The Economy

This Is The Worst Inflation Since The 1970s, And The Stage Is Being Set For The Total Collapse Of The U.S. Economy

How does it feel to live in a country with double-digit inflation?  On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the consumer price index has risen 5.4 percent over the past 12 months, and such a high number shocked a lot of people.  But in order to make a fair comparison to the past, we have to account for the fact that the way inflation is calculated has been changed literally dozens of times over the past several decades.  According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1990, the official rate of inflation over the past 12 months would be about 9 percent.  And if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation over the past 12 months would be well into double-digits.

Everyone that has been warning that we could soon see inflation rise to levels that we haven’t witnessed since the the Jimmy Carter years can stop, because we are already there.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics is committing fraud, because the numbers that they give us are almost meaningless.  For example, U.S. home prices have risen 20 percent over the past year, but the “shelter component of inflation” makes up only a tiny fraction of the overall consumer price index…

We’ll get the latest read on inflation Tuesday, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics puts out its consumer price index for the month of June. As you may recall, the May report showed the biggest annual increase in consumer prices, 5%, in 13 years. But if you’re looking for the recent jump in home prices to show up in that number, you’re likely to be disappointed. The shelter component of inflation, as measured by the CPI, has stayed pretty steady, from around 2% to 3.5%, for the past decade. And some economists have a problem with that.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if your mortgage payment accounted for only 3.5 percent of your overall budget each month?

Needless to say, such a figure is completely and totally unrealistic.

For most of us, housing is the single biggest expense that we face on a regular basis.  And as I have documented in many previous articles, housing costs have been soaring into the stratosphere in recent months.

Car prices are also rising at an extremely alarming pace.  According to CNN, the average price of a new car has shot up 12 percent over the past year…

In May, the average new car price hit a record $38,255, according to JD Power, up 12% from the same period a year ago. About two-thirds of car buyers paid within 5% of the sticker price in May, with some paying even more.

Instead of buying a new vehicle, you could purchase a used one instead, but used car prices increased 10.5 percent in just the last month…

Last month alone, average used car prices soared 10.5 percent – the largest such monthly increase since record-keeping began in January 1953. That spike accounted for about one-third of the monthly increase for the third straight month.

Renting vehicles has gotten a lot more expensive as well.

In fact, average rental rates are up a whopping 86 percent since this point in 2020…

Daily car rental rates have increased 86% compared to this time last year and 140% more than 2019, according to Julie Hall, a spokesperson for AAA.

The “5.4 percent inflation” fairly tale that the Labor Department is trying to sell us is absolutely laughable.

And as long as they keep putting out such doctored numbers, they are going to have zero credibility.

Everyone can see that prices are skyrocketing all around us.  In such an environment, a restaurant in New York can charge 200 dollars for French fries and some people will actually pay that price…

Serendipity3, the iconic Upper East Side restaurant, set a Guinness World Records title for making the “Most Expensive French Fries” — just in time to celebrate National French Fry Day Tuesday!

Serendipity3’s Creative Director and Chef Joe Calderone and Corporate Executive Chef Frederick Schoen-Kiewert are the masterminds behind the “Creme de la Creme Pommes Frites,” which cost a whopping $200.

Our leaders thought that they could pump trillions upon trillions of fresh dollars into the system without any serious consequences.

Sadly, they were dead wrong.

Inflation is wildly out of control, and one economist just told Breitbart News that the U.S. is starting “to look a little bit like a Latin American country”…

Desmond Lachman, an economist and senior fellow with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), told Breitbart News on Sunday that the U.S. is beginning to resemble a Latin American country given its inflation, government spending, and printing of money.

“[The U.S. is] in [a]very bad position from a long-term point of view. I don’t see how this can end well when we’re running — now — budget deficits something like 15 percent of GDP,” Lachman said on SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Sunday with host Joel Pollak. “This is beginning to look a little bit like a Latin American country.”

It is actually much worse than that.

The truth is that we are in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world, and at such a critical moment U.S. officials have decided to systematically destroy the value of the reserve currency of the planet.

Prior to the pandemic, the U.S. government was stealing more than a hundred million dollars an hour from future generations of Americans, but now our politicians have upped that rate to more than 300 million dollars an hour.

And when the next major crisis comes along, they will pass even more “emergency packages”, because spending money is the only solution they have.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve continues to pump giant mountains of money into the financial system.  Since September 2019, the size of the Fed balance sheet has more than doubled, and that should be considered a crime against humanity.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Americans don’t even know what the Federal Reserve is, and only a small fraction of the population actually understands what they are currently doing to our financial system.

Facing no significant resistance, our politicians will continue to get us into staggering amounts of debt, and the Fed will continue to transform the U.S. dollar into toilet paper.

Sadly, what they are doing is setting the stage for the collapse of the late, great U.S. economy, and the economic pain that is ahead will affect every single man, woman and child on the entire planet.

