The Economy

The Number Of Billionaires In America Has Absolutely Exploded During The Pandemic

April 8, 2021April 8, 2021 by Michael

For the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy, happy days are here again. Even though we have just been through one of the most difficult 12 months in our history, the number of billionaires has increased dramatically during this pandemic. That seems rather odd, but there is no denying that the rich have gotten even richer during this crisis. In fact, Forbes revealed this week that the number of billionaires has risen by about 30 percent over the past year…

The number of newly minted and reissued billionaires soared last year, Forbes reported Tuesday in its annual ranking, a staggering accumulation of personal wealth that stands in sharp contrast with the widespread economic struggles unleashed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The number of billionaires on Forbes’ 35th annual ranking swelled by 660 to 2,755 — a roughly 30 percent jump from a year ago — and 493 of them are first-timers. Seven of eight are richer than they were before the pandemic. Forbes calculates net worth by using stock prices and exchange rates from March 5.

Of course thanks to the reckless policies of our leaders, a billion dollars does not go nearly as far as it once did.

But still, a billion dollars is a whole lot of money.

Needless to say, the biggest reason why the number of billionaires has exploded is because we have been witnessing one of the greatest stock market rallies in history.

A year ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was sitting at about 23,000.

Today, it is above 33,000, and some analysts expect it to shoot quite a bit higher throughout the rest of 2021.

Stock prices have never been more detached from economic reality as they have been over the past 12 months, and they have only risen so high because of unprecedented intervention by the Federal Reserve and because of extremely wild spending by the federal government.

Many have warned that the party will inevitably come to a crashing end at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet.

So for now, the market optimists look like champions.

And now that Joe Biden is in the White House, the corporate media is telling us that we are on the verge of a grand new era of American prosperity. The corporate media insists that the pandemic will soon be behind us thanks to the vaccines, and the talking heads on television envision a return to the good old days very quickly.

In fact, Barron’s is already declaring that the “U.S. economy might be stronger than it’s ever been”.

And CNN is trying to convince us that “America’s economy could be heading for a golden era of growth”.

Really?

If the U.S. economy is actually improving, then why are new claims for unemployment benefits going up?…

The number of Americans filing first-time unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, according to the Labor Department.

Data released Thursday showed 744,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims in the week ended April 3. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv were expecting 680,000 filings. The previous week’s total was revised higher by 9,000 to 728,000.

If economic conditions were getting better, that number should be going the other way.

Even I didn’t expect a number this bad.

Prior to 2020, the all-time record high for new unemployment claims in a single week was 695,000. That record was established in October 1982, and it stood all the way until the COVID pandemic hit the U.S. early last year.

Sadly, we have been above 695,000 almost every single week since then.

The numbers compiled by the states tell us that nearly three-quarters of a million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. That is an absolutely catastrophic number. Nobody should be talking about a “golden era of growth” or claiming that the “economy might be stronger than it’s ever been” until we get that number back down to pre-pandemic levels.

And right now, we are at a level that is about three times as high as pre-pandemic levels.

Look, the truth is that anyone that tells you that unemployment is low in the United States is lying to you.

According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the unemployment rate in the United States would be 25.7 percent right now.

That is the sort of number that we would expect to see during an economic depression, and the truth is that we are in an economic depression.

Over the past year, more than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed, and approximately 4 million U.S. businesses have gone out of existence permanently.

But don’t worry, the stock market is hovering near all-time record highs and the corporate media is telling you that everything is going to be wonderful now that Joe Biden is in control.

Come on man!

You can’t really believe that stuff that they are shoveling.

With each passing day, more Americans are losing their jobs, more Americans are falling out of the middle class, and the cost of living just keeps going up even higher.

In fact, we just learned that global food prices have now gone up for 10 months in a row…

The global food-price rally that’s stoking inflation worries and hitting consumers around the world shows little sign of slowing.

Even with grain prices taking a breather on good crop prospects, a United Nations gauge of global food costs rose for a 10th month in March to the highest since 2014. Last month’s advance was driven by a surge in vegetable oils amid stronger demand and tight inventories, according to Abdolreza Abbassian, a senior economist at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization.

I am going to continue to watch global food prices very carefully, because I believe that it will be a very important trend in the months and years ahead.

