The Economy

Does This Chart Show That The Recession They Have Been Planning Has Already Begun?

March 3, 2025March 3, 2025 by Michael

Have you noticed that now there is a lot of chatter about how “Trump’s policies” threaten to plunge the U.S. economy into a recession? The messaging that we are getting from so many prominent voices is so similar that one would be tempted to think that they are all getting their talking points from the same source. Is some sort of a coordinated effort taking place behind the scenes? Without a doubt, our economy is in really big trouble right now. Our economic momentum was taking us in the wrong direction during the final stages of the Biden administration, and in recent weeks our problems have clearly accelerated. About a month ago, I suggested that those that control the levers of financial power were up to something. Could it be possible that what they have been planning is now playing out right in front of our eyes?

Within the past week, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model has gone into a nosedive.

Honestly, I have never seen anything like this.

If you can believe it, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is now projecting that U.S. GDP will shrink by 2.8 percent on an annualized basis during the first quarter of 2025…

The GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2025 is -2.8 percent on March 3, down from -1.5 percent on February 28. After this morning’s releases from the US Census Bureau and the Institute for Supply Management, the nowcast of first-quarter real personal consumption expenditures growth and real private fixed investment growth fell from 1.3 percent and 3.5 percent, respectively, to 0.0 percent and 0.1 percent.

I have been arguing that the U.S. economy has been heading into recession territory for quite some time.

But the shift that we are witnessing in the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model is like something out of a science fiction novel. Just look at this chart…

It is almost as if someone flipped a switch and decided that it was time for the numbers to show that a recession has started.

Of course the truth is that we have been living through an economic horror show for years, and now the economic figures are becoming extremely dismal.

At this point, even CNN is admitting that our economy “is looking less and less stable by the day”…

The health of the US economy is looking less and less stable by the day.

Layoffs are rising. Consumer spending — the backbone of the economy — unexpectedly dropped in January. Consumer confidence has plunged. A key GDP forecast suddenly turned negative. And extreme fear is back on Wall Street, with stocks sliding last month.

All of that is true.

Yes, consumer spending really is going down. In fact, we just witnessed the largest month over month drop in retail sales since January 2024…

New data out Friday showed retail sales declined more than expected in the first month of 2025.

Headline retail sales fell 0.9% in January, more than the 0.2% decline economists had expected, according to Bloomberg data. This marked the largest month-over-month decline in retail sales since January 2024.

We are also seeing subprime delinquencies spike. In fact, the delinquency rate for subprime auto loans that are at least 60 days delinquent just hit the highest level of all time…

60+ day auto loan delinquencies in the subprime cohort (less credit-worthy borrowers) hit 6.56% in December 2024—the highest ever recorded. That’s up from 6.01% in November 2024 and 6.27% in 2023.

And as I have repeatedly tried to explain to my readers, the housing market has already fallen into a depression.

In January, pending home sales dropped to an all time record low…

Contracts to buy previously owned homes fell to a record low in January as prospective buyers were constrained by higher mortgage rates and house prices.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Thursday that its Pending Home Sales Index, which is based on signed contracts, declined by 4.6% last month to 70.6, an all-time low.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast contracts, which become sales after a month or two, falling by 1.3% in January. Pending home sales were down 5.2% from a year ago.

Things weren’t even this bad during the Great Recession.

Alarmingly, approximately one out of every seven pending home sales were cancelled in January. That represents “the highest cancellation rate for this time of year since at least 2017”…

More home purchases are being canceled, especially in the southeastern part of the country. Just over 41,000 U.S. home-purchase agreements fell through in January, equal to 14.3% of homes that went under contract that month. That’s up from 13.4% a year earlier, and the highest cancellation rate for this time of year since at least 2017.

Are you starting to get the picture?

We are in so much trouble.

And now here come the tariffs.

After President Trump confirmed that enormous tariffs on goods coming from Mexico and Canada would go into effect at midnight, stock prices started to crash…

The stock market plummeted after President Donald Trump confirmed tariffs on Canada and Mexico would go into effect at midnight.

The Dow Jones Industrial Index lost 2.1 percent, the S&P 500 fell 2.3 percent and the tech-heavy Nasdaq was down 3.2 percent in afternoon trading.

Speaking from the White House alongside Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Trump confirmed 25 percent tariffs on America’s largest trading partners would start on Tuesday.

A lot of pain is on the way.

We are dependent on the rest of the world for so many of the things that we purchase on a regular basis.

Sadly, this even includes food.

For a long time, we exported far more food than we imported, but now the reverse is actually true.

In 2025, it is expected that we will run an agricultural trade deficit of 49 billion dollars…

The U.S., known for being a global agriculture powerhouse, has never imported so much food.

Inbound shipments of everything from avocados to coffee and sugar are expected to drive the country’s agriculture trade deficit to a record $49 billion this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said in its trade outlook report. At the same time, America’s most widely grown crops have been losing overseas markets over the past decades.

It’s a stark turnaround for a nation that once used its abundant food supplies as a tool of statecraft, with the U.S. now facing a future of persistent agricultural trade deficits.

We consume far more than we produce, we buy far more stuff than we make, we have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and we depend on the rest of the world to send us what we need.

For more than a decade I have been desperately trying to get people to understand that we are literally committing national suicide.

When will America finally wake up?

Global events are moving in a very troubling direction very rapidly, and the clock is ticking…

Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

Alert! The Economic Numbers That We Are Getting Now Are Absolutely Staggering

February 27, 2025February 27, 2025 by Michael

We haven’t seen an economic shift of this magnitude in a long time. Four years of “Bidenomics” absolutely devastated the U.S. economy, and that is one of the primary reasons why Kamala Harris lost the election. The American people truly hate what has happened to the economy, and they are desperate for change. Unfortunately, our long economic slide just continues to get even worse. In fact, we just got some new numbers that are simply staggering.

