Money

Why Are Hordes Of Wealthy People Hitting The Escape Button And Heading To Montana?

June 13, 2021 by Michael

Why have thousands upon thousands of very wealthy people suddenly felt an overwhelming urge to buy a home in Montana? At this moment, Montana is one of the hottest real estate markets in the entire country. When a desirable house is put on the market, it can often spark a wild bidding war. Of course the vast majority of the potential buyers involved in these bidding wars do not actually have any roots in Montana at all. Vast hordes of wealthy individuals from Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and other major cities are flooding into the state, and there is only a limited amount of housing to accommodate them. As a result, home prices are being pushed to absolutely absurd levels.

In the Flathead Valley, home builders have been working incredibly hard to construct houses for the new arrivals. The following comes from a New York Post article entitled “Montana, the sold-out state New Yorkers can’t get enough of”…

All around the Lodge, along Montana Highway 35, from Kalispell to Whitefish, are what the locals call “COVID homes,” prefabricated track houses that line up along what used to be a timber farm — all of which were built last year and sold at around $550,000.

“Most were bought sight unseen for cash deals,” said Doug Averill.

$550,000 may have seemed like a hefty price when those homes originally went up, but today $550,000 would be considered a bargain price.

That is because the average selling price of a home in Flathead County has now risen to more than $638,000…

In May 2020, the average sale price for a home in Flathead County was $447,387 — a year later it had increased to $638,992. The average number of days a property stayed on the market has been cut almost in half, from 77 days in May 2020 to 41 days in May 2021.

The Flathead Valley possesses great natural beauty, and Whitefish in particular has become an extremely popular tourist destination.

All of this interest in Whitefish has helped to fuel a home price boom that is unlike anything the region has ever experienced…

While this may be good for realtors, locals are shell-shocked at the price hikes due to what the Flathead Beacon called the “COVID migration” from states like New York. “(The housing crisis) is happening all over Montana,” one Whitefish local told The Post. “No one who is from here can actually afford to live here anymore.”

According to Realtor.com, just before the pandemic in December 2019, the average home price in Whitefish, a town of 7,700 people just south of Glacier National Park, was $369,450. A year and a half later, that has almost doubled — and the average home price is now $704,000. Local average wages in Whitefish are just $30,642, according to bestplaces.net.

Needless to say, the vast majority of Americans cannot afford a $700,000 home.

Only the wealthy have enough money to relocate to Whitefish now, and many locals with roots in the area are having to leave for good because housing has become so ridiculously expensive.

A similar thing is happening over in Missoula. From last May to this May, the median sales price in Missoula shot up a staggering 41 percent…

New real estate data for the month of May shows an increasingly competitive market in western Montana.

New Multiple Listing Service data shows the median sales price in Missoula increased 41% from May 2020 to May 2021, up to $449,338.

Ten years ago, the median sales price in Missoula was just $205,000.

If you go all the way back to 2001, it was just $138,000.

Things are getting crazy in Bozeman too. At this point, “the average home in the greater Bozeman area is going for more than $650,000”…

One hundred thirty thousand dollars. That’s what it takes for a down payment to buy an average-priced home in Bozeman, Montana. Then an aspiring homeowner must fork out another $3,000 each month, which is more than two-thirds of their household’s paychecks if they make the median income for the metro area.

That’s because the average home in the greater Bozeman area is going for more than $650,000, up from an already astronomical $500,000 in early 2020.

So why is this happening?

Why are home prices in Montana and other desirable locations around the country going absolutely nuts?

Many are blaming the COVID pandemic, and that certainly played a major role at first, but now the COVID pandemic is subsiding.

Ultimately, I believe the the largest reason why we are seeing such a home buying frenzy is because people can see that our society is starting to come apart at the seams and they can sense that enormous trouble is ahead.

Just consider what happened this weekend. We literally witnessed mass shootings in four different U.S. cities in a period of just six hours…

At least four major U.S. cities were reeling from an onslaught of mass shootings over the weekend that left at least 39 people wounded, five dead and police officials alarmed that the surge in gun violence is a prelude to a bloody summer as the nation emerges from the pandemic.

Police in Austin, Cleveland, Chicago and Savannah were all investigating on Sunday mass shootings that erupted over a six-hour streak that began around 9 p.m. on Friday and spilled over into Saturday morning.

All over America, countless numbers of people are finally waking up and realizing that it is time to leave the major cities and head for greener pastures.

As I have been encouraging people to do for years, those that are leaving are looking for areas with low population density and low crime rates.

Of course the wealthy also value great natural beauty, and this is one of the big reasons why the Flathead Valley has become so popular.

And once they have purchased their beautiful new homes in remote parts of the nation, many wealthy individuals are filling them up with emergency food and supplies.

