The Economy

If you are really struggling with the high cost of living, I want you to know that you aren’t alone.  In recent months, I have been hearing from so many people that feel like they are drowning financially.  Have you experienced a palpable sense of panic when you compare your rising bills to the level of income that you are currently bringing in?  So many people out there are stressed out of their minds because it has become such a struggle to pay the bills each month.  As I discussed a few days ago, a typical U.S. household must now spend $1,069 more a month just to buy the exact same goods and services that it did three years ago.  Over the course of an entire year, that is almost an extra $13,000 dollars.  Month after month, prices just keep going higher, but those that are running things continue to insist that everything is just fine.

No, everything is not just fine.

Last week, a TikTok video about rising grocery prices at Walmart quickly garnered more than a million views.  The person that made the video found a grocery order that he had placed two years ago, and he decided to hit the “Reorder All” button to see what that same order would cost today…

A recent TikTok video has gone viral, showing a user’s surprising experience with Walmart’s grocery prices. The user explained in his video that he tried to use the “Reorder All” button for an order he placed two years ago, which originally cost $126.67. To his shock, the same order would now cost $414.39.

I was quite stunned by this video.

Many of the things that I regularly purchase at the grocery store have doubled or more than doubled in price, but in this case the total cost of the grocery order had more than tripled…

The TikTok (@sewerlidd) explained that the original $126.16 purchase was for a month’s worth of groceries, which included 53 items.

“A whole month of groceries just for me,” he said in the video.

The total was updated to $414.39, almost quadrupling.

“I feel like I’m going to be sick,” he said.

Needless to say, this video has generated a ton of discussion online.

When Walmart was asked about this, they responded by saying that the primary reason there was such a difference is because the person that made the video was attempting to order “discontinued items”…

Walmart representatives have responded, stating that the claims in the video are not accurate. According to them, the discrepancies in prices are due to discontinued items rather than actual inflation.

But this explanation certainly did not satisfy everyone.

Another person hit the “Reorder All” button on an old order, and that order went from $180 back then to $430 today…

Viewers expressed both shock and frustration in the comments.

“Now I feel a little less gaslit about grocery prices because it has gone crazy, and it’s not just me!” wrote one person.

“Walmart, can you explain yourself, please,” added another.

A fellow shopper said they used to spend $180 for two weeks’ worth of groceries and are now spending over $430 for the same amount.

If you think that the price of groceries is not a problem, I have a challenge for you.

Fill up a grocery cart all the way to the very top with items that you typically eat, and try to keep the final bill under 300 dollars.

If you are smart, you can do it, but it won’t be easy.

In the old days, you could buy a used vehicle for 300 dollars.

Now, many people burn through more than 300 dollars in just one trip to the grocery store.

This is just one of the reasons why inflation has become such a huge political issue.

According to Gallup, inflation was not really considered to be an important issue at all prior to 2022…

For the third year in a row, the percentage of Americans naming inflation or the high cost of living as the most important financial problem facing their family has reached a new high. The 41% naming the issue this year is up slightly from 35% a year ago and 32% in 2022. Before 2022, the highest percentage mentioning inflation was 18% in 2008. Inflation has been named by less than 10% in most other readings since the question was first asked in 2005.

The last three years have been an inflationary nightmare, and no matter how much our leaders try to deny it, a lot more inflation is on the way.

Things are particularly bad in our major cities.  In fact, it is being reported that Manhattan is the most expensive place to live in the United States by a wide margin…

The New York borough of Manhattan is the most expensive place to live in the U.S. — and the cost of living in the No. 2 place isn’t even close.

The cost of living in Manhattan is more than twice the national average. The second- and third-most expensive places are Honolulu and San Jose, California, but in comparison, they are much more affordable. Manhattan is 24% more expensive than Honolulu and 30% more expensive than San Jose.

It isn’t a big mystery why this is the case.

When our leaders pumped trillions upon trillions of dollars into the system, the financial markets benefitted greatly.

So Manhattan is swimming in cash, and prices there have gone into the stratosphere.

Many of us relentlessly warned about what would happen when our leaders flooded the system with cash, and now we are facing economic distortions that are extremely painful.

For most Americans, prices have been rising much faster than their paychecks.

As a result, our national standard of living has been steadily declining.

And now we have entered a time when it appears that economic conditions are really slowing down.