Let me start with the housing market.

On Thursday, we learned that pending home sales in the United States have dropped to the lowest level ever measured…

High mortgage rates and elevated home prices combined to crush home sales in January.

Pending sales, which are based on signed contracts for existing homes, dropped 4.6% from December to the lowest level since the National Association of Realtors began tracking this metric in 2001. Sales were down 5.2% from January 2024. These sales are an indicator of future closings.

Just think about this for a moment.

Pending home sales were not this low at any point during the Great Recession.

And pending home sales were not this low when everybody was being locked down during the pandemic.

Nobody can deny that the housing market is in a depressed state, and there is no indication that this is going to change any time soon.

Meanwhile, jobless claims spiked even more than expected last week…

First-time applications for unemployment benefits rose much more than expected last week, a likely indication of some “noisy” data, but also a potential worrisome hint that cracks may be forming in America’s long-solid labor market.

There were an estimated 242,000 jobless claims filed last week, according to seasonally adjusted data released Thursday by the Department of Labor. That’s an increase of 22,000 from the prior week’s tally and a figure that landed well above economists’ expectations for 220,000 claims.

It’s the largest weekly spike in claims in more than four months and the weekly claims — a proxy for layoffs — are at their highest level since early December, Labor Department data shows.

As I discussed the other day, we are witnessing mass layoffs all over the country right now.

So I expect jobless claims to continue to spike in the months ahead.

Of course what is currently going on in Washington D.C. will just add fuel to that fire. Last week, jobless claims in D.C. jumped another 26 percent…

In Washington, D.C., new claims totaled 2,047, an increase of 421, or 26%, according to numbers not adjusted for seasonal factors.

It appears that a tsunami of federal layoffs is just getting started, and so this is a developing story.

At the same time, we are being told that inflation “is moving in the wrong direction again”…

No matter what metric you’re looking at, US inflation is moving in the wrong direction again.

Whether it’s a house or a carton of eggs, price growth is once again intensifying across a broad range of indicators. Much of that has to do with the same supply and demand factors and labor-market pressures that led to the initial inflation surge in the pandemic, while planned tariffs from President Donald Trump are heightening concerns that prices will rise even more.

What a mess.

Last month, beef prices moved significantly higher once again…

It’s not just eggs getting expensive. Beef prices have also been on the rise, with executives at various companies noting in recent earnings calls that it’s creating significant challenges.

In January, prices for beef and veal rose 5.5%, outpacing the entire food-at-home category, which rose 1.9%, according to the Labor Department’s Consumer Price Index.

Courtney Schmidt, Sector Manager at Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, told FOX Business the uptick in beef prices is driven by tighter U.S. beef production with consistent consumer demand.

And egg prices have risen to absolutely absurd levels…

Shoppers are reeling from sticker shock as egg prices hit an all-time high at stores like Walmart, with some joking that they might need a loan just to afford breakfast, while other angry Americans have been caught stealing the product.

One frustrated customer took to X to vent about the soaring costs, revealing that in Bakersfield, California, a 60-pack of eggs now costs $43. “$9 – $15 a dozen. It’s ridiculous,” she wrote. “I have to take out a loan just to buy eggs.”

Overall, the USDA is projecting that egg prices will increase by 41 percent by the end of this calendar year…

Egg prices are already at an all-time high, and, according to a USDA estimate, they’re only likely to get more expensive as the year continues.

According to a US Department of Agriculture projection, egg prices are expected to increase by 41 percent this year.

Skyrocketing egg prices are largely the result of a widespread bird flu outbreak that forced a mass culling of egg-laying birds. With fewer birds, there are fewer eggs, and with scarcity comes increased cost.

I wish that I could tell you that things will soon get better.

But I can’t.

Every single day, more businesses that were once thriving are shutting their doors for good.

For example, the only factory in the town of Liberty, New York is permanently closing, and 287 workers will have to find something else to do with their lives…

PepsiCo will soon lay off 287 employees of a Frito Lay manufacturing plant in Liberty, New York, likely devastating the small upstate town of about 10,000 residents.

The employees, who were not represented by a union, will officially lose begin losing their jobs on May 21 with the layoffs expected to conclude on June 6, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice filed with the New York Department of Labor.

The Frito Lay factory, which produces PopCorners brand snacks, has employed hundreds of locals over its almost 30 years of operation.

Similar scenarios are playing out over and over again all over the nation.

And now enormous tariffs on Mexico and Canada threaten to cause yet another shockwave for the economy…

President Donald Trump on Thursday said his proposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada will go into effect March 4 and that China will be charged an additional 10% tariff on the same date.

The sweeping 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada had been paused on Feb. 3 for one month. But the Trump administration has recently sown confusion about whether they would go back into effect when the delays expired.

In a Truth Social post Thursday morning, Trump clarified that they would.

Sometimes people write to me and attempt to convince me that everything is just fine.

But does everything seem just fine to you?

Just look around. Everywhere around us stores are being boarded up, restaurants and shutting down, factories are closing, businesses are laying off workers, delinquencies are spiking, families are going broke, prices are skyrocketing and debt levels are soaring.

This is what we have been warning about all these years.

The U.S. economy is coming apart at the seams, and those that refuse to acknowledge what we can all see are in a deep state of denial.

Our long-term economic slide really is threatening to become an avalanche, and I fully expect our economic numbers to get even worse in the months ahead.

Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

17 Signs That America’s Long Economic Slide Threatens To Become An Economic Avalanche

February 25, 2025 by Michael

Are you better off than you were four years ago? If you are, you should consider yourself to be extremely fortunate, because the vast majority of the population is not. The U.S. economy has been sliding the wrong direction for a very long time, and now our economic momentum in the wrong direction is accelerating. Retail sales are slowing down, the housing market is in a depressed state, mass layoffs are happening all over the nation, stores are closing at a staggering pace, the cost of living has become extremely painful, and debt levels have soared to unprecedented heights. Four years of deteriorating economic conditions have brought us to a breaking point, and now we are witnessing quite a bit of shaking in the financial markets. Even though many in the mainstream media are still trying to deny it, the truth is that we are in an enormous amount of trouble. The following are 17 signs that America’s long economic slide threatens to become an economic avalanche…

#1 The Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence just experienced the largest drop that we have seen since August 2021…

Consumers grew more pessimistic about the economic outlook in February as worries brewed about a slowing economy and rising inflation, the Conference Board reported Tuesday.

The board’s Consumer Confidence Index slipped to 98.3 for the month, down 7 points and below the Dow Jones forecast for 102.3. This was the lowest reading since June 2024 and the largest monthly drop since August 2021.

#2 The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index just fell to the lowest level that we have seen since November 2023…

The University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers on Friday released its consumer sentiment index which dropped from 71.7 in January to 64.7 in February. That’s the lowest reading since November 2023 and was weaker than the preliminary reading of 67.8, which was the consensus expectation among economists polled by Reuters.

#3 Retail sales in the United States just fell “by the most in nearly two years”…

U.S. retail sales dropped by the most in nearly two years in January, likely weighed down by frigid temperatures, wildfires and motor vehicle shortages, suggesting a sharp slowdown in economic growth early in the first quarter.

#4 Walmart is warning us that it will experience a year-over-year drop in quarterly profit for the first time in 3 years…

Shares of Walmart Inc. were hit hard Thursday after the retail behemoth provided a disappointing earnings outlook, including a warning for the first year-over-year decline in quarterly profit in three years.

#5 Last month, sales of previously-owned homes dropped 4.9 percent…

The U.S. housing market continues to weaken, as potential buyers face stubbornly high mortgage rates, elevated prices and limited supply of listings.

Sales of previously owned homes fell 4.9% in January from the prior month to 4.08 million units on a seasonally adjusted, annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors. Analysts were expecting a 2.6% decline.

#6 The cost of living is absolutely crushing most Americans. At this stage, almost 70 percent of all single adults “struggle to afford their regular rent or mortgage payments”…

Nearly 70% of single, divorced or separated people struggle to afford their regular rent or mortgage payments, compared to just over half (52%) of married people, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey. More than three-quarters (76%) of respondents who live with their partner but aren’t married struggle with housing payments, making them the group most likely to struggle.

#7 Starbucks is telling us that they will be laying off more than 1,000 corporate employees…

Starbucks has announced plans to lay off 1,100 corporate employees as it looks to restructure its operations.

CEO Brian Niccol sent out a letter on Monday revealing employees who have been laid off will be notified on Tuesday.

Niccol stated, “Our intent is to operate more efficiently, increase accountability, reduce complexity, and drive better integration.”

#8 Southwest Airlines is giving the axe to more than 1,700 corporate employees…

Southwest Airlines said Monday that it is cutting about 15% of corporate jobs, or about 1,750 people, a move its CEO called “unprecedented” as the company scrambles to cut costs.

The company said it expects savings from the cuts of $210 million this year and about $300 million in 2026. The layoffs will be mostly done by the end of the second quarter and include some senior leadership roles, CEO Bob Jordan said in a staff note, which was seen by CNBC.

#9 Blue Origin has decided to fire nearly 14,000 workers…

Blue Origin announced layoffs late last week. Almost 14,000 people work at the space company founded by Jeff Bezos, according to Reuters.

#10 Chevron has announced that it will be reducing the size of their workforce by about 15 to 20 percent…

Chevron Corp. Vice Chair Mark Nelson said it will lay off 15-20% of its workers in a bid to “simplify our organizational structure, [execute] faster and more efficiently, and position the company for stronger long-term competitiveness.”

#11 Estée Lauder is telling thousands of employees that it is time to hit the bricks…

Estee Lauder’s job cuts will impact a net of 5,800 to 7,000 roles.

They came as part of an updated “profit recovery and growth plan” and restructuring program that the cosmetics company detailed Feb. 4 along with other measures meant to “further transform the Company’s operating model to fund a return to sales growth and restore a solid double-digit adjusted operating margin over the next few years.”

#12 So many federal workers are being fired that initial claims for unemployment benefits in Washington D.C. went up by 36 percent in just one week…

Since Trump has taken office, nearly 4,000 workers in the city have filed for unemployment insurance as part of a surge that began at the start of the new year, according to Labor Department figures not adjusted for seasonal factors.

In all, just shy of 7,000 claims have been filed in the six weeks of the new year, or about 55% more than in the prior six-week period. Filings rose to 1,780 for the week ending Feb. 8, a 36% increase from the prior week and more than four times around the same period in 2024.

#13 Forever 21 has announced that it will be closing another 200 stores…

A clothing chain that was once a fixture in every mall across America is to close 200 more stores as it prepares for second bankruptcy in five years.

Amid mounting debt, Forever 21’s US operator could file for Chapter 11 protection as soon as next month, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday.

#14 Joann Inc. has decided to close all of their stores in the United States…

Joann Inc., which has supplied crafty Americans with art supplies and fabrics for decades, recently announced that it plans to close all of its U.S. stores, just a month after filing Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

In a statement obtained by Reuters on Sunday, the 82-year-old company announced its plans to sell all assets to a buyer group. Joann executives originally hoped that a buyer would continue its business, but the highest bidder is slated to start going-out-of-business sales at all locations.