Collectively, rich people tend to be much more into “prepping” than the general population as a whole.

Sadly, the vast majority of the population is still asleep. The mainstream media keeps telling us that everything is going to work out just fine somehow, and most Americans blindly believe them.

Meanwhile, many among the wealthy are buying up properties in remote locations at a blistering pace, and this is going to permanently change the character of those communities.

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

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

Thoughts On The “New Normal” And The Things That We Are Losing As A Society…

May 20, 2021May 20, 2021 by Michael

The last two years have greatly shaken America, and our country will never be the same as a result. If you would have told someone two years ago that in 2021 millions of people would run around wearing masks all day and that the federal government would be relentlessly pushing a large scale mass injection campaign, that person probably would have thought that you were nuts. But now this is the “new normal”. Our freedoms and liberties have been permanently eroded, and now that they have gotten away with pushing the envelope so dramatically, government entities on all levels will be ready to flex their muscles again once the next major crisis comes along.

You could argue that we should just vote out the politicians that are running things on the state and federal levels, but exactly how are we supposed to do that?

After what we witnessed last November, tens of millions of Americans won’t believe that our system of choosing leaders is legitimate ever again.

Of course those that are currently running things could attempt to restore faith in the system by getting rid of all the voting machines and by instituting real reforms that would make the process as transparent as possible, but we all know that they will never do that.

The last couple of years have been extremely painful for our economy as well. More than 70 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last year, homeless encampments started popping up like mushrooms all over the country, and countless numbers of small businesses shut down permanently. In fact, most Americans say that they have lost a favorite local business as a result of the pandemic…

Few people have escaped the financial impact of the coronavirus pandemic and that’s especially true for local ‘mom and pop’ shops. A new study finds half of Americans have witnessed their favorite local businesses close down because of COVID-19.

A survey of 2,000 people reveals 68 percent personally know a local business owner impacted by the pandemic. According to respondents, the most commonly impacted businesses include cafes (62%), retail shops (58%), gaming shops (55%), and book stores (54%).

On Thursday, we learned that another 444,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week.

In 2019, such a number would have been considered catastrophic.

But in the “new normal”, that number is actually considered to be “good news”.

Our politicians have tried to make everyone feel better by sending out waves of huge government checks, but that has just created rampant inflation and widespread shortages.

We are also losing the peace on our streets. Murder rates were way up in major cities all over America in 2020, and in most of those cities they are even higher this year.

And it isn’t just men that are shooting men. Today, I came across an article about an “eight-woman brawl” that resulted in a pregnant mother being gunned down…

A pregnant mother was shot and killed while she sat in her car close to an eight-woman brawl that erupted in gunfire.

The deadly confrontation took place just before 6pm Tuesday in the 1200 block of Valencia Avenue in Hemet, which is located 75 miles southeast of Los Angeles.

Family members identified the 27-year-old who had been shot in the head and died after being flown to a county trauma center as Tamika Haynes.

What in the world is happening to us?

You would have never read about such a thing happening on the streets of America in 1950.

These days, we seem to be losing control of just about everything, and that even includes the technology that we have become so dependent upon. Hackers are causing nightmares for large entities all over the U.S., and in many cases absolutely enormous ransoms are being paid out…

CNA Financial Corp., among the largest insurance companies in the U.S., paid $40 million in late March to regain control of its network after a ransomware attack, according to people with knowledge of the attack.

The Chicago-based company paid the hackers about two weeks after a trove of company data was stolen, and CNA officials were locked out of their network, according to two people familiar with the attack who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

Criminals seem to have the upper hand on the Internet, in our streets and in the halls of power in Washington and on Wall Street.

In previous times, we could rely on law enforcement to restore order, but now law enforcement authorities are being relentlessly demonized in our society.

In fact, it has gotten so bad that large numbers of law enforcement officers are permanently walking away from their careers. For example, it is being reported that nearly 20 percent of all police officers in Seattle have quit over the past year.

Police departments all over the nation are having an exceedingly difficult time recruiting replacements for those that are leaving, and that is going to continue to be the case as long as we are treating police officers like human garbage.

Speaking of human garbage, just check out the bill that was just passed in the Wisconsin Senate…

Wisconsin senators approved a bill earlier this week allowing dead bodies to be dissolved in a chemical bath and disposed like sewage.

The bill, Senate Bill 228, authorizes a practice called alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which liquifies the human body using a mixture of water, heat, and chemical agents, leaving only bones behind. The liquid is then dumped into the sewage system or boiled off, and bones can be crushed and deposited in an urn.

You have got to be pretty sick to want to liquify Grandma and Grandpa before dumping their remains into the sewer.

But that is who we are.