***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.

Millions Of Low Paying “Jobs” Are Available, But Most Americans Can’t Afford To Take Them

There are more job openings in the United States than ever before, but the vast majority of the available “jobs” pay so little that most Americans don’t want them.  If working extremely long hours for some employer is not even going to lift you out of poverty, then you are probably better off taking whatever government assistance that you can get until a decent paying job eventually comes along.  For example, if you get a job that pays 10 dollars an hour and you work full-time hours every week, you will earn somewhere around $1,600 a month before taxes.  Needless to say, you can’t survive in most U.S. cities on $1,600 a month these days.  It would have been tough to make it on $1,600 a month before the pandemic, but now we are in a highly inflationary environment.  Housing costs are absolutely skyrocketing, health insurance premiums are at extremely ridiculous levels and food prices have been rising aggressively.  The higher the cost of living gets, the less attractive low paying jobs are going to become.

Having said that, it is still good news that the number of job openings is sitting at a record high right now…

Job openings in the U.S. rose slightly in May to a record 9.21 million, reflecting an insatiable demand for labor as the economy fully reopens and businesses scramble to keep up with soaring sales for their goods and services.

The number of available jobs has set a record for three straight months. Job openings had fallen to as low as 4.6 million last year after the coronavirus pandemic briefly shut down much of the economy.

Having lots of jobs available is better than not having a lot of jobs available, but of course the vast majority of those “jobs” could not support a middle class lifestyle for an average American family.

Some have been using the term “labor shortage” to describe what is going on out there, but in reality what we are really facing is a shortage of jobs that people are actually willing to work.

Even though there are supposedly so many “jobs” available at this moment, the unemployment rate in this country actually went up last month…

“There’s simply no labor shortage when you’re talking about finding house cleaners for a hotel — there is a shortage of workers who want to work at what you’re offering,” said Sylvia Allegretto, a UC Berkeley labor economist. She said the country is experiencing a “wage and benefits shortage.”

A labor shortage implies there aren’t enough available workers to fill open jobs, but this is not the case nationally, or in California. National unemployment in June was 5.9%, up from 5.8% in May, in part because the number of people looking for jobs grew, according to data from the Labor Department on Friday. California’s unemployment is tracking higher, at 7.9% in May.

Of course it doesn’t help that being unemployed pays quite handsomely in many states these days.

If you can make more money doing nothing, it simply doesn’t make sense to work.

In order to encourage more people to work, many large chains in the restaurant industry are now raising wages substantially…

Job openings in the accommodation and food services sector increased from 1.16 million in April to 1.25 million in May.

To entice workers to stay — and to hire more people — restaurants have been raising wages. Darden Restaurants (DRI), which owns Olive Garden, announced in March that it is hiking pay. McDonald’s (MCD), too, announced wage hikes for employees at corporate-owned stores in May. Others have done the same.

Large corporate chains can do this because they have deep pockets.

But millions of small businesses all over the country that deeply struggled during the pandemic are not in the same position.

Ultimately, a lot of small business owners find themselves doing more and more of the work themselves because they simply can’t find enough people to work for the wages that they are offering.  Here is just one example…

Jarvis Young, who owns a Papa John’s in Los Angeles with his wife, is struggling to staff up at all levels, from managers to delivery drivers. He employs 16 workers and said he needs closer to 23.

He has started borrowing employees from other Papa John’s franchises to keep up with demand. Until they hire one, his wife is acting as the general manager. The two of them sometimes deliver pizzas — not quite what they envisioned for themselves as franchise owners. “At the end of the day, this is our business,” he said.

Today, there are tens of millions of Americans that are considered to be among the “working poor”, and that number is growing with each passing day.

The cost of living is rising far faster than our paychecks are, and an increasing number of Americans are not even able to afford the basics.

For instance, everyone needs a place to live.  Unfortunately, home prices have surged so dramatically this year that the percentage of Americans that say that it is a “bad time to buy a home” has risen to the highest level ever recorded…

The percentage who said that it was a “bad time to buy a home” spiked over the past three months from record to record and in June hit 64%. Consumers cited home prices as the predominant reason.

A record low 32% of the respondents said that it was still a good time to buy a home, while the percentage of fence-sitters who didn’t know dropped to 4%.

And just trying to buy enough food to eat is becoming a challenge for a lot of people.

When I went to the grocery store this week, I was stunned to see how high prices had become.  Of course some manufacturers are trying to hide price increases by shrinking the sizes of their packages, and this is something that NPR did an article on the other day…

A couple of weeks ago, Edgar Dworsky walked into a Stop & Shop grocery store in Somerville, Mass., like a detective entering a murder scene.

He stepped into the cereal aisle, where he hoped to find the smoking gun. He scanned the shelves. Oh no, he thought. He was too late. The store had already replaced old General Mills cereal boxes — such as Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs — with newer ones. It was as though the suspect’s fingerprints had been wiped clean.

But Dworsky’s story didn’t end there.  He decided to check out the back of the store, and it was there that he discovered what he was searching for...

Then Dworsky headed toward the back of the store. Sure enough, old boxes of Cocoa Puffs and Apple Cinnamon Cheerios were stacked at the end of one of the aisles. He grabbed an old box of Cocoa Puffs and put it side by side with the new one. Aha! The tip he had received was right on the money. General Mills had downsized the contents of its “family size” boxes from 19.3 ounces to 18.1 ounces.