For example, it is being reported that Ford is preparing for yet another round of layoffs…

Ford Motor is preparing for a new round of layoffs for its salaried workers in the United States, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company in March last year announced plans to reduce structural costs of up to $3 billion at its gas-powered vehicle unit. In August, Ford said it would cut a total of 3,000 salaried and contract jobs, mostly in North America and India.

Over the past several years, our politicians in Washington have borrowed and spent trillions upon trillions of dollars, and the “experts” at the Federal Reserve have pumped trillions upon trillions of dollars into the financial system.

All that did was buy us a little more time.

All that did was delay the inevitable.

Now we are facing a crisis of absolutely epic proportions, and the economic suffering that we are currently experiencing is nothing compared to the economic suffering that is ahead of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.

Unless you are living under a bridge or you are eagerly drinking the kool-aid that the mainstream media is dishing out, you probably understand that the economy has been struggling.  Survey after survey has found that the American people are deeply dissatisfied with how the economy has been performing, and as a result it has become the number one issue this election season.  But even though a large portion of the population is not happy about how things have been going, the truth is that the situation is far more dire than most people realize.  Just this week we have received quite a bit of very troubling news, and the outlook for the months ahead is very bleak.  The following are 11 signs that the U.S. economy is in far worse shape than most people think…

#1 Just like in 2008, delinquencies are on the rise.  In fact, credit card delinquencies have now reached the highest level that we have seen in more than 10 years…

Meanwhile, more consumers aren’t making loan payments on time. Credit card delinquencies have hit their highest level in over a decade, and auto delinquencies are also spiking. This could prove to be yet another tripwire for the stock market, as consumer spending accounts for about 70% of U.S. economic activity.

#2 The commercial real estate crisis just continues to escalate.  An article that originally appeared in the New York Times claims that major Wall Street banks have “begun offloading their portfolios of commercial real estate loans hoping to cut their losses”…

Some Wall Street banks, worried that landlords of vacant and struggling office buildings won’t be able to pay off their mortgages, have begun offloading their portfolios of commercial real estate loans hoping to cut their losses.

It’s an early but telling sign of the broader distress brewing in the commercial real estate market, which is hurting from the twin punches of high interest rates, which make it harder to refinance loans, and low occupancy rates for office buildings — an outcome of the pandemic.

#3 When banks get into trouble, they start shutting down branches.  So far this year, U.S. banks have closed more than 400 branches all over the country…

US banks closed 51 branches across the country in the first three weeks of June.

The figures suggest banks are committed to increasingly offering their services online and axing costly bricks-and-mortar locations.

More than 400 bank branches have closed so far in 2024.

#4 Big companies are laying off workers from coast to coast.  For example, approximately 500 Texas truckers just lost their jobs when a large logistics company abruptly shut their doors for good…

A truck and logistics company has abruptly shut – affecting 2,000 workers – just three years after being bought by private equity.

Out of the blue, staff at US Logistics Solutions were given news on Thursday that they were out of a job and would also not get their paychecks on Friday.

Around 500 were truck drivers, and the rest a mixture of warehouse, dock and office workers at the Humble, Texas- based company.

#5 The Dallas Fed Services Index has now been in negative territory for 25 months in a row…

This is the 25th straight month of contraction (sub-zero) for the Dallas Fed Services index and judging by the respondents’ comments, there is a clear place to point the finger of blame

#6 The “restaurant apocalypse” just continues to intensify.  This week, we learned that Hooters has suddenly decided to permanently shut down close to 40 “underperforming” locations…

The Atlanta-based sports bar chain, Hooters, abruptly shuttered dozens of “underperforming” restaurants across the U.S., as it joins a growing list of eateries facing the harsh realities of inflation and changing consumer habits, according to reports.

Nation’s Restaurant News (NRN) reported that word began to spread on Sunday evening that Hooters locations in places like Bryan, Texas; Lakeland, Florida; and Louisville, Kentucky were closing abruptly, with nearly 40 restaurants in the U.S. shutting their doors.

#7 Retail chains continue to go belly up at a staggering rate.  Today, it was being reported that two large retailers in the Northeast have made a decision to file for bankruptcy…

Two sister chains that sell sporting goods have filed for bankruptcy as retailers continue to struggle.

Bob’s Stores, which sells athletic and casual clothing, and outdoor gear retailer Eastern Mountain Sports together have 50 stores across the northeast of America.

#8 We just learned that consumer confidence in the U.S. dropped lower this month…

US consumer confidence teetered slightly in June as Americans grew a little warier about the future, new data released Tuesday showed.

The Conference Board’s latest consumer confidence index dipped to 100.4 in June from a downwardly revised level of 101.3 in May.