But for now, the good news is that at least economic conditions are relatively stable.

Yes, things are not nearly as good as they were before the pandemic, but at least they are not getting a whole lot worse.

So even though things are not great, we should enjoy this period of relative stability while we still can, because it definitely will not last.

***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.

This Economic Depression Has Left Very Deep Economic Scars All Over America

April 7, 2021April 7, 2021 by Michael

The last 12 months have been pure hell for the U.S. economy. According to Oxxford Information Technology, approximately 4 million U.S. businesses permanently closed their doors in 2020. We have never seen that many businesses wiped out in such a short period of time in the entire history of our country. Meanwhile, we have seen a tsunami of unemployment that has been absolutely unprecedented. More than 70 million new claims for unemployment benefits have been filed during the pandemic, and the number of new claims each week continues to hover at a level that is about three times as high as we witnessed before the pandemic. Currently, the Economic Policy Institute is telling us that “25 million American workers are either unemployed, underemployed or have pulled out of the workforce entirely”. This economic depression has already been extremely painful, and many experts believe that a whole lot more economic pain is still on the horizon.

If you are doing well in this economic environment, you should be very thankful for your blessings, because millions of other Americans are suffering greatly. One of those Americans that is deeply suffering is named Denitra Pearson…

One hundred and forty days have passed since Denitra Pearson lost her job caring for the elderly in their homes. Forty-two days have passed since she, her husband, and children lost all their belongings after a fire engulfed their house on a snowy winter night.

They’re now living in a hotel.

Denitra has six kids to care for, and the only “job” that she has been able to find is low-wage work vaccinating people at a local clinic…

Pearson, a New Haven mother of six, has an associate’s degree and two job certificates but only one of the dozens of applications she’s filled out has led anywhere, landing her another low-wage job at a local clinic vaccinating people against COVID-19. Her husband, who was a chef at a nearby university before the pandemic disrupted the college campus, is still looking for work.

This economic depression has pushed millions of formerly middle class Americans into poverty, and for many of them life will never be the same again.

At this point, the Bureau of Labor Statistics says that a whopping 2.4 million Americans have been unemployed for 52 weeks or longer…

Nearly 2.4 million Americans were unemployed 52 weeks or more in March, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That’s almost double the number in February and is about 1.6 million more people than in March 2020.

Could you imagine being out of work for that long?

Almost one-fourth of all of our unemployed workers have been out of a job for at least 12 months, and one economist that was interviewed by CNBC is calling that fact “pretty breathtaking”…

“I think that number is pretty breathtaking, that nearly a quarter of unemployed workers have been unemployed for over a year,” said Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the Economic Policy Institute and former chief economist at the Department of Labor from 2014 to 2017.

“It really shows that even as the economy is recovering, you have a lot of the same people who have been unemployed throughout this whole damn thing,” she added.

I feel particularly bad for college students that are graduating in this sort of environment.

Many of them went in with such high hopes and dreams, but now the job opportunities that they were promised are not materializing.

College senior Bao Ha will be graduating this year from Macalaster College in Minnesota, but he hasn’t even been able to land an interview even after applying for more than a hundred jobs…

The job market is starting to roar back, but for anxious college seniors like Bao Ha, it’s a different reality altogether.

“I’ve probably applied to like 130 or 40 jobs or something,” Ha says. “I have not gotten even an email back, or an interview.”

College graduate Erica Schoenberg is in the same boat.

She hasn’t been able to find a full-time job after a year of searching, and so she is still living with her parents…

Erica Schoenberg would know.

She was a member of the class of 2020, which had the misfortune of graduating in the brunt of the pandemic.

A year after Schoenberg watched her virtual graduation ceremony from Trinity University from her living room couch, she’s back at her parents’ home because she can’t find a full-time job.

During this pandemic, the percentage of Americans that are living with their parents reached the highest level since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

That is crazy.

But there is some good news.

The good news is that we are in a temporary pocket of time in which economic conditions have stabilized. Things are certainly a lot worse than they were before the pandemic, but at least we are not seeing the same sort of rapid deterioration that we did throughout much of 2020.

Of course this temporary pocket of time will not last, and that is the bad news.