Dworsky went to the checkout aisle, and both boxes — gasp! — were the same price. It was an open-and-shut case: General Mills is yet another perpetrator of “shrinkflation.”

As I discussed a few days ago, we are going to be in a high inflation environment for the foreseeable future.

That means that low paying jobs will just become less and less attractive.

So employers can boast that they have as many “job openings” as they want, but if wage growth continues to lag way behind the real rate of inflation most of those jobs will continue to remain empty.

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

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

5 Specific Reasons Why You Should Stockpile Food Right Now

For decades, Americans have not needed to be concerned about food prices.  Yes, prices would always go up by a little bit each year, but in general we have been extremely blessed for a very long time.  Our supermarkets have always been packed with food, and we could always count on the fact that prices would be about the same a month or two down the road.  Unfortunately, things are now changing, and not in a good way.  A massive wave of inflation has hit agricultural commodities, and food producers have felt forced to pass those cost increases along to consumers.  Unfortunately, many experts are anticipating that the price hikes that we are currently witnessing are just the beginning.

So even though food prices have already become quite painful, they are never going to be any lower than they are at this moment.

Looking forward, there are several factors that are likely to combine to cause food inflation to accelerate even more in the months ahead.  The following are 5 specific reasons why you should stockpile food right now…

#1 Supermarkets are feverishly stockpiling food, and the Wall Street Journal is reporting that they are doing this in anticipation of “the highest price increases in recent memory”…

Supermarkets are stocking up on everything from sugar to frozen meat before they get more pricey, girding for what some executives anticipate will be some of the highest price increases in recent memory.

This only makes good business sense.  If you can get inventory now for significantly less than you will be able to get it for later, that will help your bottom line.

The Wall Street Journal is admitting that all of this stockpiling “is driving shortages of some staples”, but it is expected that these shortages will just be temporary.

I can’t remember a time when we have seen anything quite like this.  At this point, some companies are purchasing up to 25 percent more food than normal…

David Smith, CEO of the US’s largest wholesaler Associated Wholesale Grocers, told the Wall Street Journal they have been buying 15 to 20 percent more goods – particularly packaged foods with long shelf lives.

‘We’re buying a lot of everything. Our inventories are up significantly over the same period last year,’ said Smith.

At SpartanNash in Michigan, the retailer has bought up around 20 to 25 percent more than normal including frozen meat.

#2 The U.S. government is going to continue recklessly spending money, and the Federal Reserve is going to keep pumping more giant mountains of fresh cash into the financial system.

The Biden administration doesn’t seem to have an “off button”, and neither does the Fed.  The U.S. national debt is moving up toward the 29 trillion dollar mark very rapidly, and the Fed’s balance sheet has more than doubled over the past year.

Unless there is some sort of a dramatic reversal, and I don’t see why there would be, this continual flow of new money will continue to push food prices even higher.

#3 Gas prices keep surging, and this is making it more expensive to transport food around the country.

According to the AAA Gas Price Index, the average price of a gallon of gasoline is up 56 percent from what it was last May…

Transport costs are also rising with gas prices rising 56 percent in May from a year ago.

On Friday, the AAA Gas Price Index pegged the national average gas price at $3.086, up from $2.171 one year ago.

#4 The endless “megadrought” in the western states just continues to intensify.

If you look at the latest U.S. Drought Monitor map, it is a horror show.  We haven’t seen anything like this since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, and water levels are dropping dangerously low.

For example, the water level in Great Salt Lake is expected to hit the lowest level in 170 years this summer…

The lake’s levels are expected to hit a 170-year low this year. It comes as the drought has the U.S. West bracing for a brutal wildfire season and coping with already low reservoirs. Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, a Republican, has begged people to cut back on lawn watering and “pray for rain.”

For the Great Salt Lake, though, it is only the latest challenge. People for years have been diverting water from rivers that flow into the lake to water crops and supply homes. Because the lake is shallow — about 35 feet (11 meters) at its deepest point — less water quickly translates to receding shorelines.

Because there is not enough water, many farmers are having to dramatically reduce the amount of crops that they are growing.

Small farmer Mindy Perkovich is only growing produce on one of her seven acres at this point, and she openly admits that she doesn’t know if she will even have enough water for that…

Perkovich typically grows things like turnips, squash and tomatoes for the local market on seven acres. This season, though, she’s had to cut her crops down to less than a single acre.

“We don’t know if we’re gonna have water to keep that alive,” she says. “Financially, I can’t really even express how dramatic it’s changed in the last couple years, water-wise, because without water, we can’t grow crops without crops, we have nothing to sell to our consumers.”

Agricultural production in the western states will be lower than originally anticipated this year, and that will also put upward pressure on food prices in the coming months.

#5 On top of everything else, an enormous plague of grasshoppers is now causing massive headaches for farmers in our western states.

As I discussed on Sunday, the extremely hot and extremely dry conditions are perfect for grasshoppers, and they have been multiplying like crazy.