#9 The initial consumer confidence reading has been revised down in 7 of the last 8 months.

#10 Housing in the U.S. is now more unaffordable than it has ever been before…

The housing cost burden has hit a record, according to a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Home prices are now 47% higher than they were in early 2020, with the median sale price now five times the median household income, according to the study.

#11 As I discussed yesterday, the homeless population in the city of Chicago tripled from January 2023 to January 2024…

The number of Chicagoans living in city shelters or on city streets tripled between January 2023 and January 2024, according to the annual survey used by federal officials to track homelessness, city officials announced Friday.

Those at the bottom of the economic food chain are being hit the hardest by the harsh economic conditions that we have been experiencing.

Homelessness, poverty, hunger and theft are all on the rise, and many of those that serve struggling communities say that they are being absolutely overwhelmed because they simply do not have sufficient resources to meet all of the needs.

Sadly, I am entirely convinced that this is just the beginning.  I believe that conditions will eventually become much harsher as the economy continues to deteriorate during the months ahead.

But Joe Biden and his minions insist that everything is just great.

In fact, they would like you to believe that the economy is “booming” right now.

You can believe that if you want, but the cold, hard numbers that we keep getting directly contradict the endless stream of propaganda that we are constantly being fed.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.

Over the past three years, millions of migrants have come pouring into this country looking for a better life.  They were promised that things would be so much better once they got here, but for so many of them that has turned out to be not true at all.  There just aren’t enough resources to care for the vast number of migrants that are arriving, and as a result many quickly find themselves homeless.  It is a tragedy of monumental proportions, and it is getting worse with each passing day.

Just look at what is happening to the city of Chicago.  According to a new report that was just released, the homeless population in the Windy City tripled between January 2023 and January 2024…

The number of Chicagoans living in city shelters or on city streets tripled between January 2023 and January 2024, according to the annual survey used by federal officials to track homelessness, city officials announced Friday.

When your homeless population triples in a single year, you have a major problem on your hands.

And please keep in mind that these are just the ones that they can actually find and count.  Studies have shown that the real homeless population is often several times greater than official counts reveal.

According to this latest report, the migration crisis is the primary reason why the homeless population in Chicago is exploding…

The point-in-time count estimates the number of people in shelters, transitional housing, encampments and other “unsheltered” locations. The estimate noted the pressures the migrant crisis poses to the city.

“Since August 2022, Chicago has welcomed over 40,000 New Arrivals arriving from the southern border, many of whom have needed shelter and services,” it said.

“The largest increase in this year’s Shelter Count was due to the continued influx of New Arrivals to Chicago in 2023.”

When 40 people show up, it is easy to take care of them.

When 40,000 people show up, that is another matter entirely.

A similar thing is happening in San Antonio.

One Catholic charity that cares for migrants says that it simply cannot keep up with the “huge increase” in migration that has occurred…

A Catholic charity has said it can’t keep up with a “huge increase” of migrants entering San Antonio through the U.S.-Mexico border, who are now finding themselves on the streets.

Over the past several years, San Antonio has been completely transformed.

According to official city data, a whopping 619,919 migrants have arrived in the city since January 2021…

According to the city’s migrant dashboard, as of June 19, migrant arrivals since January 2021 have totaled 619,919. Those numbers peaked in November and December 2022, at 30,900 and 37,146, respectively.

For many, San Antonio is not the final destination.

But there are others that have ended up stuck in the city because they literally have nowhere else to go…

“I can tell you we have seen a huge increase of people in the streets, so we have our mobile units go around like south side, west side, places we usually give out food to the homeless people, we’re having now an increase in people coming to the food pantry and our mobile unit who are from Venezuela,” said Fernandez.

With no place to sleep and no money for a bus or plane ticket, Fernandez said many of these migrants are out on the streets, adding to the homeless population Catholic Charities already serves.

We should all be greatly saddened by what we are witnessing.

So much of this suffering could have been easily avoided if our politicians had made different decisions.

At one shelter in Los Angeles, it is being estimated that migrants now account for about 90 percent of the people that are being served…

“We’re mainly serving people that come from other countries like Venezuela, Honduras, Nicaragua,” said Salvador Mendoza, the shelter’s lead case manager. “I will say yeah, 90%.”

The bulk of the shelter’s residents are now asylum seekers who’ve arrived in the U.S. in the past several months, he said. Most are from Venezuela. Some came on buses from Texas; others made it to L.A. themselves, some after being initially bused elsewhere. Many had plans to stay with acquaintances, relatives or other sponsors, but those plans fell through.