On all levels, we no longer respect life, and that is because as a society we are abandoning our faith. Just check out these numbers…

The American Worldview Inventory (AWVI) 2021, an annual survey that examines the perspectives of adults aged 18 and over in the United States, found that while 57 percent of Millennials (born 1984-2002) consider themselves to be Christian, 43 percent “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”

Comparatively, 70 percent of Generation X (Gen X) Americans (born 1965-1983), 79 percent of Baby Boomers (born 1946-1964), and 83 percent of the Builder Generation (born 1927-1945) consider themselves to be Christian, while 31, 28, and 27 percent, respectively, “don’t know, care, or believe that God exists.”

America no longer resembles the nation that our founders sacrificed so much to establish, and if we stay on the path that we are currently on there is no future ahead for us.

But even though voices such as mine have been crying out for change for years, most of the population continues to sprint in the other direction.

We have already lost so much, and the “new normal” truly is horrible, but if America does not wake up things are only going to get worse.

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

A Severe Computer Chip Shortage Will Last “A Few Years”, And This Could Plunge The Global Economy Into Utter Chaos

May 17, 2021 by Michael

Of all the shortages that we are currently facing, the global computer chip shortage may be the most serious. That is because the chip shortage is expected to last “a few years”, and just about every sector of the world economy will be dramatically affected by this. When people think of products that contain computer chips, they tend to think of electronic devices such as televisions, phones and laptops. But computer chips are in thousands of other products as well. They are in the vehicles that we drive, they are in the toys our children play with, and they are in the heavy machinery that farmers use to produce our food. Without computer chips, our society as it is constituted today simply could not function, and so this is a really big deal.

Right now, global demand for computer chips is far outpacing global supply. Some may assume that the answer is just to quickly build a bunch more factories and start pumping out more chips, but it isn’t that simple.

At this point, chips have become incredibly sophisticated, and manufacturing them can be extremely complicated…

There are up to 1,400 steps in the overall manufacturing process for semiconductor wafers; it can take as long as 20 weeks to complete advanced chips, and fabs can use as many as 300 different types of materials throughout fabrication.

“It’s almost impossible to start chip manufacturing from scratch,” says Priestley. “This is why we are seeing industry consolidation: it has become so difficult and expensive to do, that companies just couldn’t afford to do it on their own.”

Over the decades, the percentage of chips made inside the United States has dwindled. At one time 37 percent of all computer chips were made inside the United States, but now that number stands at just 12 percent.

Today, the vast majority of the computer chips that are used around the globe are made over in Asia…

Specifically, companies have largely been outsourcing the manufacturing process to two companies – Samsung and TSMC. As a result, about three-quarters of the world’s total semiconductor manufacturing capacity comes from China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

That makes us exceedingly dependent on chip production on the other side of the globe, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

So for the foreseeable future, there is going to be a chip shortage, and the head of IBM is telling us that it could last “a few years”…

The boss of the US tech giant IBM has said a computer chip shortage could last another two years.

Its President Jim Whitehurst told the BBC it could be “a few years” before the situation improves.

Other voices are issuing similar warnings.

For example, an industry insider quoted by CNBC believes that this crisis will persist “into 2023″…

Glenn O’Donnell, a vice president research director at advisory firm Forrester, believes the shortage could last until 2023.

“Because demand will remain high and supply will remain constrained, we expect this shortage to last through 2022 and into 2023,” he wrote in a blog.

This is very bad news for industries all over the world.

Apple needs chips to make iPhones, and it is being projected that Apple will lose billions of dollars in sales simply due to a lack of chips…

Speaking to analysts following Apple’s latest earnings report, the iPhone maker’s chief financial officer, Luca Maestri, predicted a loss of between $3bn and $4bn in sales in the current quarter due to limited supplies of certain chips.

The impact on the auto industry will be even more dramatic.

According to NBC News, auto industry revenues will be down 110 billion dollars in 2021 alone because of a lack of chips…

The auto industry will suffer a $110 billion hit to revenues this year due to the ongoing shortage of semiconductor chips, according to a new analysis from AlixPartners consulting firm. That is a steep increase from January estimates of $60 billion.

With no clear resolution in sight, the industry will likely produce about 3.9 million fewer vehicles than originally planned for all of 2021, the firm said. The chip shortages are not only curbing production of current models but may also force delays in the rollout of some 2022 products.

If you are planning to buy a new vehicle, I would do it soon, because shortages of certain vehicles are likely to start popping up around the country.

Personally, I am extremely concerned about the impact that this chip shortage will have on agricultural production. Even though the western half of the country has been gripped by an endless “megadrought”, the chip shortage is being called the biggest problem that U.S. farmers are currently facing…

The biggest factor impacting the ability of U.S. farmers to produce the food we need has nothing to do with the weather, the markets, trade, regulations, or disease. The worldwide shortage of computer chips will impact all aspects of agriculture for the next two years and beyond. Almost every piece of farm equipment, like most everything else in our lives, needs a computer chips to operate.