In some areas, the swarms are so thick that “it can appear the earth is moving”, and there are times when the swarms are so large that they are actually appearing on radar.

Seven states are being hit particularly hard, and the federal government is going to begin a large scale spraying campaign.  The spraying may reduce the plague, but all of the experts agree that it will not stop it.

Grasshoppers will continue to eat our crops on a massive scale for many months to come, and this is another factor that will be driving up food prices.

So, to summarize, the outlook for the months ahead is rather bleak.

A number of factors are going to combine to push prices significantly higher, and so if you can afford to stock up you should be doing so.

Our leaders continue to insist that this bout of inflation is just “transitory”, and you can believe them if you like.

But the truth is that high inflation is here to stay, and what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

***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.

Home Prices Just Did Something That They Have Never Done Before

Everyone knew that home prices were going crazy, and now we have some solid numbers that are simply incredible.  Home prices are rising faster than they ever have before, and so if you are shopping for a home in this environment I truly feel sorry for you.  In many parts of the country, average hard working American families have already been completely priced out of the market.  Prior to the pandemic, the largest price bubbles were in major urban areas along both coasts, but now desirable rural and suburban communities all over the nation are red hot.  In some cases, we have seen wild bidding wars that result in buyers paying more than a million dollars over asking price, and this unprecedented frenzy is pushing home prices to dizzying heights.

On Tuesday, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price data for the month of April was released, and it quickly made headlines all across America…

U.S. home prices jumped the most in more than 30 years in April.

Nationally, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of property values climbed 14.6% from a year earlier, according to a statement Tuesday, the biggest gain in data going back to 1988. That came after 13.2% increase in March, and was the 11th straight month that price gains accelerated.

This particular series of data only goes back to 1988, and in all that time we have never seen a rise of this magnitude.

One expert that is being quoted by CNBC is calling the rise in prices “truly extraordinary”…

“April’s performance was truly extraordinary. The 14.6% gain in the National Composite is literally the highest reading in more than 30 years of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data,” said Craig Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Redfin has also released new numbers, and their numbers show an even faster rate of increase for home prices…

… it makes sense that home prices are also surging thanks to trillions in stimmy checks, near-record low mortgage rates and an exodus away from cities, and as we noted two last month that’s precisely what they are doing, with Redfin reporting an 18% jump in median home sale prices to an all time high…

… as a record 58% of all houses sell within two weeks of listing, of which 45% sell for more than their listing price, also a record.

But don’t worry about these numbers.  Officials at the Federal Reserve insist that inflation is “low” and that they have everything under control.

If you can’t afford to buy a home, you can still try to rent a place, but rent prices are also starting to explode in many areas around the country…

Leading the trend is Boise, ID, where rents grew another 6 percent in June and are now up 39 percent since the start of the pandemic. But the fastest single-month rent growth took place in Spokane, WA, where prices shot up 8.1 percent in June and sit 31 percent above pre-pandemic levels. After that, a handful of fast-growing cities have experienced roughly 20 percent price appreciation over the last year and a half. With the exception of Virginia Beach, VA, all of them are located in the Western United States, absorbing the rental demand overflowing from nearby, pricey metros like the San Francisco Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles.

Those that are having their rents jacked up will be just fine as long as their paychecks are increasing at the same rate.

Oh, but that isn’t happening for most people, is it?

Vehicle prices are getting crazy too.  According to the Wall Street Journal, some dealers are now selling new vehicles for “thousands of dollars” above the sticker price…

Some buyers say they have encountered dealerships asking for thousands of dollars above MSRP. And analysts and dealers say the practice is becoming more widespread and occurring on a wider range of vehicles, including more mainstream models that typically wouldn’t be targeted for such price increases.

In the old days, the goal was to negotiate a deal that was as far below sticker price as possible.

Unfortunately, these days many customers are willingly making offers that are much higher than the MSRP….

“I was shocked,” said Ken Baird, a 61-year-old Boca Raton, Fla., resident who was recently shopping for a Kia Telluride. The window sticker on the particular model he was looking at read $45,000, and he said he offered to pay $3,000 over that knowing the vehicle was in high demand.

Needless to say, food prices are getting very painful as well.

In fact, an official at one food bank in Chicago says that their food purchasing budget “has doubled” over the past 12 months…

Soaring food prices aren’t just impacting financially strapped families and the working poor. They’re also affecting the mission of US food banks who are spending a lot more on food than ever before.

“We’re already spending a lot more on food than we have in years past,” said Greg Trotter, a spokesman for the Greater Chicago Food Depository, a large food bank, who spoke with VOA News. “Our food purchasing budget has doubled this year.”

All of this has been caused by the actions of our leaders.  Our politicians in Washington decided to go on the greatest spending binge in history and the Fed decided to pump trillions of fresh dollars into the financial system in order to “save the economy”, and now we have rip-roaring inflation as a result.

In addition to very painful inflation, we are also now dealing with widespread shortages.  For example, as the holiday weekend approaches many locations around the nation are once again running out of gasoline…

Gas stations across the country are running out of gasoline just as 43 million Americans are preparing to hit the road for the July 4th holiday weekend.