“So they come to this cruel reality, you know, of not being able to find a job, not being able to have a roof over their head, not knowing the language, not knowing where to go, what to do, so their only option is just being on the street,” Mendoza said.

Some cities have decided that the solution to the migrant crisis is to simply ship migrants somewhere else.

Recently, reports that Denver was shipping large numbers of migrants to Salt Lake City caused a tremendous uproar…

News that the city of Denver was covering the transportation costs of some immigrants to travel from the Colorado capital to Salt Lake City caused an uproar last Friday. Denver, also overwhelmed by an immigrant influx, has also covered the cost of transporting immigrants to Chicago and New York City, which actually received a larger influx than Salt Lake City, according to a report last February by Denverite, a Colorado publication.

Cox called Denver’s practice “completely unacceptable” and said Utah resources “are completely depleted.” Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County officials also said the situation has stressed their ability to contend with the housing and other needs of the immigrants, which led to the alert, published in both Spanish and English.

Denver is absolutely overwhelmed by migrants.

But so is Salt Lake City.

And so is Chicago.

And so is New York City.

Transporting them from city to city isn’t going to solve anything.

But many local politicians feel like they have to do something because of all the social problems that are erupting.

In the Big Apple, there has been a lot of violence and crime, and that includes one recent incident that involved two police officers…

A mob of migrants are facing gang assault charges after allegedly pummeling two NYPD cops outside a Queens hotel shelter, prosecutors and law enforcement sources said Tuesday.

Four men were busted after they attacked two of New York’s Finest shortly before 4:30 a.m. Monday as the cops were checking on three unattended children outside the converted Long Island City hotel that now houses asylum seekers, according to authorities.

When they asked about the unsupervised kids the men allegedly pounced on them.

As I have been relentlessly warning my readers, a tremendous amount of social unrest is in our future, and adding millions of extremely desperate migrants to the equation is only going to make things even worse.

We depend upon our politicians in Washington to make common sense decisions, and they have completely and utterly failed us.

Now major cities all over the nation are being absolutely overwhelmed by deeply suffering people, and that is a reality that should greatly sadden every single one of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.

The Social Security program was instituted to help elderly Americans thrive during their retirement years.  Unfortunately, millions upon millions of retired Americans are finding that their monthly Social Security payments are simply not enough as the cost of living spirals out of control.  One recent survey found that a whopping 85 percent of U.S. adults now consider inflation to be one of the most important political issues that we are facing, and seniors are being hit particularly hard.  In fact, a different survey that was just conducted by the Motley Fool discovered that 44 percent of retired Americans are thinking of going back to work because they need more money to survive…

A growing number of retired Americans are considering returning to work as they continue to battle chronic inflation, according to a new survey published by the Motley Fool.

About 44% of respondents said they are thinking about looking for work because their Social Security benefits have not adequately kept pace with high inflation.

Needless to say, trying to go back to work in your seventies, eighties or nineties is not an easy thing to do.

But if you have to choose between going back to work or not eating three meals a day, I think that the choice is easy.

Today, the average Social Security payment is less than half of what the average retired American spends each month…

The average monthly Social Security payment in 2024 is $1,907, according to the Social Security Administration. But that is just a fraction of the $4,818 that Americans age 65 and older reported spending in 2022.

Of course the current economic environment has been very difficult for all of us.

If you can believe it, compared to three years ago the typical household in this country is spending an extra $1,069 per month just to maintain the same standard of living…

The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.

Sadly, the cost of living is only going to get worse because our leaders just can’t help themselves.

At this point, our politicians in Washington have borrowed so much money that we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

In fact, we now spend more on interest on the national debt than we do on national defense.

But instead of slowing down, our politicians just continue to borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars.

So inflation is not going away any time soon.

Meanwhile, the number of home foreclosures was up once again last month…

Home foreclosures rose again in May as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that there were 32,621 properties in May with foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

That certainly isn’t a good sign.

Needless to say, there have been lots and lots of troubling signs for the economy lately…

In addition to the conflicting rise in unemployment, other signs of deterioration include stagnant retail sales, a slowing of consumer spending, weak industrial production and manufacturing orders, increasing consumer debt, depressed new housing starts, falling annual earnings of full-time employees, and rising commodity prices.

To many of those at the bottom of the economic food chain, it feels like the economy has already collapsed.

Today, 20 percent of the entire population of California is living in poverty, and massive homeless encampments have sprouted all over the state.