If anyone out there believes that Joe Biden is going to save the U.S. economy, they are just being delusional.

The stimulus money that Americans are being showered with right now will help in the short-term, but all of the borrowing and spending that our government is doing will just make our long-term problems even worse.

We should be thankful for the relative stability that we are currently enjoying, but this is not a time to party.

Instead, we should be using this time to prepare for the troubled times that are ahead, because the truth is that our long economic nightmare is just beginning.

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

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.***

America’s Upside Down Economy Just Took Another Bizarre Turn

March 18, 2021 by Michael

Is this a good economy or a bad economy? Well, that all depends on who you are talking to. For most Americans, economic conditions have been absolutely horrible ever since the COVID pandemic first arrived. More than 100,000 businesses have permanently shut down, approximately 10 million Americans are in danger of being evicted from their homes, and weekly unemployment claims have been above the old record set in the early 1980s every single week for nearly an entire year. Meanwhile, the absolutely insane polices that the Federal Reserve and our politicians in Washington have been pursuing have made the wealthy far wealthier than ever before. In early 2020, M1 was sitting at about 4 trillion dollars, and now it is up to 18 trillion dollars. Much of that money has ended up in the pockets of the ultra-wealthy, and now they are spending it is some pretty odd ways.

For example, NFT art is one of the latest crazes. You can’t hang NFT art on your wall, but that isn’t stopping people from paying ridiculous amounts of money for it. In fact, things have gotten so crazy that one film director has decided to sell audio clips of himself farting as NFTs…

A Brooklyn-based film director is simultaneously mocking and attempting to profit off the cryptocurrency craze for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by selling a year’s worth of fart audio clips recorded in quarantine.

“If people are selling digital art and GIFs, why not sell farts?” Alex Ramírez-Mallis, 36, told The Post of his dank addition to the blockchain-based NFT market.

You would have to be absolutely nuts to purchase such a thing, but apparently someone has already purchased one clip for 85 dollars…

Individual fart recordings are also available for 0.05 Ethereum, or about $85 a pop. The gassy group has so far sold one, to an anonymous buyer.

“If the value increases, they could have an extremely valuable fart on their hands,” he said.

Pizza Hut has decided that they want to get in on the NFT craze as well.

In Canada, the company originally listen an NFT of a pizza slice for 18 cents, but it ended up selling for $8,824…

Pizza Hut Canada has announced it is releasing “1 Byte Favourites,” aka digital images of pizza, as non-fungible tokens. “Pizza Hut believes no world should exist without pizza, especially their pan pizza. That’s why they wanted to make sure it was enshrined in the digital universe,” they said in a release. Each week the company will release a new image of a pizza slice, each of a different recipe, for purchase on Rarible. The first-ever “slice” was listed for $0.0001 ETH (a cryptocurrency the equivalent of 18 cents), but wound up being sold for $8,824.

This is madness, and it is also a grave insult to all of those that are deeply suffering out there.

Could it be possible that we are rapidly approaching our own “let them eat cake” moment?

As the ultra-wealthy continue to throw their money around in absurd ways, most people are just struggling to get by from month to month. On Thursday, we learned that another 770,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show that 770,000 Americans filed first-time jobless claims in the week ended March 13, higher than the 700,000 forecast by Refinitiv economists.

Weekly jobless claims have remained stubbornly high for months, hovering around four times the typical pre-crisis level, although it’s well below the peak of almost 7 million that was reached when stay-at-home orders were first issued a year ago in March.

After all this time, the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits each week is still about four times higher than pre-pandemic levels.

And we just learned that retail sales fell pretty dramatically during the month of February…

Americans shopped less in February, leading retail sales to fall 3% on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

It was a much steeper drop than the 0.5% decline economists had predicted, according to Refinitiv.

Bad weather across many states were part of the reason sales declined last month.

When things go badly, they love to blame the weather.

Of course the new stimulus checks that Americans are now receiving should help to boost retail sales temporarily.

But at this point there are no plans to cut checks every month, and any short-term assistance will only briefly alleviate the long-term suffering that so many Americans are enduring.

We are currently in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and a lot more pain is on the horizon.