Those that do manage to find gas are likely to find some of the highest prices in almost seven years, with gas now averaging $3.10 a gallon across the US – the highest since October 2014.

The corporate media would have us believe that extremely high inflation and widespread shortages are signs that the U.S. economy is “booming”.

But to me, it sounds way too much like a rerun of the Jimmy Carter era of the 1970s.

Sadly, this is just the start of the pain.  The politicians in Washington continue to spend money like drunken sailors, and the Federal Reserve continues to pump more fresh cash into the financial system each week.

So the short-term outlook is quite bleak, and the long-term outlook is even worse.

***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.

They Are Gaslighting Us! Nightmarish Inflation Is Already Here But The Fed Is Denying That It Even Exists

They would like us to believe that what we can see happening right in front of our eyes is not actually real.  Over the past year, our politicians in Washington have gone on the largest spending binge in U.S. history by a very wide margin, and the Federal Reserve has created the most enormous financial bubble of all time by pumping trillions upon trillions of fresh dollars into the financial markets.  Of course this was going to cause very painful inflation, and prices are rising very aggressively all around us.  But Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and other leaders in Washington are trying to convince us that even though they added all of this money to the system it has hardly affected the overall rate of inflation at all.  They are “gaslighting” us, and it is absolutely infuriating.

If you are not familiar with the term “gaslighting”, the following is how Wikipedia defines it…

Gaslighting is a form of psychological manipulation in which a person or a group covertly sows seeds of doubt in a targeted individual or group, making them question their own memory, perception, or judgement.

This is precisely what they are trying to do to all of us.  Everyone can see that nightmarish inflation is already here, but they are trying to manipulate us into thinking that it is not.

Just look at home prices.  Everyone needs a place to live, and existing home prices have risen 23.6 percent over the past year…

The median existing-home price rose 23.6% in May from a year earlier to $350,300, a record high, NAR said. The annual price appreciation was the strongest in data going back to 1999. Median sales prices have climbed sharply since rising above $300,000 for the first time last July.

At this point, homes are absolutely flying off the market.  In fact, the average time that a home stays on the market has hit a record low…

Homes are selling quickly. The typical home that sold in May spent 17 days on the market, matching the record low reached in April, NAR said.

Buyers with limited cash for down payments are struggling the most to compete. Half of existing-home buyers in April who used mortgages put at least 20% down, according to a NAR survey.

But Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell insists that everything is just fine and that the Fed is perfectly capable of keeping inflation around 2 percent…

“When Congress spends trillions of dollars and the Fed prints money, something’s got to give,” Rep. Mark Green (R., Tenn.) said. He asked Mr. Powell whether the price increases seen in recent months are “the start of something that could be as bad as the ‘70s,” when inflation reached double digits.

Mr. Powell said such a scenario is “very, very unlikely,” in part because the central bank “is strongly prepared to use its tools to keep us around 2% inflation.”

What an insane thing to say.

How can you claim that you are going to “keep us around 2% inflation” when inflation is already out of control?

As John Williams of shadowstats.com has documented, if honest numbers were being used the official rate of inflation would already be well into double digits.

Of course for certain categories we are now seeing triple digit inflation.  For instance, at one point in May the price of lumber was four times higher than it was at the same time last year…

The price of lumber, which shot up to $1,600 per thousand board feet in May from $400 early last year, is making renovations more expensive – especially projects that involve kitchens cabinets, hardwood floors and additions that require framing.

But Powell just told Congress that he is not troubled by any of this…

“If you look behind the headline and look at the categories where these prices are really going up, you’ll see that it tends to be areas that are directly affected by the reopening,” Mr. Powell said in a hearing before a House subcommittee. “That’s something that we’ll go through over a period. It will then be over. And it should not leave much of a mark on the ongoing inflation process.”

These days, Powell is definitely starting to sound a lot like Frank Drebin.

We are supposed to believe that nothing out of the ordinary is happening, but meanwhile the wholesale price of chicken wings has more than tripled…

“The [wholesale] price of wings a year ago was as low as 98 cents,” per pound, Charlie Morrison, Chairman and CEO of Wingstop Restaurants Inc., told CNN Business. “Today, it’s at $3.22. So it’s a meaningful difference.”

Our leaders insist that this is perfectly normal.

Nothing to see here.

Please move along.

To me, one of the craziest examples of inflation in our economy is what is happening to used car prices.

At this point, some used vehicles are now selling for more than they sold for when they were brand new…

When it was new, the window sticker price on a typical 2019 Toyota Tacoma SR double cab pickup was just under $29,000. Two years later, dealers are paying almost $1,000 more than that to buy the same vehicle, even though it’s used. Then they’re selling it to consumers for more than $33,000.

Welcome to the wacky world of U.S. car and truck sales, where the pandemic and a global shortage of computer chips have pushed prices to record levels.

I was absolutely floored when I first read that.

We have never seen anything happen like this before in all of U.S. history.

