 2012July 23, 2012 by Michael

Where have we seen this before? Bond yields soar above the 7 percent danger level. Check. The stock market crashes to new lows. Check. Industrial activity plummets like a rock and the economy contracts. Check. The unemployment rate skyrockets to more than 20 percent. Check. The bursting of a massive real estate bubble pushes the banking system to the brink of implosion. Check. Broke local governments beg the broke national government for bailouts. Check. The international community pressures the national government to implement deep austerity measures which will slow down the economy even more and hordes of violent protesters take to the streets. Check. All of this happened in Greece, it is happening right now in Spain, and mark my words it will eventually happen in the United States. Every debt bubble eventually bursts, and right now Spain is experiencing a level of economic pain that very, very few people saw coming. The recession in Spain is rapidly becoming a full-blown economic depression, and at this point there is no hope and no light at the end of the tunnel.

The bad news for the global economy is that Spain is much larger than Greece. According to the United Nations, the Greek economy is the 32nd largest economy in the world. The Spanish economy, on the other hand, is the 4th largest economy in the eurozone and the 12th largest economy on the entire planet. It is nearly five times the size of the Greek economy.

Financial markets all over the globe are very nervous right now because if the Spanish government ends up asking for a full-blown bailout it could spell the end for the eurozone. There simply is not enough money to do the same kind of thing for Spain that is being done for Greece.

Of course European officials are going to do their best to keep the eurozone from collapsing, but what they have completely failed to do is to keep these countries from falling into depression.

As I have written about previously, Greece has already been in an economic depression for some time.

I warned that Spain, Italy, Portugal and a bunch of other European nations were going down the exact same path.

Now we are watching a virtual replay of what happened in Greece take place in Spain.

Unfortunately, the global financial system may not be able to handle a complete implosion of the Spanish economy.

The following are 12 signs that Spain is shifting gears from recession to depression….

#1 At one point on Monday, the IBEX stock market index fell to 5,905, which was the lowest level in nearly ten years. When it hit 5,905 that represented a drop of about 12 percent over just two trading days. If that happened in the United States, it would be the equivalent of the Dow falling by about 1500 points in 48 hours.

#2 So far this year, the Spanish stock market is down more than 25 percent. Back in 2008, the IBEX 35 was well over 15,000. Today it is sitting just above 6,000.

#3 Spain has banned many forms of short selling for 3 months.

#4 The yield on 10 year Spanish bonds is now well above the 7 percent “danger level”.

#5 Thanks to the problems in Spain, the euro continues to fall like a rock. On Monday it hit a new two year low against the U.S. dollar, and it is near a twelve year low against the Japanese yen.

#6 During the first quarter of 2012, the Spanish economy contracted by 0.3 percent. During the second quarter of 2012, the Spanish economy contracted by 0.4 percent.

#7 Local governments all over Spain are flat broke and need to be bailed out by the broke national government. The following is from a recent CNBC article….

Adding to Madrid’s woes, media reports suggested another half a dozen of Spain’s 17 regional authorities, facing an undeclared funding crisis, were ready to follow Valencia in seeking aid from the central government.

#8 The percentage of bad loans on the books of Spanish banks has reached an 18 year high. European officials have already promised a 100 billion euro bailout for Spain’s troubled banking system, but most analysts agree that 100 billion euros will not be nearly enough.

#9 Spanish industrial output declined for the ninth month in a row in May.

#10 The unemployment rate in Spain is up to an astounding 24.6 percent. The unemployment rate in Spain is already higher than it was in the United States at the peak of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

#11 The youth unemployment rate in Spain is now over 52 percent.

#12 The Spanish government has just announced a whole bunch of new tax increases and spending cuts which will cause the Spanish economy to slow down even more. In response to these austerity measures, people are taking to the streets all over Spain. Last week, 100,000 demonstrators poured into the streets to protest in Madrid alone.

Sadly, the nightmare in Spain is just beginning.

If the yield on 10 year Spanish bonds stays above 7 percent, that is going to be a really bad sign. According to the Wall Street Journal, the 7 percent level is key as far as investor confidence is concerned….

Monday’s dramatic market moves suggest Spain may be stuck in a spiral that culminates in a bailout from other euro-zone countries.

“The rise in the 10-year yield well beyond 7% carries a very distinct reminder of events in Greece in April 2010, Ireland in October 2010 and Portugal in February 2011,” said analysts at Bank of New York Mellon. “In each case, a decisive move beyond 7% signaled the start of a collapse in investor confidence that, in each case, led to a bailout within weeks,” they added.

So keep an eye on that number in the weeks ahead.

Meanwhile, the Spanish economy continues to get worse with each passing month.

So just how bad are things in Spain right now?

Just check out this excerpt from a recent article by Mark Grant….

Recently two noted Spanish economists were interviewed. One was always an optimist and one was always a pessimist. The optimist droned on and on about how bad things were in Spain, the dire situation with the regional debt, the huge problems overtaking the Spanish banks and the imminent collapse of the Spanish economy. In the end he said that the situation was so bad that the Spanish people were going to have to eat manure. The pessimist was shocked by the comments of his colleague who had never heard him speak in such a manner. When it was the pessimist’s turn to speak he said that he agreed with the optimist with one exception; the manure would soon run out.

That may make you laugh, but for those in Europe going through these horrific economic conditions it is no laughing matter.

On Sunday, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras actually told former U.S. president Bill Clinton that Greece is already in a “Great Depression“.

Like Spain, the unemployment rate in Greece is well above 20 percent and the youth unemployment rate is above 50 percent.

The only reason the Greek financial system has not totally collapsed is because of outside assistance, but now there are indications that the assistance may soon be cut off.

At this point there are persistent rumors that the IMF does not plan to give any more aid money to Greece unless Greece “shapes up”.

Meanwhile, the suffering in Greece just gets worse and worse.

Sadly, most Americans pay very little attention to what is going on in Greece and Spain.

Most Americans just assume that we will always have “the greatest economy on earth” and that we can take prosperity for granted.

Unfortunately, the truth is that the United States already has more government debt per capita than either Greece or Spain does.

Just like Greece and Spain, we are also rapidly traveling down the road to economic oblivion, and depression-like conditions will arrive in this country soon enough.

So enjoy these last months of economic prosperity while you still can.

A whole lot of pain is on the horizon.