The farm equipment industry has already been plunged into a state of great uncertainty because of a lack of chips. From top to bottom, supply chains have been greatly disrupted, and this is causing massive headaches for U.S. farmers…

Meanwhile, farm equipment manufacturers have halted shipments to dealers because they don’t have the chips to put in the equipment. Reynolds Farm Equipment, one of Indiana’s largest John Deere dealers, says they are unsure about when thy will receive the new equipment that is on order. Bane Welker Equipment, which handles Case and several other brands at their dealerships in IN and OH, are urging customers to plan ahead. They indicated that not only have combine, planter, tillage, and tractor sales been impacted, but even ATV supplies are limited. Parts, even non-electric parts, are also in short supply because the manufacturers of those parts use the chips in the manufacturing process. As farmers integrate technology into all aspects of the farming process, these highly sophisticated semi-conductors have become the backbone of almost every farming operation.

Everyone agrees that this chip shortage will be with us for a long time to come.

But assuming that the world returns to “normal” after the pandemic and the global economy remains relatively stable, it is hoped that the chip shortage will end some time in 2023.

Unfortunately, those are not safe assumptions to make.

We live at a time when one crisis after another is erupting. Just when you think that things have settled down a little bit, something else goes haywire.

Trying to accurately predict what conditions will be like for the chip industry in 2023 is a futile exercise, because nobody really knows how the world will have changed by then.

But what we do know is that we are facing a severe computer chip shortage right now, and everyone agrees that it definitely isn’t going away any time soon.

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

Megadrought Nightmare: No Water For Crops, Horrific Wildfires, Colossal Dust Storms And Draconian Water Restrictions

May 16, 2021May 16, 2021 by Michael

The megadrought that has almost the entire western half of the country in a death grip is starting to become extremely painful. In some areas, irrigation water is being totally cut off for farmers, and that is going to result in a totally lost year for many of them. Without water, you simply cannot grow crops, and irrigation water is the difference between success and failure for multitudes of western farmers. Scientists are also warning that this upcoming wildfire season could be even worse than last year due to the bone dry conditions. For me, it is difficult to imagine a wildfire season that is any worse than what we experienced in 2021. But this is what they are telling us. This megadrought has already been going on for many years, and experts are giving us very little hope that things will improve any time in the foreseeable future. In fact, CBS News is reporting that this current drought is in danger of evolving into a “permanent drought”…

Extreme drought across the Western U.S. has become as reliable as a summer afternoon thunderstorm in Florida. And news headlines about drought in the West can seem a bit like a broken record, with some scientists saying the region is on the precipice of permanent drought.

Even during the “Dust Bowl” of the 1930s, there was always hope that the drought would end and normal conditions would return.

But now we are being told that this is the new normal.

The western half of the country desperately needed a healthy level of precipitation during last winter’s “wet season”, but instead conditions were much drier than usual…

Consequently, this past winter’s wet season was not very wet at all. In fact, it just added insult to injury, with only 25 to 50% of normal rainfall falling across much of the Southwest and California. This followed one of the driest and hottest summers in modern times, with two historic heat waves, a summer monsoon cycle that simply did not even show up and the worst fire season in modern times.

Now we are moving into “the dry season”, and there simply is not enough water for everyone.

Along the California-Oregon border, things just went from bad to worse. Farmers in the region already knew that they would be getting much less water this year, but now federal officials have decided to completely shut the water off for most farmers…

The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year.

In what is shaping up to be the worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system. The agency announced last month that hundreds of irrigators would get dramatically less water than usual, but a worsening drought picture means water will be completely shut off instead.

Needless to say, for many of them no water will mean no crops.

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has already declared a drought emergency.

So has California Governor Gavin Newsom.

The state of California grows more of our vegetables than anyone else does, and this growing water crisis is forcing many farmers in the state to make some heartbreaking decisions…

With the uncertainty of water, some Central Valley farmers are destroying their crops ahead of the summer season in order to survive. It’s impacting jobs and soon possibly the grocery shelves.

In many instances, farmers are destroying some of their crops in order to give other crops half a chance of making it.

For example, farmer Joe Del Bosque just destroyed all of the asparagus he was growing in order to use water elsewhere…

“There’s been a blade that’s cut underneath and these here, they are green still but they are going to die,” explained Del Bosque.

The loss of asparagus means 50-60 farmworkers are out of a job next year.

If more crops are lost, jobs will follow.

This is already a major national crisis, and it is getting worse with each passing month.