But Fed officials are going to continue to tell you that everything is just fine in the months ahead even as economic conditions continue to go haywire all around us.

I warned that extremely painful inflation was coming in my last book, and I will be warning about it again in the new book that I will soon be releasing.

Our leaders consciously made the decision to flood the system with new money in a desperate attempt “to save the economy”, and they should just be honest with us about the consequences of that decision.

But instead, they are just going to keep trying to spin the truth for as long as they can.

Unfortunately for them, the clock is ticking, and time is not on their side.

***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.

Inflation Is Starting To Get Really Crazy – And It Is Worse Than You Think

Inflation is making headlines all over the country, but the mainstream media is not being honest about the true severity of the crisis.  We are being told that the official rate of inflation is still in single digits, but what we aren’t being told is that the way inflation is calculated has changed dramatically over the years.  In fact, according to Forbes “the government has changed the way it calculates inflation more than 20 times” over the past 30 years.  The rate of inflation directly affects so many other things in our system, and the government would like to keep that number as low as possible.  So they tinkered and tinkered with the formula until they got it just where they wanted it.

But even with the highly modified formula that they are now using, the rate of inflation still rose at the fastest pace in almost 13 years last month…

The consumer price index, which represents a basket including food, energy, groceries, housing costs and sales across a spectrum of goods, rose 5% from a year earlier. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting a gain of 4.7%.

The reading represented the biggest CPI gain since the 5.3% increase in August 2008, just before the financial crisis sent the U.S. spiraling into the worst recession since the Great Depression.

We all remember what happened in the months following August 2008.

Hopefully we will not have a repeat of that.

Of course the truth is that consumer prices are not just rising at a 5 percent rate in the United States right now.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1990, it would be above 8 percent right now.

And if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, it would currently be sitting at about 13 percent.

But 5 percent inflation sure sounds a whole lot better than 13 percent, doesn’t it?

One thing that I am keeping a very close eye on is food inflation.  Earlier today, I came across a story from one CBS affiliate in which they used the term “sticker shock” to describe what consumers are now experiencing at the grocery store…

You may have noticed a significant jump in prices at the grocery store.

More and more grocery shoppers are experiencing sticker shock every day. The price of food — especially meat, fruit and vegetables — is going up.

If prices were increasing at just a 5 percent annual rate, that wouldn’t be a big deal.

Sadly, the reality is much worse than that, and that is especially true for meat prices.  According to one deli owner, the true rate of inflation for meat prices is “probably closer” to 20 or 30 percent…

Jeff Cohen, a deli owner and meat wholesaler, said those factors are making the price of meat out of control.

“They said on national news it’s 10 percent. But that’s not true. it’s probably closer 20, 30 percent,” Cohen said.

We will continue to get a lot of happy talk from the Biden administration and from the Federal Reserve, but this is becoming a real national crisis.

When CBS News interviewed one shopper in Maryland, she said that she is now spending about twice as much on groceries as she did before…

Abby Walter said she started noticing her grocery bill creeping up earlier this year. Prior to January, the Maryland resident had typically spent about $75 a week on groceries. Now her bill is averaging about $150 or even more.

I still remember when I could get an entire shopping cart of food for just 25 dollars.

Now if I can get an entire cart of food for less than 200 dollars, I consider that to be a monumental achievement.

I try really hard to take advantage of sales and make every dollar stretch as far as I can.  But these days some of the sale prices are higher than the old regular prices.

As global commodity prices have exploded higher in recent months, companies have been forced to pass those increases along to consumers, but they are attempting to use language that will not cause widespread alarm…

If you ask Pampers maker Procter & Gamble Co., it’s not raising prices, it’s “taking pricing.” Rival Unilever, known for Dove soap and Axe body spray, says it’s been “very active with pricing.” The prize for creativity — so far at least — has been home-improvement retailer Lowe’s Cos., whose finance chief told investors Wednesday that it was “elevating our pricing ecosystem.”

What in the world is a “pricing ecosystem”?

I would love to have a representative from Lowe’s define that for me.

Executives from General Mills are also using language that borders on the absurd…

Then there’s cereal maker General Mills Inc., whose jargon includes arcane phrases like “strategic revenue management” and “holistic margin management,” which is not language you’d ever find on the back of a box of Lucky Charms. The company uses those terms so often, in fact, that its CEO now just refers to them by the acronyms SRM and HMM.

Why can’t they just say that they are “raising prices”?

These days, I cringe whenever I go down the cereal aisle.  It is hard for me to believe that cereal prices are so high now, but I know that they will eventually get a whole lot higher.

We have way too many dollars chasing way too few goods and services, and instead of taking emergency measures to get inflation under control our leaders seem intent on making things even worse.

The Biden administration wanted to spend 2 trillion dollars on infrastructure, but a group of U.S. Senators is currently working on a “compromise deal” that would only provide 1.2 trillion dollars in new infrastructure spending.

This is on top of the trillions upon trillions of dollars that we have already borrowed and spent during this crisis.

We can’t do this anymore.

It is complete and utter insanity.