#15 Overall, Coresight Research is projecting that an all-time record 15,000 stores will be permanently closed in the United States in 2025.

#16 Household debt in the United States has now crossed the 18 trillion dollar mark…

Americans’ household debt — including credit cards, mortgages, auto loans and student loans — is at a new all-time high of $18.04 trillion, according to a report released Thursday by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

#17 More than 26 trillion dollars has been added to the U.S. national debt since the start of 2009, and now we are shelling out more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest payments…

And the punchline is that no matter what Musk does, the USS Titanic is now more or less on autopilot because while a few billions in discretionary spending can be cut, interest on the debt can not be – without a default (it can however be inflated away… and it will be) – and in January, gross interest on the Federal debt hit a record $1.167 trillion in the past twelve months thanks to another $83.6 billion in interest spending.

The meltdown that so many of us warned about is happening right in front of our eyes.

We piled up trillions of dollars in new debt in recent years, and that bought us some time.

But now a day of reckoning has arrived.

For those that haven’t figured it out yet, an extreme amount of pain is ahead of us.

You can cheat the laws of economics for a while, but economic reality always catches up with you eventually.

Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

18 Horrifying Statistics About Medical Bills, Medical Debt And The Healthcare Industry That Will Make You So Mad You Will Want To Tear Your Hair Out

February 24, 2025February 24, 2025 by Michael

Do not read this article if you do not want to get angry. The “healthcare industry” in the United States has become one gigantic money making scam, and tens of millions of American families now live in great fear of illness and disease. Why are they so afraid? It is because a single trip to the hospital can ruin you financially. Even if you are covered by health insurance, medical debt can still wreck your finances. In fact, most of the people that go bankrupt due to medical bills actually have health insurance. Meanwhile, on the other side there are lots of people that are becoming fabulously wealthy from this system. Our “healthcare industry” has turned large numbers of doctors, lawyers, health insurance company executives and pharmaceutical company executives into multi-millionaires. Of course the largest shareholders in our gigantic healthcare corporations are raking in the most cash of all. The healthcare industry in the United States has become a cesspool of corruption and greed, and this has been the case for so long that we don’t even remember what a legitimate system even looks like anymore.

Many Americans truly believed that health insurance would protect them if something went terribly wrong with their health.

But then they discovered that health insurance companies will use their “delay, deny and defend” tactics to weasel out of paying what they owe any what that they possibly can.

Even if you do have a health insurance company that is relatively honest, and that is fairly rare these days, you are still just one really bad accident or one really bad illness away from bankruptcy unless you are independently wealthy.

Our healthcare system is designed to rapidly drain money out of us when we are at our most vulnerable. If you have to call for an ambulance to take you to the hospital, are you thinking about how much your care will cost at that point?

Of course not. You are just hoping that you will survive.

Today, it is so easy to rack up $10,000, $20,000 or even $30,000 in medical debt in the blink of an eye and many hospitals are becoming extremely aggressive about collecting on those medical debts.

I guarantee that many of you that are reading this article know exactly what I am talking about.

One trip to the hospital can wipe out years of financial savings. But why should it cost so much? In many cases, a doctor only spends a few minutes with you.

Sadly, you discover the truth when you follow the money. There are a lot of people that are becoming exceedingly wealthy from this system, and unfortunately that does not include middle class Americans.

The following are 18 horrifying statistics about medical bills, medical debt and the healthcare industry that will make you so mad you will want to tear your hair out…

#1 According to the CFPB, approximately 100 million Americans are in medical debt right now.

#2 Even though the vast majority of the population is covered by health insurance, 62 percent of the two million personal bankruptcies that are filed each year in the United States are caused by medical debt.

#3 One survey found that U.S. households have piled up more than 220 billion dollars in medical debt.

#4 A three day stay in the hospital will typically cost you somewhere around $30,000.

#5 Americans spend more than 200 billion dollars treating cancer each year.

#6 According to the CDC, heart disease costs this country more than 250 billion dollars each year.

#7 According to the NIH, diabetes costs this country more than 400 billion dollars each year.

#8 A 25-year-old mother in Nevada was handed a bill for $700,000 after her baby daughter spent about two months in the neonatal intensive care unit.

#9 One study found that hospitals overcharge Americans “by as much as 18 times over their costs”.

#10 78 percent of U.S. adults have avoided hospital visits because they cost so much.

#11 Hospital profits have risen by more than 400 percent since 1999.

#12 A study that was conducted a few years ago determined that more than 90 percent of all hospital bills contain errors that can result in “overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials”…

According to a 2020 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, billing errors affected over 90% of hospital bills. These errors can result in overcharges, unnecessary costs, and insurance claim denials, leading to financial hardship for patients.

#13 The average family premium for employer-sponsored health insurance in the United States has skyrocketed to $25,572 annually.

#14 One survey found that 18 percent of all insured adults in the U.S. have had a health insurance claim denied within the past year.

#15 Since Obamacare became law, the annual profits of the five largest health insurance companies in the United States have gone up by 230 percent.

#16 In 2023, the six largest health insurance companies in the United States had combined revenues of almost 1.1 trillion dollars.

#17 In 2023, the CEOs of the five largest health insurance companies in the U.S. brought home approximately 75 million dollars in total compensation.

#18 There are five giant pharmaceutical companies that each make more than 10 billion dollars in profits each year.

Our healthcare system should not be based on greed.

It should be based on helping people and doing what is right for patients.

Other industrialized nations spend a much smaller portion of their GDP on healthcare, and many of their systems are actually more efficient.

What is wrong with us?

Why can’t we get our healthcare system fixed?

Can anyone answer that question?

Unfortunately, I don’t think that it is going to be fixed.

They have made trillions of dollars by keeping us sick and managing our illnesses.