According to the NOAA, the soil moisture content in our southwestern states is now the lowest it has been “in at least 120 years”…

Kelsey Satalino, the Digital Communications Coordinator from NOAA’s National Integrated Drought Information System, says that during the past few months, several states including Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah experienced their most intense period of drought since the Drought Monitor began back in 2000. As a result, soil moisture content is at its lowest levels in at least 120 years.

That means that things weren’t even this bad during the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s.

As I have discussed in previous articles, colossal dust storms are now regularly happening in the western half of the country.

In fact, some of them are so large you can see them from space.

In addition to being extremely unpleasant, these dust storms can also spread fungal spores that cause Valley fever. The following comes from NASA…

Valley fever is a dangerous threat to human health – and cases are on the rise in the arid southwestern United States, as wind from increasing dust storms can transport the fungal spores that cause the disease. Valley fever is caused by the Coccidioides fungus, which grows in dirt and fields and can cause fever, rash and coughing. Using NASA research and satellite data, the World Meteorological Organization is refining its Sand and Dust Storm Warning Advisory and Assessment System to help forecast where dust risk is greatest.

In my most recent book, I warned that “record drought” was coming, and now it is here.

Sadly, extremely dry conditions create an ideal environment for wildfires.

Last year’s wildfire season was a complete and utter nightmare, but now officials are warning that 2021 could be even worse.

Could that be possible?

It is hard to imagine anything worse than what we witnessed in California last year, but it appears that things are off to an even earlier start this year.

At this moment, an absolutely massive fire is burning out of control in Los Angeles County…

Los Angeles County authorities looked Sunday for a potential arsonist who might have set off a brush fire that forced the mandatory evacuation of about 1,000 people in the exclusive Pacific Palisades area near Topanga Canyon.

Cool and wet conditions overnight helped prevent the Palisades Fire from spreading beyond the 750 acres it had reached Saturday, but the LA Fire Department said in an update Sunday morning that warming weather and afternoon winds may push the blaze northwest – threatening homes – as it rips through dense mountain vegetation that “is very dry and has not burned in 50+ years.’’

It almost seems like the west coast is under some sort of a curse.

Whenever it seems like things couldn’t get any worse, somehow they do.

Scientists tell us that another very dry summer is looming, and that is extremely bad news for the entire region.

Dust Bowl conditions have returned, and it appears that they will be with us for a long time to come.

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

IT’S WAR!: Israeli Forces Strike Gaza As The World Braces For A Horrific Conflict In The Middle East

May 13, 2021May 13, 2021 by Michael

***UPDATE: It appears that Israeli statements about the conflict have caused much confusion among news outlets. Earlier in the day Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus had told the press that there were Israeli ground troops “attacking in Gaza”, but now he has told reporter Alex Ward the following: “Clarification: there are currently no IDF ground troops inside the Gaza Strip. IDF air and ground forces are carrying out strikes on targets in the Gaza Strip.” So it appears that ground forces are being used to conduct strikes in Gaza, but they have not officially crossed over into Gaza just yet. I apologize for any confusion, and we will continue to monitor further developments.***

The next Middle East war has begun. Israel has sent troops over the line into Gaza, and Israeli officials are telling us that they will be there for as long as it takes. Ultimately, the Israeli government didn’t have much of a choice. Hamas had already fired more than 1,600 rockets into Israeli territory, and the Israeli people were crying out for action. If someone had fired 1,600 rockets at major U.S. cities, millions upon millions of Americans would literally be begging the Biden administration to nuke whoever did it. Now that war has started, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is pledging that “this operation will continue as long as necessary”…

The Israel Defense Force tweeted from its official account on Thursday night: ‘IDF air and ground troops are currently attacking in the Gaza Strip.’

Military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus confirmed: ‘There are ground troops attacking in Gaza, together with air forces as well.’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu posted moments later: ‘The last word was not said and this operation will continue as long as necessary.’

What does that exactly mean?

We don’t know, but it sounds like there is no end in sight for this conflict.

Previously, Defense Minister Benny Gantz had stated that there is “no end date” for airstrikes against Gaza…

Defense Minister Benny Gantz said Wednesday that the military operation will continue in the Gaza Strip for as long as necessary and that there is currently no end in sight.

“Israel is not preparing for a ceasefire. There is currently no end date for the operation. Only when we achieve complete quiet can we talk about calm,” Gantz said during a tour of rocket-hit Ashkelon. “We will not listen to moral preaching from any organization or institution regarding our right and duty to protect the citizens of Israel.”

I think that Israeli officials are finally fed up with having rockets being lobbed at them out of Gaza.

Now that Israeli troops have gone in, one of the first jobs will be to neutralize the tens of thousands of rockets that Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad have stockpiled over the years…

Hamas and Islamic Jihad fired more than 1,000 missiles in the first 48 hours of the conflict which began on Monday, an average of one every three minutes, and has enough to keep the bombardment going for two months.