Even though I write about this stuff on a daily basis, I was surprised to learn that the results of a recent survey show that finances have now become the number one source of stress for the American people…

WalletHub’s new Coronavirus Money Survey also reveals that the nation’s focus is now shifting from the virus to finances. The survey of over 750 Americans in March 2021 finds money is now the biggest stressor around the country.

Three in 10 respondents say money is their greatest concern this year, a 15-percent increase over last year. COVID-19 is still the top stressor for 28 percent of Americans. As coronavirus safety measures fade however, researchers find people are getting back to worrying about how to make ends meet.

If you don’t know how you are going to pay the bills this month, that can be a source of stress that never leaves you day or night.

Those that have gone through this sort of emotional torment know exactly what I am talking about.

So when the ultra-wealthy throw their money away on “farting art” or “Pizza Hut art”, that is like rubbing dirt in the faces of tens of millions of Americans that are desperately trying to figure out some way to survive from month to month.

The ultra-wealthy can continue to flaunt their wealth, but already we are seeing the rise of the “Robinhood mentality” that so many have warned about.

When things get bad enough, the poor will start venturing into rich neighborhoods, and they won’t be there for a social visit.

We still have relative stability for this brief moment, but it won’t last very long at all.

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

Brace Yourselves For The Most Dramatic Shift In The Standard Of Living In All Of U.S. History

March 11, 2021 by Michael

They are assuring us that we don’t have to be concerned about “inflation” because they have everything under control. Do you believe them? The value of the U.S. dollar has been steadily declining for a long time, and most Americans have grown accustomed to having the cost of living rise at a faster pace than their paychecks do. But over the past 12 months an enormous paradigm shift has begun. Instead of devaluing our currency a little bit at a time, now our leaders are going “full Weimar”. Our money supply is growing at an exponential rate, and this is becoming a major national crisis. As I pointed out yesterday, it took from the founding of our county all the way to 2020 for M1 to reach 4 trillion dollars. But then from the start of the pandemic to today, M1 has gone from 4 trillion dollars to 18 trillion dollars. To call that “economic malpractice” would be way too kind. The truth is that it is complete and utter lunacy, and we are all going to literally pay the price for such madness.

Sadly, inflation is already starting to show up in a major way all throughout our economy.

For example, most Americans have noticed that the price of gasoline has really started to shoot up over the last several weeks…

Gas prices have been increasing at the pump for the past few weeks, reaching a national average of $2.77 a gallon as of Monday, which is 39 cents higher than the same time in 2020, according to AAA.

A lot of people are alarmed by this, but the Federal Reserve insists that this is completely normal.

Meanwhile, the price of agricultural commodities has risen by 50 percent over the past year…

The price of agricultural commodities traded on the global stage has shot up by 50 percent since the middle of 2020, according to economists at Rabobank.

In a new report, the bank pins the lift in the price of wheat, corn, soy, sugar, and a range of other commodities on the northern La Niña, a weakening US currency, market speculators, and rising demand from importing nations.

As those prices are passed along to the consumer, you will be paying more for groceries at your local supermarket, but authorities assure us that prices will stabilize once the economy returns to “normal”.

The good news is that at least the price of food is not rising as fast as the price of lumber is…

Lumber prices have increased more than 180 percent since last spring, and this price spike has caused the price of an average new single-family home to increase by $24,386 since April 17, 2020, according to the NAHB standard estimates of lumber used to build the average home.

Now that is some serious inflation!

There are so many people that have had to put their plans to build a home on hold in recent months because the price of lumber has gotten so ridiculously high.

But the experts at the Fed insist that those that are warning of hyperinflation just have wild imaginations.

Over the course of the past year, our leaders have pumped trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars into the system, and all of that money has to go somewhere.

In such a highly inflationary environment, this sort of a thing can happen…

A digital collage by American artist Beeple which exists only as a JPG file sold Thursday for a record $69.3 million at Christie’s, fetching more money than physical works by many better-known artists.

‘Everydays: The First 5,000 Days’ became the most expensive ever ‘non-fungible token’ (NFT) – a collectible digital asset that uses blockchain technology to turn virtual work into a unique item – after being listed at the start of the two-week auction for only $100.

The U.S. dollar is being transformed into “toilet paper money”, and we are rapidly approaching the point of no return.