Unfortunately, many more Americans will soon be joining the ranks of the poor because the economy is rapidly moving in the wrong direction.

The outlook is so bleak that even Walmart is closing down stores…

Walmart has decided to close three more stores across the US, bringing this year’s total number of failed locations to 11.

The retail giant said these three stores – located in Georgia and Colorado – underperformed financially.

And we just learned that more Pizza Hut locations are being permanently shuttered…

Pizza Hut shuttered 15 locations in Indiana on Friday while more than 120 additional locations are in danger of closing, according to a report from The Times of Northwest Indiana.

The latest closures come after a long-running dispute between the chain and a franchisee. EYM Group, which owns and operates 142 Pizza Hut locations in Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Wisconsin, was accused of defaulting on millions of dollars in payments owed to Pizza Hut by a June deadline.

A new economic crisis has already begun, but it is going to get so much worse during the months and years that are ahead of us.

As we approach the end of this calendar year, we will want to keep a very close eye on the global financial system.

There have been a number of ominous signs lately that should definitely alarm all of us.  Most notably, the fifth largest bank in Japan just announced that it will be selling off approximately 63 billion dollars in government bonds…

But if that was the first, and still distant, sign that something was very wrong at one of Japan’s biggest banks (Norinchukin is Japan’s 5th largest bank with $840 billion in assets) today the proverbial canary stepped on a neutron bomb inside the Japanese coalmine, because according to Nikkei, Norinchukin Bank “will sell more than 10 trillion yen ($63 billion) of its holdings of U.S. and European government bonds during the year ending March 2025 as it aims to stem its losses from bets on low-yield foreign bonds, a main cause of its deteriorating balance sheet, and lower the risks associated with holding foreign government bonds.”

See, what’s happened in Japan is not that different from what is happening in the US, where as the FDIC keeps reminding us quarter after quarter, US banks are still sitting on over half a trillion dollars in unrealized losses, as a result of the huge jump in interest rates which has blown up the banks’ long-duration fixed income holdings, sending them trading far below par and forcing banks (and the Fed, see BTFP) to come up with creative ways of shoving these massive losses under the rug.

Major banks all over the world are sitting on gigantic mountains of unrealized losses.

If things start going wrong, it won’t take much to induce panic.

And once panic starts, it won’t take much to spark a financial avalanche.

We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and the dark clouds on the horizon are getting closer with each passing day.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.

If you live in a major city, you can see them all around you.  I am talking about aging vans, RVs and trailers that are parked on the side of the road for months at a time and that obviously have people living in them.  There is an entire class of people that live in such conditions, and there is an entire class of “businessmen” that prey on such people.  When I was growing up, there were lots of headlines about “slumlords” that were taking advantage of the poor.  According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, a “slumlord” is “a landlord who receives unusually large profits from substandard, poorly maintained properties”.  Today, we have a different sort of a problem.  “Vanlords” are parking vans, RVs and trailers along the streets of the worst parts of our major cities, and they are renting them out to people that cannot afford regular homes.  Sadly, we live at a time when lots and lots of people cannot afford regular homes because homelessness is absolutely exploding all over the nation.  In some areas there have been efforts to crack down on the “vanlords”, but when things get too hot in one area they just move somewhere else.  As long as there are vast hordes of homeless Americans that are deeply suffering, there will be “vanlords” that are eager to take advantage of them.

Matt Feely just authored a very interesting piece about this phenomenon.  He says that things are particularly bad in the poorest sections of Oakland…

The most familiar and ominous form of homelessness in Oakland, however, has become the vehicle encampment. A few small clusters of vehicles have gathered in my North Oakland neighbourhood, lines of dirty campers and battered cars seeking shade under an elevated freeway, but poor East Oakland has it the worst. There, such encampments have taken over long stretches of busy street, visiting already-distressed neighbourhoods with huge living sculptures of ugliness and disorder — cars filled with clothes and junk; hulking RVs parked for months at a time, drug and sex deals conducted streetside; trash gathering around and between the vehicles, and lots of new crime. Recently, the city had to replace traffic lights at an East Oakland intersection with stop signs, because people, presumably from the vehicle encampment close by, were constantly stealing the cables to sell the copper wire inside.

All over the country, this is how vast numbers of people are living now.

Unfortunately, most of the people that are living in RVs don’t even own them.  Instead, most of them are owned by the “vanlords”…

But the people in those RVs don’t own them. They rent them, from people who’ve come to be called “vanlords”. These energetic businesspeople buy up old trailers and RVs and either drive or tow them to unfortunate neighbourhoods in cities like Oakland. There they enter into informal rental agreements with homeless people.