Israeli military spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus said: ‘According to our estimates we’re talking about between 20,000 and 30,000 rockets in Gaza today, rockets and mortars.

It is going to take some time to achieve that goal, but if the Israelis want the constant bombardment to stop they need to find those weapons.

Beyond that, there are many in the Israeli government that would like to destroy Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza for good. Both groups have sworn to never stop until Israel is wiped off the map, and so there is no negotiating any sort of a permanent peace with them.

Over the past couple of days, a number of key Hamas targets have been eliminated, and an IDF spokesperson has stated that the terror group is in the process of “losing everything”…

On Thursday morning the IDF bombed government targets, Hamas’s central bank, a force that the Israeli military said belonged to the terror group’s navy unit as well the home of Iyad Tayeb, a top Hamas commander who oversaw a number of battalions. The IDF said that the home was being used for terrorist purposes.

“The organization is losing everything,” IDF Spokesperson Brig.-Gen. Hidai Zilberman told reporters on Thursday morning.

If Hamas and Islamic Jihad lose their grip on Gaza, that would give Mahmoud Abbas and Fatah an opportunity to consolidate control over the Palestinian people.

So even though he would never admit it publicly, I have a feeling that Mahmoud Abbas is very pleased with what is happening right now.

Israel was never going to negotiate a permanent peace deal with the Palestinians as long as Hamas was running Gaza. But if Hamas and Islamic Jihad are out of the way, that would clear a path for a comprehensive peace plan and the establishment of a “two state solution” that is so greatly coveted by the Biden administration.

Needless to say, any such “peace deal” would be a tragic error, and this is something that I have discussed in numerous other articles.

For the moment, we need to watch and see how this current conflict plays out.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad are no match for the Israeli military. But now that the IDF is preoccupied in the south, this could be a golden opportunity for Hezbollah to take action in the north.

And if that happened, all of a sudden the Israelis would find themselves fighting a war on two fronts.

As I discussed the other day, Hezbollah has more than 150,000 missiles currently pointed at Israel. If Hamas and Islamic Jihad were able to overwhelm the Iron Dome system, what would happen if Hezbollah suddenly started launching thousands upon thousands of highly advanced rockets at Israeli cities?

In addition, we need to watch Iran. The Iranians try to avoid attacking anyone directly, but they could choose to use this moment as an opportunity to strike Israel through various proxies other than Hezbollah.

In the days ahead, keep alert for any attacks against Israel that seem to come from unusual sources.

At some point, there will be open conflict between Israel and Iran, but hopefully that day can be put off for as long as possible.

Of course I always said the same thing about the coming conflict between Israel and Hamas, and now it is here.

I think that Hamas officials realize that Israel intends to destroy the organization, and so they will throw everything that they have got at the Israeli military.

A lot of blood is going to be spilled, and it will be a very messy conflict.

But if Hezbollah jumps in, things will get a whole lot worse.

And if things escalate to a point where Israel and Iran are openly firing missiles back and forth, we would potentially be facing an apocalyptic scenario in the Middle East.

We have entered a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and the days ahead are certainly going to be very dark for the entire globe.

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

Do You Get The Feeling That Events Happening Now Are Leading Us Into An Endless Global Nightmare?

May 11, 2021May 11, 2021 by Michael

2021 was supposed to be the year that life went back to normal. Obviously that is not happening, and so a lot of prominent voices out there are going to be forced to update their narratives. Global events have really started to accelerate, and so many of the things that the “doom and gloomers” have been warning about are starting to happen right in front of our eyes. For example, on my websites I have been talking about Israel a lot in recent months, and now it appears that the region is on the brink of war. So far, more than 700 rockets have been fired into Israel from Gaza, but by the time you read this article that number will probably be even higher. In response, the IDF has conducted a series of dramatic strikes inside Gaza, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is promising “to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks”…

‘Hamas will be hit in ways that it does not expect,’ Netanyahu said. ‘We have eliminated commanders, hit many important targets and we have decided to attack harder and increase the pace of attacks.’

Joe Biden and other world leaders are begging for peace, but neither side appears to be inclined to back down.

Every time Israel retaliates, Hamas just launches even more rockets at Israeli cities, and they are insisting that this is their “right”…

“We have the right to respond to the Israeli offensive and protect the interests of our people as long as the Israeli occupation continues the escalation,” Hamas said in a statement.

So here we go.

As I discussed yesterday, this situation has the potential to get wildly out of control very rapidly.

On Tuesday, the skies above Tel Aviv looked like something out of a science fiction movie as Israel’s Iron Dome intercepted countless incoming rockets from Gaza. Could you imagine living in fear that a rocket could explode right next to you at any moment?