At least if our paychecks were rising as fast as the cost of living was, American families would be able to keep up with the escalating prices.

But of course that is not happening, and more Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day.

In fact, vast numbers of formerly middle class Americans no longer have jobs at all. Last week another 712,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits, and the number of claims continues to hover around “four times the typical pre-crisis level”…

Weekly jobless claims have remained stubbornly high for months, hovering around four times the typical pre-crisis level, although it’s well below the peak of almost 7 million that was reached when stay-at-home orders were first issued a year ago in March.

There are roughly 10 million fewer jobs than there were last year in February before the crisis began.

This is not what an “economic recovery” looks like.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is broken, and the only solution our leaders have is to print, borrow and spend even more money.

Now Biden and his minions are about to pump another 1.9 trillion dollars into the system.

Do you think that will make the inflation crisis better or do you think that it will make it worse?

You don’t need to answer, because the answer is self-evident.

As prices soar into the stratosphere, life is going to become increasingly difficult for most Americans.

If your income does not rise as fast as prices are going up, your standard of living will go down.

Of course you will be far from alone. The vast majority of Americans are about to experience a dramatic shift in the standard of living, and most of the population doesn’t even realize what is happening.

All they know is that more government checks are on the way, and most of them are absolutely thrilled about that.

But all of this printing, borrowing and spending has put us on a path to national financial suicide.

As we continue to recklessly destroy the value of our currency, other nations will begin to realize that a move to a different reserve currency is needed.

And once the U.S. dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world, there will never be any going back to the “good old days”.

We are so close to the economic endgame, and the word “collapse” is not nearly strong enough to describe what is eventually going to happen to us.

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

If You Need To Move Somewhere Before Everything Hits The Fan, You Need To Do It Now

March 8, 2021March 7, 2021 by Michael

Enjoy this brief period of relative stability while you can, because it won’t last. I have been sitting here searching for the right words for this article, and I hope that I can accurately convey the urgency of this hour to all of you. Following the election of Joe Biden, there appears to be a bubble of hope in the United States. Short-term economic conditions have stabilized a bit, the COVID pandemic seems to be subsiding, and many are hoping that life will “return to normal” this summer. But what most people do not understand is that the next chapters of “the perfect storm” are about to begin.

The cracked pieces of our planet that we are all floating around on are becoming increasingly unstable, and we witnessed multiple examples of this last week. On one day alone, New Zealand was shaken by a magnitude 7.3 earthquake, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake and a magnitude 8.1 earthquake. On the other side of the globe, Iceland has been hammered by more than 20,000 earthquakes over the past week, and geologists are warning of imminent eruptions at two prominent volcanoes.

Overall, there have been more major earthquakes during the first 65 days of this year than we have ever seen in the first 65 days of any other year in recorded history.

As our planet continues to become more unstable, I would not want to be living anywhere near a major fault line.

Now that the warmongers are back in control in Washington, it also appears that war is on the horizon. Just a little while ago, I published an article entitled “9 Signs That Chess Pieces Are Being Moved Into Place For A Major War In The Middle East” in which I detailed some of the threats that we are potentially facing. Once war begins, things will begin to change very rapidly.

Up until now, most of the civil unrest that we have witnessed in this country has been focused on “social justice” issues, and this week there will be more protests.

But soon there will be a shift. Once war starts, a lot of people will be angry about that, and economic conditions will also feature prominently as the U.S. economy steadily deteriorates.

Speaking of the economy, we are already seeing homeless encampments take over large portions of major cities on the west coast, and we haven’t even gotten to the largest tsunami of evictions in U.S. history yet.

Meanwhile, the emerging global food crisis gets worse with each passing day. Global food prices have risen for nine months in a row, and the head of the UN World Food Program has warned that we will be facing “famines of biblical proportions” in 2021.

I could go on and on. The truth is that there is not a single element of “the perfect storm” that has not already begun, but of course global events are going to escalate dramatically in the months and years ahead.

So if you need to move somewhere before everything hits the fan, you need to do it now.

Over the past 12 months, we have seen the greatest exodus out of our major cities that we have ever seen as millions of Americans have scrambled to relocate.

In fact, one new study found that the number of people fleeing San Francisco increased by 649 percent last year compared to the year before.