When trillions of dollars are at stake, any effort to fundamentally fix the system will be met with overwhelming resistance.

So it appears that we are stuck with our current system for the foreseeable future, and that is very bad news for all of us.

Michael’s blockbuster entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

The Answer To 1913 Is 2025: 3 Charts That Show Why The Income Tax, The IRS And The Federal Reserve Should All Be Abolished

February 20, 2025February 20, 2025 by Michael

Most Americans don’t know that for much of U.S. history there was no federal income tax and there was no central bank. But now everyone assumes that we must have a federal income tax and a central bank in order to have a functioning society. Today, there are just a handful of nations that do not have an income tax, and more than 99 percent of the entire population of the globe lives in a country that has a central bank. Of course the two work hand in hand. A central bank creates a spiral of borrowing that is meant to be unbreakable, and an income tax is necessary to service payments on that debt spiral. It is not a coincidence that a federal income tax and the Federal Reserve were both established in 1913. Since that time, we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and that is precisely the outcome that the system was designed to produce.

So what is the solution to this colossal mess?

The answer to 1913 is 2025.

This year, we are seeing things get proposed in Washington D.C. that once would have been unthinkable.

For example, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just told Fox News that President Trump wants to “abolish the Internal Revenue Service”…

More details have emerged from the Trump administration about alleged plans to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and utilize tariffs so the “whole economy explodes.”

“His goal is to abolish the Internal Revenue Service and let all the outsiders pay,” Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said Wednesday on “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

“As the president said, reciprocal tariffs, either you bring yours down or we’re going to bring ours up. If we go to their level, it will earn us $700 billion a year to be equal to everybody else,” he expanded Thursday on “America’s Newsroom.”

And it appears that the Trump administration is already taking concrete steps toward that goal.

In fact, it is being reported that “approximately 7,000 probationary workers” at the IRS are about to be hitting the bricks…

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is planning to slash approximately 7,000 probationary workers in Washington, D.C., and across the U.S. starting Thursday, according to reports.

The layoffs will affect probationary workers who have been employed for one year or less and have not been able to secure full civil service protection, The Associated Press reported, citing a person familiar with the plans.

Wow.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is also being targeted by the new administration.

In fact, Elon Musk has suggested that the Federal Reserve could soon get visited by the Department of Government Efficiency…

Musk wrote on X in response to a user’s post about the billionaire’s support for an audit of the Fed that the central bank isn’t above scrutiny from DOGE.

“All aspects of the government must be fully transparent and accountable to the people. No exceptions, including, if not especially, the Federal Reserve,” Musk wrote.

Musk is a longtime critic of the central bank and has called out its decisions on monetary policy as well as claiming the Fed’s workforce is bloated.

This is wonderful news.

Because what we have been doing for decades is clearly not working.

The Federal Reserve system is designed to create debt, and the income tax is designed to service that debt.

We find ourselves on an endless hamster wheel that becomes more painful with each passing year.

The charts that I am about to share with you tell a very clear story.

The primary reason why we have had an almost unbelievably high standard of living over the past three decades is because we have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Once upon a time the United States was the wealthiest country on the entire planet, but all of that prosperity was not good enough for us. So we started borrowing and borrowing and borrowing and we have now been living beyond our means for so long that we consider it to be completely normal.

When President Woodrow Wilson entered the White House in 1913, the U.S. was less than 3 billion dollars in debt.

Now we are 36 trillion dollars in debt…

This is what a central bank is designed to do.

Most people simply do not understand this.

We have been robbing future generations blind for so long that it doesn’t even seem to bother most people anymore.

It is time for a change.

Sadly, Americans have also accumulated the largest mountain of household debt in the history of the world. The following chart which comes directly from the Federal Reserve shows the growth of household and non-profit organization debt over the years…

Of that amount, more than 18 trillion dollars of it is household debt…

Americans’ household debt levels, including credit card debt, rose to new all-time highs in the fourth quarter of 2024, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

The report showed that overall household debt increased by $93 billion to $18.04 trillion at the end of 2024, an all-time high. Credit card balances rose by $45 billion from the prior quarter to reach $1.21 trillion at the end of December, which is also a record high.

We have become accustomed to living in debt. We go into massive amounts of debt to get an education, we go into massive amounts of debt to buy a home, we go into massive amounts of debt to purchase our vehicles, and we even pile up debt to buy holiday gifts and to purchase groceries.

The American people want to hear that better times are ahead.

But under the current system the only way to give the American people “better times” is to crank up the debt spiral to an even higher level.

That is the approach that our leaders have been taking for a long time, and it is madness.

When you add up all forms of debt in our society, it comes to a grand total of more than 100 trillion dollars…

We are literally committing national suicide.

I wish that I could get more people to understand this.

30 years ago, the total amount of debt in the system was less than 20 trillion dollars.

Now we have surpassed the 100 trillion dollar mark.

We are talking about a financial bubble that is unlike anything that the world has ever seen before.

If we continue down this road, our children and our grandchildren would have no future.

When people hear words like “billion” or “trillion” they tend to tune out.

But that is a mistake.

There is an enormous difference between a billion dollars and a trillion dollars.

Just how big is one trillion dollars?

To answer that question, I would like to use an illustration that I have used in my books. If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.

Yet somehow we have piled up more than 100 trillion dollars of debt, and our financial status just keeps getting worse month after month after month.

If we want to get free from all this debt, we have to abandon the system that created all of this debt in the first place.

We need to abolish the Federal Reserve, the IRS and the income tax.

We have been living far, far beyond our means for decades, and it has been the greatest party in the history of the world.

But it is time to turn out the lights because the party is over.

The good news is that change is in the air.

The answer to 1913 is 2025, and those that are attempting to dismantle the current system should be applauded.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Where Did All Of That Money Go?