If that was happening in this country, millions of Americans would be screaming for Biden to nuke somebody.

Meanwhile, the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack has caused massive gasoline shortages up and down the east coast of the United States. On Tuesday evening, the Drudge Report breathlessly declared that more than 1,000 gas stations had run out of gasoline, and Zero Hedge was reporting that some people were waiting in line for up to five hours in a desperate attempt to fill up their vehicles.

Up until recently, just about the only thing that we were missing from the economy of the 1970s was the long gas lines, but now here we are.

North America’s largest petroleum pipeline has been shut down for just a few days, and now much of the southeastern quadrant of the country is absolutely paralyzed.

Do you think that there is a lesson to be learned here?

Of course there is. Once again we see how incredibly vulnerable we are to any sort of a major disruption. If the unprecedented power grid failure in Texas a few months ago was not enough of a wake up call for you, this definitely should be.

At this point, we are being told it is uncertain whether or not the Colonial Pipeline will be able to restore operations by this weekend…

If the Colonial Pipeline is not back in business by the weekend, prices could continue to rise at the pump and there will be broader localized fuel shortages across the southeast and mid-Atlantic regions.

Eventually, the flow of gasoline will be restored and everyone along the east coast will be able to fill up their vehicles again.

But the crazy inflation that we are witnessing right is not going to go away.

For years, economic “doom and gloomers” have been warning that if we kept recklessly creating, borrowing and spending money that really bad things would happen.

How many times have we heard about “the death of the dollar” and the dangers of wildly inflating our currency?

Well, it turns out that the “doom and gloomers” were dead on accurate. Inflation is one of the biggest stories of 2021 so far, and we just got another confirmation of how bad things are getting out there…

The median price for a single-family home in the U.S. rose the most on record in the first quarter, as buyers fought over a dearth of inventory, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Prices jumped 16.2% from a year earlier to a record high of $319,200. The growth eclipsed the 14.8% rate in the fourth quarter, which was the highest in data going back to 1989, the group said in a report Tuesday.

But at least home prices are not rising as fast as the price of cotton is.

If you can believe it, the price of cotton is up more than 50 percent over the past year.

Of course the price of corn is rising even more rapidly. As I discussed the other day, the price of corn is up about 50 percent just since the turn of the year.

Needless to say, lumber still has everyone else beat. The price of lumber has actually risen more than 200 percent over the past 12 months.

A lot of comparisons have been made to the horrible inflation that the U.S. experienced during the 1970s, but really I think that we need to go all the way back to the 1930s for a more accurate parallel to our current situation.

At this point, we are becoming more like the Weimar Republic with each passing day.

But if you think that things are really bad now, just wait, because you ain’t seen nothing yet.

Everywhere you look, systems are failing, society is crumbling and evil is growing. Even the Secret Service, who are supposed to be the best of the best, are now plagued by endless scandals and widespread incompetence.

This is not a drill. A widespread societal collapse is now underway, and it is going to get progressively worse.

This is the time of our endless nightmare, but nobody is going to ever be allowed to wake up from it.

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

10 Signs That “Things Are Getting Better In America”

April 26, 2021April 26, 2021 by Michael

Everything is great, and America is about to enter a golden new era that will be overflowing with peace, prosperity and happiness. If you believe that, there is a very large bridge that I would like to sell to you. There is certainly nothing wrong with being optimistic about the future, and personally I am very excited about the next chapters in my life. But if you think that the United States is heading in the right direction you are not thinking straight. Evidence of our advanced state of decline is all around us, and yet we continue to embrace our self-destructive ways.

Over the years, I have literally shared thousands of examples that show that our society is coming apart at the seams, and today I would like to share 10 more…

#1 New York City was once one of the most beautiful cities in the entire world, but now giant mountains of trash are piled up everywhere and approximately 2 million rats are rampaging all over the place. In an attempt to turn the tide, city officials plan to create a “City Cleanup Corps”…

New York City is being forced to deploy an army of 10,000 cleanup workers in response to worsening problems with trash and rats.

A newly created ‘City Cleanup Corps’ will be tasked with fighting the piles of garbage on the streets of the Big Apple, with complaints surging by 150% between March and August last year.

After a $100 million cut to the city’s sanitation budget, filth and rodent infestations have become a common sight, with data revealing that waste tonnage rose 15% by the end of March compared to the early months of the pandemic.

#2 In 2020, homicide rates increased by an average of more than 30 percent in major U.S. cities, and now homicide rates in many of those cities are even higher in 2021…

A Baltimore sanitation worker was fatally shot yesterday evening on his trash truck. The city has 94 homicides in less than four months.

To the south, DC had two more homicides yesterday, bringing its tally to 62, up 41 pct over 2020.