San Francisco saw an exodus of residents during the coronavirus pandemic, with the net number of exits increasing 649% in 2020, according to a new report published by the California Policy Lab.

Unfortunately, most of those that have left San Francisco are staying in the state of California, and I believe that is a huge mistake.

When things get really bad, you will not want to be in a heavily populated area or in a region of the country that is prone to natural disasters.

Even cities that used to have low crime rates have totally changed. When I was a kid, I really enjoyed the trips that my family would take to Minneapolis, but now it has become a crime-ridden hellhole that is dominated by roving gangs…

Bill Carlyon moved to the metropolitan area in 1980 to work as an electrical engineer after a brief stint in the army. Back then, he says, Minneapolis was more inclusive than just about anywhere else in the country he ever visited.

“Almost everybody I know won’t come downtown anymore for any reason. We used to come down to theater events and movies all the time. Now there’s gangs that just rove around and beat up old people,” said Carlyon, 69, who prides himself on working with the black community for decades on anti-poverty initiatives.

Believe it or not, Portland was a very nice city at one time too. But now violent crime is absolutely soaring…

More people died of gunfire last year in Portland — 40 — than the entire tally of homicides the previous year. The number of shootings — 900 — was nearly 2 1/2 times higher than the year before. The spike has continued this year, with more than 150 shootings, including 45 people wounded and 12 killed so far.

It is so sad to watch what is happening to that once great city. At the end of last week, I wrote about the epidemic of crimes that are being committed in broad daylight around the nation, and I just came across another example that happened just outside a bar in Portland…

Elmer Yarborough got a terrifying call from his sister: She wept as she told him two of his nephews may have been shot in broad daylight as they left a bar in Portland, Oregon.

He drove there as fast as he could. An officer told him one of his nephews was heading to the hospital and the other, Tyrell Penney, hadn’t survived.

Of course there are countless other examples of people being shot in broad daylight in our major cities. Here is an example from New York…

A man was fatally shot in the head in broad daylight during a dispute outside a Bronx bodega late Friday afternoon, police have said.

Travis Brooker, 35, was killed outside of G&K Deli on Rosedale Ave. near East Tremont Avenue in Parkchester at around 5:15pm.

There is so little fear of the police that the criminals aren’t even waiting for the sun to go down to start shooting people anymore.

And once economic conditions completely implode, the violence is going to get far, far worse.

We should mourn for America, because things could have turned out very differently for our nation if we had made much different choices.

At the same time, if you plan on living through what is ahead you need to get prepared, because the years in front of us are not going to be easy.

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

The Global Inflation Nightmare That You Have Been Warned About Is Here

March 1, 2021March 1, 2021 by Michael

If you thought that authorities all over the planet could print, borrow and spend money like there was no tomorrow without any consequences, you were being delusional. Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we have witnessed the greatest monetary binge in world history. Of course that was going to cause enormous problems. Of course that was going to cause nightmarish inflation. Anyone with an ounce of common sense should have been able to see that. When the value of money is tied to nothing, “more money” is always such a tempting solution for those in power. But as history has demonstrated over and over again, going down that path almost always leads to tragedy.

In our case, it will be the poorest people on the planet that suffer the most. According to Bloomberg, basic food staples are dramatically spiking in price all over the globe…

Global food prices are going up, and the timing couldn’t be worse.

In Indonesia, tofu is 30% more expensive than it was in December. In Brazil, the price of local mainstay turtle beans is up 54% compared to last January. In Russia, consumers are paying 61% more for sugar than a year ago.

And as Albert Edwards has pointed out, annual inflation in cereals has hit 20 percent, which represents “the highest annual rise since mid-2011 when the Arab Spring was in full flow!”

If prices continue to rise like this, it is just a matter of time before we see widespread food riots all over the globe.

In explaining why this is happening, Bloomberg got half the answer correct…

Emerging markets are feeling the pain of a blistering surge in raw material costs, as commodities from oil to copper and grains are driven higher by expectations for a “roaring 20s” post-pandemic economic recovery as well as ultra-loose monetary policies.

No, there is definitely not going to be a “roaring 20s” post-pandemic recovery.

That is a complete and utter fantasy.