But our politicians in Washington don’t seem to care.  They are going to continue to borrow and spend giant mountains of money that we do not have, and the Federal Reserve is going to continue to shovel enormous gobs of cash into the financial system.

So more inflation is on the way, and the standard of living for most Americans is going to continue to go down.

***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.

Ranchers Sell Off Cattle And Farmers Idle Hundreds Of Thousands Of Acres As America’s Drought Emergency Escalates

In my entire lifetime, this is the worst that drought conditions have ever been in the western half of the country.  During the past 20 years, the amount of territory in the West considered to be suffering from exceptional drought has never gone higher than 11 percent until now.  Today, that number is sitting at 27 percent.  The term “mega-drought” is being thrown around a lot these days to describe what is happening, but this isn’t just a drought.  This is a true national emergency, and it is really starting to affect our food supply.

Just look at what is happening up in North Dakota.  The vast majority of the state is either in the worst level of drought or the second worst level of drought, and ranchers are auctioning off their cattle by the thousands…

“Normally this time of the year, we’re probably looking at 400-600 head and a lot of times would be every other week,” said former auctioneer Ron Torgerson.

On Sunday and Monday, more than 4,200 head of cattle were sold at Rugby Livestock and Auction.

Needless to say, ranchers in North Dakota don’t want to get rid of their cattle, but the drought has pushed prices for hay and corn so high that many of them simply have no choice.

One of those that has already been forced to sell a large number of cattle is rancher David Bohl…

As the drought continues, the price of hay and corn has gone way up. It’s more expensive for ranchers to try and supplement feed than it is to sell the cattle.

Bohl has already sold 200 of his head in the last month.

“Everybody is in the same situation, they’re going to have to sell probably 25 to 50% of them because there’s nowhere to go with them we just got no food to feed them,” Bohl said.

As cattle herds shrink all over the western half of the country, this is going to push beef prices significantly higher than they are right now.

And in many areas, they are already at ridiculous levels.

Meanwhile, the drought continues to push the water level in Lake Mead into the danger zone.  According to CBS News, Lake Mead will soon hit the “lowest level ever recorded”…

For more than eight decades, the iconic Hoover Dam has relied on water from Nevada’s Lake Mead to cover up its backside. But now, at age 85, it finds itself uncomfortably exposed. Much of the water the dam is supposed to be holding back is gone.

“This is like a different world,” said Pat Mulroy, the former head of the Southern Nevada Water Authority. She told CBS News senior national and environmental correspondent Ben Tracy that Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir, is on track to soon hit its lowest level ever recorded.

Since the year 2000, the water level in Lake Mead has declined by a whopping 30 feet, and it is currently at just 37 percent of capacity.

The dam’s hydropower output has already been reduced by about 25 percent, and once the water level gets low enough it will stop producing electricity completely.

In addition, many farmers that rely on water from Lake Mead are facing a very uncertain future at this point…

For the first time ever, the federal government is expected to declare a water shortage on the lower Colorado River later this summer. That will force automatic cuts to the water supply for Nevada and Arizona starting in 2022. Homeowners have higher priority and, at first, won’t feel the pain as badly as farmers.

Dan Thelander is a second-generation family farmer in Arizona’s Pinal County. The water to grow his corn and alfalfa fields comes from Lake Mead. “If we don’t have irrigation water, we can’t farm,” he said. “So, next year we are going to get about 25% less water, means we’re going to have to fallow or not plant 25% of our land.”

Unless something changes, Thelander and other farmers in the region could potentially have all water cut off in 2023.

That is just two years away.

Of course there are many farmers in California that have already been informed that they will not be getting any water allocated to them at all here in 2021.  It is being projected that farmers in the state will not grow anything on 500,000 acres this year, and that is really bad news because California grows more than a third of our vegetables and two-thirds of our fruits and nuts…

Along with wildfire risks, short water supply is putting immense pressure on the state’s agricultural industry, which grows over a third of the country’s vegetables and supplies two-thirds of the fruits and nuts in the US. Already farmers are culling crops and fallowing fields in anticipation of water shortages. Karen Ross, California’s food and agriculture secretary, told the California Chamber of Commerce that she expected 500,000 acres would have to sit idle this year.

So what are we going to do if this mega-drought persists several more years and agricultural production in California is dramatically reduced for an extended period of time?

I am sure that some wise guy will post a comment after this article about importing more fruits and vegetables from South America, but South America is experiencing a historic drought too.

In fact, at this moment Brazil is experiencing the “worst drought in nearly a century”, and scientists are anticipating that it will not end any time soon.

Needless to say, the droughts that we are witnessing are setting the stage for many of the things that I have been warning about, and the future of agricultural production in the western hemisphere is looking quite bleak for the foreseeable future.

In the short-term, this crisis is going to result in substantially higher prices at the grocery store.  I know that grocery prices have already risen to painful levels, but the truth is that food prices will never be as low as they are right now.

So I am encouraging everyone to stock up while they still can.

As I have said so many times, we really struggle to feed everyone in the world during the best of years, and 2021 is definitely not one of the best of years.

Global food supplies are getting tighter and tighter, and this definitely has enormous implications for our future.