February 18, 2025February 18, 2025 by Michael

Apparently our government cannot explain how 4.7 trillion dollars was spent. Are you kidding me? A stack of 4.7 trillion one dollar bills would reach all the way to the Moon and part of the way back. This is yet another example of why we desperately need the Department of Government Efficiency. I realize that my articles about DOGE have caused some confusion in recent weeks, and so let me try to explain. On the one hand, I have been arguing that we must crack down on waste, fraud and abuse, but on the other hand I have been arguing that what DOGE is doing is going to cause a great deal of pain. Some readers think that I have been contradicting myself, but I have not been contradicting myself at all. There are times when we must do things that are necessary even though we know that they will cause a tremendous amount of pain. We have piled up the largest mountain of debt in the history of the entire planet, and it really is an existential threat to the future of our nation. But cutting down the size of the federal government and greatly reducing the flow of cash that is being spewed out of the giant money machine that we call the U.S. Treasury is going to cause immense chaos. Honestly, I do not know if our society will be able to handle it.

On Monday, DOGE revealed that 4.7 trillion dollars in payments that have come through the U.S. Treasury are basically impossible to trace because they lacked a very important tracking code…

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced Monday that some $4.7 trillion in payments from the Treasury Department were missing a critical tracking code which made tracing the transactions “almost impossible.”

The transactions were reportedly missing the Treasury Account Symbol, or TAS, an identification code which links a Treasury payment to a budget line item, according to DOGE, which described the use of such code as a “standard financial process.”

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” read an X post from DOGE.

This is inexcusable.

We should be able to trace how every single penny has been spent.

As Eric Daugherty has aptly pointed out, if you do not accurately account for every single penny of income the IRS can come after you big time…

The government will audit you, track every single dollar that went into your bank account, and hunt you down to squeeze every last penny.

But once they get hold of YOUR money – they chuck it into a black hole of their choice with little to no accountability.

Two standards.

If you tried to tell the IRS that you have no idea what happened to $4,700, you would not get one inch of mercy.

But now we are being told that the government has no idea what happened to $4,700,000,000,000.

The good news is that from now on all government payments that flow through the U.S. Treasury will be traceable thanks to DOGE…

“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE said, thanking the Treasury Department for its “great work” implementing the change.

Musk touted the change as a “major improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”

“This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve],” Musk tweeted. “Nice work by all.”

This is a very positive change.

And when good things happen in Washington D.C., we should all applaud.

Overall, reforms implemented by DOGE have saved U.S. taxpayers a grand total of 55 billion dollars…

Elon Musk’s DOGE revealed Tuesday that President Donald Trump has saved taxpayers a staggering $55 billion in less than a month.

It said the savings were found through a combination of detecting and deleting fraud, canceling contracts and leases, and selling assets.

The group – nicknamed the ‘nerd army’ – also ended grants, fired federal employees, changed some programs, and saved money with regulatory reforms.

So far, the biggest contract savings have come from USAID and the Department of Education…

So far, the DOGE lists the United States Agency for International Development as the number one agency for “total contract savings,” followed by the Department of Education, the Office of Personnel Management, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Agriculture.

Sadly, the left is not applauding these efforts.

In fact, many on the left are acting like it is the end of the world.

Could it be possible that the reason why they are so upset is because they are the ones that are primarily benefitting from all of the waste, fraud and abuse?

Billions of dollars in payments have already been cut off, and DOGE insists that this is just the beginning.

And now it appears that Ft. Knox will be one of the next targets for DOGE…

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has his sights set on an audit of the U.S. gold reserve at Ft. Knox through the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after it was revealed there is no yearly review for the world-renowned stash.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who invited Musk to review the gold reserve on X over the weekend, joined “FOX & Friends” to discuss the need for greater transparency about the massive reserve after trying to verify it himself for a decade.

If the DOGE team actually visits Ft. Knox, what will they find?

I don’t know, but I find it very interesting that “somebody” in the U.S. has been purchasing a massive amount of physical gold. This is something that Glenn Beck recently commented on…

“Somebody here in the United States is buying a crapload of gold. We think (I hope) it’s the Treasury or the Central Bank,” he says.

Whoever is behind the purchases — “somebody with very deep pockets” — isn’t just collecting gold notes, either.

Whoever this mysterious somebody is, they’re “taking huge physical deliveries, and it’s causing shortages in London,” says Glenn.

I am just speculating here, but could it be possible that this physical gold is being used to replenish the reserves at Ft. Knox before an audit happens?

Hopefully we will soon get some answers.

Personally, I would love for the mystery of the missing gold at Ft. Knox to be solved after all these years.

Under previous administrations, the transparency that is happening now would never have been possible.

But now some of the U.S. government’s deepest and darkest secrets are being laid bare, and that is a wonderful thing.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

If You Think That The Left Is Angry Now, Just Wait Until Fraudulent Social Security Payments Stop Going Out

February 17, 2025February 17, 2025 by Michael

What is our society going to look like if “the biggest fraud in history” is brought to a screeching halt? Elon Musk and his DOGE team have been taking a meat axe to federal agency after federal agency, but Social Security is the big Kahuna. According to the Social Security Administration, in 2025 approximately 69 million Americans will be receiving Social Security payments each month, and those payments will come to a grand total of approximately 1.6 trillion dollars for the entire year. As you will see below, it appears that the Social Security program is being victimized by fraud on a massive scale. If those fraudulent payments stop going out, those that have been living the high life at our expense are going to be extremely, extremely angry.

I am entirely convinced that we are going to see so much civil unrest in the months ahead. On Monday, thousands of protesters gathered near the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C., and large protests were also being held in other major cities throughout the nation…

Groups opposed to the agenda of President Donald Trump’s administration and presidential adviser Elon Musk were converging on cities across the nation Monday to express outrage with slogans such as “Not My President’s Day” and “No King’s Day.”