But it is quite true that we have seen “ultra-loose monetary policies” all over the globe. Not since the days of the Weimar Republic have we seen anything like this in the industrialized world.

As the global money supply continues to expand at a frightening pace, other factors will weigh very heavily on global food production.

For example, the other day I wrote about the giant hordes of locusts that are currently ravaging East Africa, and now Saudi Arabia is being hit hard as well…

Horrifying footage shows a swarm of locusts filling the sky in the town of Mahayil in the Asir region of Saudi Arabia.

In a nightmarish clip, filmed by someone standing in the street on February 23, the locusts hang overhead like a swirling black cloud as they fly around outside people’s homes.

As the camera is turned around 360 degrees, it becomes clear nearby buildings are all completely surrounded by the ravenous insects as far as the eye can see.

The head of the UN World Food Program has publicly stated that there will be “famines of biblical proportions in 2021”, but here in the United States many people don’t take warnings like that seriously because we still have plenty of food in the stores.

And so far, food inflation in this country has not been overly dramatic.

But we are seeing crazy inflation show up in other ways. If you can believe it, a Luka Doncic rookie card just sold for 4.6 million dollars…

At $4.6 million, the most expensive basketball card ever sold is a signed Luka Doncic rookie card featuring the NBA Logoman patch from a game-worn Dallas Mavericks jersey.

Collector Nick Fiorello bought the 1-of-1 card on Feb.28, which is second in all time in sports cards to a 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle card that sold for $5.2 million. It was first sold for $2.8 million in April of 2018. It then became the largest known sale of all time in January of 2021 when Rob Gough purchased it for $5.2 million, according to actionnetwork.com.

When I was a kid, I loved to collect sports cards.

It looks like I should have stayed with that hobby.

Even more bizarre, a 10 second video clip just sold for a whopping 6.6 million dollars…

In October 2020, Miami-based art collector Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile spent almost $67,000 on a 10-second video artwork that he could have watched for free online. Last week, he sold it for $6.6 million.

The video by digital artist Beeple, whose real name is Mike Winkelmann, was authenticated by blockchain, which serves as a digital signature to certify who owns it and that it is the original work.

Why in the world would anyone spend more than 6 million dollars for a video clip that can be watched online for free?

It doesn’t make any rational sense at all, but this is what can happen in a highly inflationary environment.

All of the money that our authorities have been creating has to go somewhere, and one of the places where it has been going is in to cryptocurrencies.

Coming into this year, the price of Bitcoin was just under $30,000, and now as I write this article it is sitting at $49,160.

If you have done well investing in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, I would take advantage of these extremely high prices while you still can.

At any time, governments around the world can decide to crack down on them, and New York Attorney General Letitia James gave us another reminder of that fact on Monday…

New York Attorney General Letitia James sent a blistering warning to investors and industry members about the dangers of cryptocurrencies on Monday.

“We’re sending a clear message to the entire industry that you either play by the rules or we will shut you down,” she said in a press release.

As conditions in this country continue to deteriorate, eventually there will be a huge shift in demand.

When things get really bad, people are not going to be so interested in collectibles and speculative investments. Instead, there will be tremendous demand for food, commodities, farmland and other essential assets.

I really wish that our authorities weren’t destroying the value of the U.S. dollar, but this is the path that they have chosen.

So now we all get to suffer the consequences, and they won’t be fun.

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

We Are Witnessing A Last Minute Mass Exodus Before The Final Collapse Of Our Major Cities

February 28, 2021 by Michael

Americans fled the big cities “in droves” in 2020, and one recent survey discovered that even more Americans are planning to move in 2021. The corporate media is attempting to frame this mass exodus as a temporary phenomenon, but there is nothing temporary about it. Millions upon millions of people can see that our society is literally melting down all around us, and they want to get somewhere safe while they still can. In recent weeks, I have written articles about the specific problems that we are witnessing in Chicago and San Francisco, but the truth is that virtually all of our major cities are coming apart at the seams, and this is motivating more people than ever to seek greener pastures.

With so many Americans looking to move, this has pushed up home prices in desirable suburban and rural areas to insane heights.