This is also happening on a very large scale in southern California.

In fact, it is being estimated that the number of people living in RVs in Los Angeles County actually increased by 31 percent from 2020 to 2023…

The number of people living in RVs across L.A. County has jumped 31% from 2020 to 2023, according to the annual homeless counts.

About 11,500 people are estimated to live in roughly 6,800 RVs.

With each passing day, more impoverished people are being forced out into the streets.

And with each passing day, more formerly middle class Americans are joining the ranks of the poor.

Our standard of living has declined so much that we have reached a point where even most middle class Americans are struggling financially…

A majority of middle-class Americans are experiencing financial hardship that they expect will continue for the rest of their lives, according to a new poll.

Findings published by the National True Cost of Living Coalition show that 65% of Americans whose incomes are 200% above the national poverty line – which is about $62,300 for a family of four, often considered middle class – said they are struggling financially.

In many cases, a single accident or a single bad break is enough to push someone over the edge.

The vast majority of us are just barely scraping by from month to month, and that is because the cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have…

The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.

If you are still doing well, please don’t look down on those that are hurting.

Many of them were once just like you.

Sadly, many more Americans will be dumped out into the streets soon as economic conditions continue to deteriorate.

This week, we learned that initial claims for unemployment benefits have hit the highest level in 10 months…

The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week unexpectedly jumped to the highest level in 10 months, the latest sign that the labor market is starting to cool in the face of high interest rates.

Figures released Thursday by the Labor Department show initial claims for the week ending June 8 increased by 13,000 to 242,000, above the 2019 pre-pandemic average of 218,000 claims. It marks the highest level for jobless claims since August 2023.

Continuing claims, filed by Americans who are consecutively receiving unemployment benefits, also rose to 1.82 million for the week ended June 1, an increase of 30,000 from the previous week.

Virtually all of the economic numbers that we have been getting lately tell us that the economy is rapidly heading in the wrong direction.

So if you think that things are bad now, just wait until you see what is coming.

Personally, I fully expect conditions to get steadily worse throughout the rest of 2024.

All of the “vanlords” out there will soon have even more potential customers to prey on, and that is not good news for any of us.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.

The health of the economy has been one of the primary determining factors in many presidential elections, and it will be the same this time around too.  Of course that is really bad news for Joe Biden, because the American people absolutely hate what is happening to the economy.  Even though the media is constantly telling us that the economy is doing just fine, the vast majority of the population is not buying into the propaganda.  Hordes of small businesses are failing, retailers are shutting down thousands of stores, and poverty is exploding all over the nation.  But inflation is the biggest reason why Americans are so dissatisfied with the economy.  According to one recent survey, it is “far and away” the biggest issue for American voters…

Inflation is “far and away” the biggest issue for Americans heading into the 2024 election, but economic outlooks and President Biden’s approval rating vary by race and ethnicity, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris poll.

That survey found that 58 percent of Americans consider the economy to be weak, and only 34 percent think that it is on the right track…

When asked how strong they think the economy is today, 42 percent of respondents said it was strong while 58 percent perceive the economy as weak, according to the online survey of 1,660 registered voters conducted May 15-16, 2024.

Just 34 percent of respondents said they believe the economy is on the right track, although that answer varied significantly depending on whether the respondent was a Republican or Democrat — 13 percent and 59 percent, respectively.

Other surveys have come up with similar results.

According to a recent ABC News/Ipsos survey, 85 percent of U.S. adults consider inflation to be an important issue…

U.S. adults trust former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden on the issue of inflation by a double-digit margin, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll this month, which found that price increases remain a top concern for voters, with less than six months to go until Election Day.

In all, 85% of poll participants said inflation is an important issue, making it the second-highest priority among adults surveyed. The top priority, the economy, also relates to individuals’ perceptions of price increases.

On each of those issues, the economy and inflation, adults surveyed by ABC News/Ipsos said they trusted Trump over Biden by a margin of 14 percentage points.

Why are we seeing poll results like this when inflation is supposedly not even a problem?

Right now, headlines all over the country are bolding declaring that inflation is under control.

You can believe that if you want, but the truth is that the cost of just about everything has been soaring in recent years…

Gas prices are currently sitting at a national average of $3.45 per gallon, down from $3.50 last week as low demand and increasing supply provide relief at the pump, AAA said. But overall, today’s prices are still 45% more expensive than in January 2021, when it cost $2.38 per gallon to fill up.