The rallies, led by the 50501 Movement and other organizations, come less than two weeks after the last round of widespread rallies and street marches.

“We witness, with growing alarm, how our constitutional rights are trampled upon, how the authority of the President is being usurped by those who seek to consolidate power for personal gain,” 50501 said in a statement on its website. “Meanwhile, President Trump systematically dismantles the very guardrails designed to ensure accountability across the branches of government.”

Our government has been showering people with money for a long time, but now the gravy train is coming to an end and those that have been enjoying the party are not pleased at all.

But the cuts that have been made so far are nothing compared to the seismic shock that would happen to our society if Social Security fraud is eliminated.

On Sunday, Elon Musk revealed that the number of “eligible” Social Security numbers greatly exceeds the total population of the country.

We are being told that there are more than 394 million “eligible” Social Security numbers in the system, but there are only 334 million people living in the United States.

How did that happen?

But it doesn’t end there.

There are apparently millions upon millions of people over the age of 100 that the Social Security database says are still alive. On Twitter, Musk joked that perhaps “there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security”.

Musk also posted a chart that shows how many “eligible” Social Security numbers exist for each age range.

According to this chart, somewhere around 20 million Americans that are 100 years of age or older are alive and eligible to receive Social Security benefits.

But the U.S. Census Bureau says that only about 101,000 Americans are 100 years of age or older…

As of 2024, the U.S. Census Bureau estimates that approximately 101,000 Americans are aged 100 and older, representing about 0.03% of the total U.S. population, according to the Pew Research Center.

Individuals aged 110 and above are referred to as supercentenarians, a subgroup that is exceedingly rare. As of February 2025, the Gerontology Research Group reported that 136 Americans belong to this category.

Currently, the oldest living American is Naomi Whitehead, born on September 26, 1910, in Georgia, making her 114 years old. The longest-lived person in U.S. history is Sarah Knauss, who lived to be 119 years and 97 days, passing away on December 30, 1999.

Needless to say, something clearly doesn’t add up.

Stephen Miller has told Fox News that foreign nationals have been using fake Social Security numbers to steal billions of dollars in Social Security benefits.

But of course it isn’t just foreign nationals that have been doing this.

If the full extent of the fraud is uncovered, it will shake this nation to the core.

And if the fraudulent payments are stopped, those that are no longer raking in government checks every month will be exceedingly upset.

Meanwhile, Elon Musk and his DOGE team continue to uncover shocking things in other government agencies as well.

For example, the official DOGE account on Twitter just posted a long list of imminent government payments that were stopped from going out just in time…

– $10M for “Mozambique voluntary medical male circumcision”
– $9.7M for UC Berkeley to develop “a cohort of Cambodian youth with enterprise driven skills”
– $2.3M for “strengthening independent voices in Cambodia”
– $32M to the Prague Civil Society Centre
– $40M for “gender equality and women empowerment hub”
– $14M for “improving public procurement” in Serbia
– $486M to the “Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening,” including $22M for “inclusive and participatory political process” in Moldova and $21M for voter turnout in India
– $29M to “strenghening political landscape in Bangladesh”
– $20M for “fiscal federalism” in Nepal
– $19M for “biodiversity conversation” in Nepal
– $1.5M for “voter confidence” in Liberia
– $14M for “social cohesion” in Mali
– $2.5M for “inclusive democracies in Southern Africa”
– $47M for “improving learning outcomes in Asia”
– $2M to develop “sustainable recycling models” to “increase socio-economic cohesion among marginalized communities of Kosovo Roma, Ashkali, and Egypt”

On one level, you have got to be in awe of the scale of the waste that was going on under the Biden administration.

They were recklessly spraying millions upon millions of our tax dollars all over the globe, and much of that money was being spent on some of the stupidest things imaginable.

Here in the U.S., hundreds of millions of our tax dollars were being spent on DEI programs. But now DOGE is relentlessly cancelling those contracts…

In just 48 hours, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) slashed a whopping $370 million in taxpayer dollars being spent on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) at the Department of Education.

DOGE, the newly formed department led by Elon Musk to purge spending by the federal government, revealed in a post on X that they terminated 70 DEI training grants within the department.

According to DOGE, the grants totaled $373 million.

The Department of Education was basically one gigantic cesspool of waste.

Thankfully, change is in the air.

Things are changing at the CDC too. Now that RFK Jr. has been confirmed as HHS Secretary, he is quickly shedding staff…

Robert Kennedy Jr. has slashed staffing at the Center for Disease Control in his new role as health chief, expanding the purge of government departments conducted by President Trump and Elon Musk. The newly confirmed Secretary of Health and Human Services for President Donald Trump fired nearly half of the vaunted team of ‘disease detectives’ during his first day on the job, setting the scene for a slimmed down department moving forward.

Our federal government is being turned upside down, and the left is desperate to stop what is happening.

At this point, at least 74 separate federal lawsuits have been filed to stop what President Trump and Elon Musk are trying to do…

In nearly one month since President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, at least 74 lawsuits have been filed in federal courts against his administration’s wave of executive actions.

As of Monday, judges have temporarily paused 18 of these measures.

During his time in the White House, Joe Biden appointed 228 judges to the federal courts.

And the left is counting on those judges to slow down President Trump and Elon Musk.

But so much damage has already been done, and with each passing day the left is getting even angrier.

The protests that we have seen so far are just the tip of the iceberg. If Trump and Musk are able to successfully execute a hardcore crackdown on fraudulent payments, I am expecting that there will be extreme chaos in our streets.