In fact, in some parts of the country it is difficult to find a decent home for sale at all. In Bozeman, Montana one man has actually resorted to walking around with a cardboard sign asking for someone to sell him a house…

“I’m just asking for someone to sell us a home. My sign says please sell me a home,” said Sean Hawksford, a Bozeman resident.

You may have seen Hawksford strolling down Main Street with a cardboard sign, asking for leads on a house for sale.

This is not a homeless man that we are talking about.

Sean Hawksford is a family man that owns a successful business, and he has been approved for a mortgage.

He just can’t find a house to buy.

According to Hawksford, he has made 18 offers over the past 6 months, but none of them have been accepted…

“It’s been about 6 months, we’ve made I think 18 offers now on different properties and haven’t had one accepted yet,” said Hawksford.

“It’s been a little bit tough with them, and all of my first-time homebuyers to be honest with you,” said Jeff Bent, the Hawksfords’ realtor in Bozeman.

I warned that this would happen.

I warned that when things started to get crazy many Americans wouldn’t be able to move because there would be a crushing amount of demand for available housing as hordes of Americans suddenly sought to relocate. NBC News has used the term “droves” to describe the mass exodus that we witnessed last year…

Americans fled big cities in droves to escape the coronavirus pandemic — and many of them are staying, permanently or indefinitely. But escape means something different depending on whom you ask.

We have never seen anything like this before in U.S. history. According to the Pew Research Center, about one-fifth of all Americans either moved or know someone who moved in 2020…

A survey conducted by the Pew Research Center while the pandemic was in full swing in June 2020 found that approximately a fifth of Americans moved or know someone who moved as a result of COVID-19. The reasons they gave for people moving were extremely varied — ranging from being called into active military duty to college housing being closed down to, of course, sudden financial constraints.

The corporate media keeps trying to blame COVID for the mass migration, but now the COVID pandemic is fading and Americans are still moving in large numbers.

In fact, one recent survey actually found that “20% more people are planning to move in 2021 than moved in 2020”.

If I was currently living in a major city on the east or west coast, I would be highly motivated to move too.

For example, just check out what is happening in Los Angeles…

Los Angeles, the state’s largest city and arguably the most populous now in the United States, has become a byword for violent crime and especially the stronghold of the enormous, ultraviolent and rapidly growing MS 13 organization, routinely mislabeled as a mere “gang” in media reports. MS 13 has up to 50,000 members worldwide of whom at least 10,000, officially, and probably twice as many according to the private assessments of many police officers are in LA.

Jeremiah Babe recently went into the wealthy areas of downtown Los Angeles, and the footage that he captured was mind blowing.

L.A. has never looked like this, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Of course many would argue that San Francisco is in even worse shape…

San Francisco – America’s “anything goes” city – is in even worse shape. Its most famous, historically popular and beautiful stylish locations are now swamped with aggressive, unsanitary street people who openly urinate and defecate in the streets. Public services, long superb, are now appalling.

For much more on the tragedy that is playing out in that once beautiful city, please see my previous article entitled “The Reason Why A Lot Of People Are Leaving San Francisco Might Surprise You”.

Of course it isn’t just individuals that are moving. In recent months we have seen large numbers of businesses choose to relocate. At one point, Tesla CEO Elon Musk made headlines all over the globe when even he decided that it was time to leave California for good…

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has left California and is now a resident of Texas.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Musk said that the move made sense, amid plans underway for a new Tesla factory in the Austin area.

I certainly can’t blame him.

What rational person would choose California over Texas at this point?

On the east coast, hordes of businesses have left New York as well. If you can believe it, even the New York Stock Exchange is thinking of leaving…

The head of the world’s largest financial market, Stacey Cunningham, floated the idea of leaving New York in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal to avoid taxes.

When people think of Florida, they often picture restaurants and shopping, the kind of business you do on vacation. But more and more, people are choosing to move down to the sunshine state because there’s no income tax, and the cost of living is low.

Perhaps they will need to rename it “the Florida Stock Exchange” if they actually pull the trigger on such a move.

Sadly, when things get really bad in this nation, no part of the country will be fully immune.

We will all feel the pain, and the suffering will be off the charts.

But if you do feel motivated to relocate, I would do it as soon as possible, because later this year global events will start accelerating at a very rapid pace.

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

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