Electricity costs are up about 29% since Biden took office.

It also costs more to buy a car (20.4% increase), maintain it (30.5%) and insure it (51.3%) than it did four years ago.

Housing costs have become particularly painful.

Just check out these numbers…

The real estate firm Zillow reports that since January 2020, the monthly mortgage payment on a typical U.S. home has nearly doubled. It’s up 96% in just four years.

According to Zillow, a typical buyer will now pay nearly $2,200 a month, with a 10% down payment. Meaning, homeownership now costs well above the 30% of median income that was once thought to equate to “affordable” housing cost in America.

And with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage hovering around seven percent right now, there’s not a whole lot of light at the end of this tunnel.

Small businesses are also being crushed by inflation.

In a recent piece for the Daily Mail, Kevin O’Leary explained that food costs for restaurants have spiked “30 to 40 percent over the last 36 months”…

Supply chains crippled by the COVID pandemic lockdown haven’t recovered. Food costs – especially for proteins like chicken, beef and seafood – are up 30 to 40 percent over the last 36 months. Worst of all for the restaurant industry – customers haven’t returned from the shutdowns.

Meanwhile, a lot more Americans are working from home these days, and so there is a lot less foot traffic for restaurants that are located in our core urban areas…

And while Americans rarely worked from their home prior to the pandemic, an estimated 22 millions employed adults (about 14 percent of the workforce) haven’t returned to the office, according to Pew Research Center.

That means fewer people are going out to lunch or meeting colleagues for dinner after work.

This has been devastating to businesses that invested in brick-and-mortar locations. Eateries in urban locations have been hit especially hard as their expensive locations are no longer receiving the footfall they need to meet rent.

On top of everything else, California and other blue states have been changing minimum wage laws…

Indeed, the restaurant industry’s struggles are most pronounced in deep-blue California – where Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom has turned the not-so-Golden State into the closest American facsimile to Venezuela.

Newsom signed a law in September jacking up the minimum wage for fast-food workers from $16-per-hour to $20 – making decades-old businesses unprofitable overnight.

One California trade group estimated the Maduro-style edict led to the firing of nearly 10,000 workers even before the law went into effect on April 1.

Last month I wrote about the “restaurant apocalypse” that is sweeping across America, and unfortunately conditions are not going to improve for America’s restaurants any time soon.

So if you have a favorite restaurant, you may want to visit it while you still can.

We really have reached an economic tipping point, and the months ahead are going to be filled with uncertainty.

I believe that the economy is going to steadily deteriorate as we get closer to the election.

Needless to say, that is good news for Donald Trump and bad news for Joe Biden.

But whoever wins is going to have a colossal mess on their hands.

It has taken decades of incredibly bad decisions to get us to this point, and our economic future looks incredibly bleak indeed.

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.

If the economy is fine, why are so many signs of trouble erupting all around us?  Those that keep insisting that the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction conveniently ignore the very troubling facts and figures that I regularly share with my readers.  When you take an honest look at the cold, hard numbers that the economy keeps producing, there is only one logical conclusion.  Our entire system is crumbling, and it appears that conditions will soon get significantly worse.

Just look at what is happening to our banks.

The FDIC’s most recent report tells us that there are 63 “problem banks” in the United States, and collectively our banks now have 517 billion dollars in unrealized losses…

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s first quarter report, the US banking system is sitting on a collective $517 billion in unrealized losses and has 63 “problem banks.”

Those losses have been sparked primarily by a surge in interest rates over the past two years, which have driven down the price of fixed-income securities held by banks.

Unrealized losses held by banks increased by $39 billion in the first quarter relative to the fourth quarter of 2023.

“Higher unrealized losses on residential mortgage-backed securities, resulting from higher mortgage rates in the first quarter, drove the overall increase,” the FDIC said.

I would love to know what banks are on that list.

Wouldn’t you?

But the FDIC will not tell us.

As Daisy Luther has accurately noted, the FDIC won’t release that information because they are afraid of bank runs…

We don’t get to know which banks are in trouble.

It could be my bank. It could be yours. Or maybe it’s not.

Are they big banks? Small ones?

The list is confidential to inhibit the likelihood of bank runs finishing off these institutions.

So we just don’t know.

If Americans had the truth, there would be bank runs all over the country tomorrow morning.

That is a rather comforting thought.

And the condition of our banks just continues to deteriorate because mountains of commercial real estate loans are going bad.