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

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

5 Signs That America’s Raging Inflation Crisis Is Accelerating

The pace at which conditions are changing is catching a lot of people off guard.  Here in the United States, we have been in a low inflation environment for most of the past four decades, and so many Americans don’t even have a frame of reference for what a highly inflationary environment looks like.  But now we are facing an inflation crisis that is unlike anything that we have seen since the Jimmy Carter era in the 1970s.  In response to the COVID pandemic, governments around the world have been borrowing and spending colossal mountains of money, and global central banks have been absolutely flooding their respective financial systems with new cash.  These measures were taken to stimulate the worldwide economy, but in the process a horrific inflation monster has been created, and it will not be tamed easily.  In fact, national governments and global central banks continue to do the very same things that created the horrific inflation monster in the first place.

Moving forward, things look very bleak.  The following are 5 signs that America’s raging inflation crisis is accelerating…

#1 Inflation tends to hit those at the bottom of the economic food chain the hardest, but at this point even most millionaires say that they are “concerned about inflation”…

This is a major worry for most wealthy investors, according to CNBC’s latest millionaire survey. As many as 65% of millionaires are concerned about inflation caused by recent government spending, according to the report. Of those, 34% said they were very concerned.

The survey, conducted online in April and May by Spectrum Group on CNBC’s behalf, had 750 respondents with investable assets of $1 million or more.

#2 The biggest banks in the world are now sounding the alarm about the inflation crisis.  This week, a team of analysts from Deutsche Bank warned that “neglecting inflation leaves global economies sitting on a time bomb”…

We worry that inflation will make a comeback. Few still remember how our societies and economies were threatened by high inflation 50 years ago. The most basic laws of economics, the ones that have stood the test of time over a millennium, have not been suspended. An explosive growth in debt financed largely by central banks is likely to lead to higher inflation. We worry that the painful lessons of an inflationary past are being ignored by central bankers, either because they really believe that this time is different, or they have bought into a new paradigm that low interest rates are here to stay, or they are protecting their institutions by not trying to hold back a political steam roller. Whatever the reason, we expect inflationary pressures to re-emerge as the Fed continues with its policy of patience and its stated belief that current pressures are largely transitory. It may take a year longer until 2023 but inflation will re-emerge. And while it is admirable that this patience is due to the fact that the Fed’s priorities are shifting towards social goals, neglecting inflation leaves global economies sitting on a time bomb.

#3 Housing prices continue to soar into the stratosphere in the United States.  These days, investment funds, wealthy individuals and foreigners are all gobbling up homes in anticipation of making huge profits, and this is making things extremely difficult for ordinary home buyers.  Earlier, I found the following message from one exasperated home shopper on a popular discussion forum…

It’s crazy. Soon as it hits the market tons of offers.

Mostly Investors and flippers.

Real estate Agent’s telling me things like.

“We’ve got Rich guys as far out as Hawaii buying houses sight unseen. They’ll even buy them in bulk. Anything from dumps to mansions.’

We’ve got Chinese snatching up properties, Bill Gates, Businesses, and like I said flippers. It’s Impossible!

Auction sites along with gov seized properties are flooded with the same types.

Can not compete you’ll be outbid by thousands upon thousand of dollars way above market value.

Any tricks or strategies to buy a house? Anything that may not have all the greedy bastards swarming over them?

A family seriously needing to actually live in a place seems completely s.o.l

It’s not just my area that’s hot right now its everywhere.

Please if anyone has good advice would be appreciated. Thanks

#4 Used car prices have now officially entered “absurd” territory.  This week, we learned that the Used Vehicle Value Index has shot up by 26 percent so far in 2021…

Prices of used vehicles sold at auctions around the US in May spiked by 4.6% from April, by 26% year-to-date, and by 45% from April 2019, according to the Used Vehicle Value Index released today by Manheim, the largest auto auction operator in the US and a unit of Cox Automotive.

I used to recommend buying used vehicles to people because I thought that most of the time you could get a better value, but at this point I am reversing my recommendation.

In this environment, I would strongly encourage everyone to consider buying new vehicles because used vehicles have become so ridiculously expensive.

#5 Food prices continue to surge higher, and I continue to see reports of intermittent shortages around the nation.

Down in Florida, Papa Bee’s Owner Lorie Hamm says that only a limited number of cases of chicken wings are being made available to restaurants in her area, and she also says that the price for such cases has nearly doubled since the start of 2021…

“There’s 300 cases that are allocated for two counties I believe, they were gone in two minutes,” Hamm said.

At the beginning of the year, a case of wings sold for $70-90 a case. Now they are about $150 a case.

When you begin to wildly create new money, this is what happens.  Prices go haywire and shortages tend to occur.

Unfortunately, our leaders don’t seem to have even a basic understanding of the laws of economics, and the pain that we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg.

If they were smart, global authorities would be taking emergency measures to get inflation under control before it is too late.

Of course that is not happening.  Instead, they just continue to feed the monster.

This crisis is going to go from bad to worse, and you should prepare accordingly.

***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.

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