Billions upon billions of dollars are at stake, and it shall be fascinating to see how all of this plays out.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

Bureaucracy Is One Of The Central Pillars Of Our Economy, And It Is Starting To Crumble (Jobless Claims In D.C. Up 36% In 1 Week!)

February 16, 2025February 16, 2025 by Michael

One of the central pillars of the U.S. economy is melting down right in front of our eyes. We spend gigantic mountains of borrowed money to maintain the largest and most bloated bureaucracy in the entire history of the planet. More than 3 million workers are employed directly by the federal government, more than 7 million workers are employed by private institutions that rely on government funding or government contracts, and more than 20 million workers are employed by state and local governments. So that gives us a grand total of more than 30 million workers that are employed in bureaucratic jobs. Needless to say, on average bureaucratic jobs pay more and have better benefits than jobs in the private sector. So what is going to happen to our deeply troubled economy as large numbers of good paying bureaucratic jobs start to disappear?

Anyone that believed that shrinking the size of government would be painless was just being delusional.

Last week, over 10,000 federal workers were given the axe by the Trump administration. We are being told that this is “likely just the beginning of the job cuts”…

In a flurry of activity at the end of the week, the Trump administration fired more than 10,000 federal workers across multiple agencies as part of its “large-scale reductions” in the government workforce.

This is likely just the beginning of the job cuts, as President Donald Trump and top White House aide Elon Musk seek to continue slashing agency budgets.

Trump signed an executive order Tuesday seeking a significant reduction in the size of the government. It instructs heads of federal departments and agencies to make “large-scale reductions in force.”

No other president has ever dared to do such a thing.

Among those that were let go at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a senior litigation attorney named Hanna Hickman…

Hanna Hickman, a now-terminated worker for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, told ABC News the last four days have been a roller coaster.

“It’s scary,” said Hickman, who was fired last Tuesday. “I had a real moment — I was at CVS the other day and … it kind of came on me all at once that I might not have health insurance in a few weeks, and that really hits you. I think it underscores the fact that we’re just regular, middle-class people, just like the people we’re trying to serve.”

Hickman was senior litigation counsel for the Division of Enforcement at the CFPB in Washington, D.C. She is one of thousands of mostly new employees known as probationary workers laid off this week across the federal government. Those recent hires had joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.

Of course it isn’t just workers in the D.C. area that are being terminated.

A 28-year-old woman named Victoria Porter says that she just lost her “dream job” which involved riding horses on mountain hiking trails in Montana…

Victoria Porter, 28, said she found her dream job riding horses into the backcountry to maintain hiking trails for the U.S. Forest Service in Montana. That all went away Friday, when she said eight other people on her 12-person trail team also were fired.

The terminations will have a big impact the community around the forest where she worked, Porter said. Outdoor outfitters and other local businesses rely on the trails as an economic engine for the region. There’s “no way” the trails can be maintained with a drastically smaller crew, she said.

Needless to say, a lot more job cuts are coming.

In fact, it is being reported that the IRS will soon “lay off thousands of probationary workers”…

The IRS is planning to lay off thousands of probationary workers during tax filing season, according to an Associated Press report citing sources familiar with the situation.

The report did not indicated exactly how many would be laid off.

The news of the layoffs comes after Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency reportedly began examining the IRS to find waste, fraud and tax dollar savings.

Things are beginning to get really, really crazy.

In D.C., new claims for unemployment benefits just jumped by 36 percent in a single week…

Since Trump has taken office, nearly 4,000 workers in the city have filed for unemployment insurance as part of a surge that began at the start of the new year, according to Labor Department figures not adjusted for seasonal factors.

In all, just shy of 7,000 claims have been filed in the six weeks of the new year, or about 55% more than in the prior six-week period. Filings rose to 1,780 for the week ending Feb. 8, a 36% increase from the prior week and more than four times around the same period in 2024.

We are still in the early stages of the government layoffs.

What will things look like once hundreds of thousands of additional government employees are unemployed?

Without jobs, many former bureaucrats will be forced to sell their homes.

According to the Daily Mail, the number of homes for sale in the D.C. area has nearly doubled within the past 30 days…

TKL found there are now nearly 8,000 homes listed for sale in the Washington, DC metro area, and almost half of them have been put on the market in the last 30 days.

There has also been a surge in new listings of homes over $1 million. According to TKL, there are 525 listings worth $1 million and 44 listings worth $5 million, suggesting DOGE layoffs could affect people in high-profile jobs.

If you are looking to purchase a home in the D.C. area, you now have a lot more choices.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what this is going to do to home values.

Home prices in the region have already been coming down substantially…

In November, the median home in the nation’s capital was worth $699,000, according to Redfin.

By February, the median home value dropped 20 percent, bringing the price down to $560,000.

Commercial real estate will be severely affected as well.

Elon Musk and his team are determined to get rid of office space that is not being utilized , and apparently the federal government currently has lots and lots of office space that is not being occupied.

What a mess.

Interestingly, it appears that a tremendous amount of money is on the move as well.

In the D.C. area, searches for “Swiss bank”, “offshore bank”, “wire money” and “IBAN” have all skyrocketed.

Now that the gravy train has come to a screeching halt, rats are scurrying for cover while they still can.

And let us not forget that we are about one month away from a potential government shutdown which could take the madness in D.C. to an entirely new level…

What almost everyone is missing: This country has roughly one month until the government runs out of money, and things like paychecks to troops, food-inspection programs, disaster-relief payments, and aid to low-income families could all be caught up in a chaotic game of chicken.

I was in favor of radically reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy long before it was fashionable.

And many of the changes that are happening right now are desperately needed.

But let there be no doubt – the process that has begun is going to result in severe pain.

Honestly, I do not know if our society is equipped to handle what is about to happen.

Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

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