At this point, it has become clear that we have never faced a commercial real estate crisis of this magnitude in our entire history…

The CRE sector faces the triple whammy of falling prices, falling demand, and rising interest rates. The post-pandemic rise of telecommuting and work-at-home programs crushed demand for office space. Vacancy rates in commercial buildings have soared.

This has put significant stress on commercial real estate companies. The biggest bankruptcy in 2023 was the failure of the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust. The company had loaded up with more than $1 billion in liabilities.

The collapse of the commercial real estate market could easily spill over into the financial sector. That’s because a lot of loans are coming due.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, around $1.2 trillion of commercial real estate debt in the United States will mature over the next two years.

A lot of financial institutions will fail during the months and years that are ahead of us.

Just hope that your money is not in one of them.

Meanwhile, one recent survey discovered that approximately two-thirds of all small businesses in the United States are teetering on the brink of disaster…

A new survey reveals that over two-thirds of small business owners are terrified of the state of the economy under Joe Biden’s watch, fearing that current conditions and ongoing downward trends will lead to them having to close their businesses.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the poll from the Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF) shows that 67% of small business owners maintain such fears about the economy as it stands today, marking a 10-point increase from sentiments two years ago. In the same poll, participants’ perceptions of economic conditions for their own businesses fell from 70.2 to 68.1. Perception of national conditions fell even more drastically, from 53.2 to 50.4.

Maybe you don’t care about what is happening to our small businesses.

But you should, because close to half of all workers in the United States are employed by small businesses…

Forbes estimates that at least 46% of all employees in the United States, around 61.6 million people in total, are employed by small businesses.

I think that it is quite an ominous sign that the household survey showed that the U.S. economy lost a whopping 408,000 jobs last month.

Sadly, I think that a lot more months like that are coming.

Retailers are also really struggling right now.

In fact, as Mark B. Spiegel recently discussed, major retailer after major retailer has been reporting disappointing sales numbers…

The U.S. economy seems to finally be cracking. This month a slew of retailers (off the top of my head: Target, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Best Buy and Foot Locker) reported negative year-over-year sales comps, and that’s before adjusting for the inflation that makes them 3% to 4% more negative in “real” terms. Others (Dollar General and Burlington) reported same-store sales comps in the +2% range, but that too was negative when adjusted for inflation, while Walmart and Nordstrom comps managed to roughly keep pace with inflation, but were unable to exceed it.

At one time, Walmart was an unstoppable retail behemoth.

But now even Walmart is closing down stores…

WALMARTS are closing across the country – and retail experts say the cuts are signals of a bleak future for shoppers.

The multi-million dollar corporation has closed nine stores so far this year, which could be a warning sign for other retail giants.

Of course the stores that Walmart is shuttering are just a drop in the bucket compared to what other chains are doing.

As I detailed in an article that I posted last week, we are on pace to lose 7,800 stores in 2024.

When the Drudge Report used the term “retail apocalypse” in one of their headlines on Monday morning, that was not an exaggeration at all.

We really are in the early stages of a historic meltdown.

And the outlook for the months ahead is extremely bleak.

In fact, Harry Dent just told Fox News that we should brace ourselves for “a bigger crash than we got in 2008 to ’09”…

Speaking in an updated interview with Fox News Digital, Dent cautioned that the “everything” bubble has still yet to burst, and it may be a bigger crash than the Great Recession.

“In 1925 to ‘29, it was a natural bubble. There was no stimulus behind that, artificial stimulus per se. So this is new. This has never happened,” Dent said on Tuesday. “What do you do if you want to cure a hangover? You drink more. And that’s what they’ve been doing.”

“Flooding the economy with extra money forever might actually enhance the overall economy long-term. But we’ll only see when we see this bubble burst,” he added. “And again, this bubble has been going 14 years. Instead of most bubbles [going] five to six, it’s been stretched higher, longer. So you’d have to expect a bigger crash than we got in 2008 to ’09.”

Our leaders were able to keep the game going for years by pumping trillions upon trillions of dollars into the system.

But they didn’t fix anything.

Instead, they just delayed the inevitable.

Our entire system really is crumbling all around us, and as it crumbles we are going to see chaos on a scale that most people don’t even want to imagine.

Already, major cities from coast to coast are being terrorized by theft, violence, drugs, homelessness, gangs and anarchy.

If things are this bad already, what is America going to look like once our leaders completely lose control of the economy?

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” 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 extremely controversial new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written seven other books that are available on Amazon.com including “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.