To the north, Philly has 156, up 31 pct.

#3 In cities all over the United States, police officers are leaving the force in record numbers. For example, just consider what is happening in New York City…

More than 5,300 officers — or roughly 15% of the force — at the New York Police Department either retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020, the New York Post reported after reviewing department data.

In all, 2,600 officers simply left the job, while another 2,746 filed for retirement, bringing the total to a whopping 5,346. That figure marked a 75% increase over the number of officers who left the force during the previous year.

#4 Meanwhile, police departments across the nation are having an exceedingly difficult time recruiting new officers. In New Jersey, the number of qualified applicants is only a small fraction of what it was a few years ago…

In some years the State Police would field between 15,000 and 20,000 applicants, according to Col. Patrick Callahan, the department’s acting superintendent. But they only had a “historically low” 2,023 qualified applicants as of Thursday, about a week before deadline, Callahan said.

#5 Less police officers will be needed if cities decide to simply stop enforcing the law. In Manhattan, a decision has been made to no longer prosecute prostitution at all…

Manhattan’s DA has announced he will no longer prosecute prostitutes, and asked a court to dismiss nearly 6,000 related cases as part of a city-wide change in policy.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. said prosecuting these types of crimes does not make the city safer, ‘and too often, achieves the opposite result by further marginalizing vulnerable New Yorkers.’

#6 Earlier this month, Charlie Biello shared some data regarding the explosion in commodity prices that we have seen over the last year…

Lumber: +265%
WTI Crude: +210%
Gasoline: +182%
Brent Crude +163%
Heating Oil: +107%
Corn: +84%
Copper: +83%
Soybeans: +72%
Silver: +65%
Sugar: +59%
Cotton: +54%
Platinum: +52%
Natural Gas: +43%
Palladium: +32%
Wheat: +19%
Coffee: +13%
Gold: +3%

But the Federal Reserve insists that inflation is “low” and that we don’t have anything to be concerned about.

#7 The “most Googled sex question in 2020” certainly says a whole lot about where we are as a society today…

Data from the online health clinic From Mars released this week indicates the most Googled sex question in 2020, with more than 2 million searches, was: “What are the symptoms of chlamydia?”

#8 As I detailed earlier this month, cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis have all soared to all-time record highs in the United States. We want America to be great at a lot of things, but not at spreading sexually-transmitted diseases.

#9 The western half of the country is in the midst of a multi-year “megadrought”, and 2021 is the worst year of that megadrought so far by a very wide margin.

In fact, water levels are dropping so fast in Lake Powell and Lake Mead that authorities are on the verge of declaring “an official shortage” for the first time ever…

The US Bureau of Reclamation released 24-month projections last week forecasting that less Colorado River water will cascade down from the Rocky Mountains through Lake Powell and Lake Mead and into the arid deserts of the Southwest and the Gulf of California.

Water levels in the two lakes are expected to plummet low enough for the agency to declare an official shortage for the first time, threatening the supply of Colorado River water that growing cities and farms rely on.

#10 We have known for a very long time that government agencies endlessly spy on us, but now even the Postal Service is tracking and collecting our social media posts…

The law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service has been quietly running a program that tracks and collects Americans’ social media posts, including those about planned protests, according to a document obtained by Yahoo News.

The details of the surveillance effort, known as iCOP, or Internet Covert Operations Program, have not previously been made public. The work involves having analysts trawl through social media sites to look for what the document describes as “inflammatory” postings and then sharing that information across government agencies.

When I visit my local Post Office I will never be able to look at the employees the same way again.

What in the world is happening to us?

Do we really need postal workers monitoring our Facebook accounts?

If they are supposed to be stopping “extremism”, it doesn’t appear to be working because we continue to see regular riots in Portland, Seattle and other major cities across the country.

Sadly, the truth is that our society is coming apart at the seams all around us, and it is only going to get worse in the years ahead.

America has been on the wrong path for decades, and all of the foolish decisions that we have made during those years are catching up with us in a major way.

Of course we could always choose to reverse course and start heading back in the right direction, but we all know that isn’t going to happen any time soon.

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

As America Focuses On Internal Strife, A War Between Israel And Iran Could Literally Start At Any Moment

April 21, 2021April 21, 2021 by Michael

You won’t hear the corporate media say very much about the “shadow war” that Israel and Iran are currently engaged in, because the corporate media is absolutely obsessed with covering the internal strife that is tearing the U.S. apart right now. But if they were doing their jobs correctly, corporate media outlets would be focusing on the Middle East, because the conflict between Israel and Iran could literally spark a major global war at any moment. As Israeli military aircraft pounded Iranian-backed forces in southern Syria on Thursday morning, there were reports coming in from central Israel of massive explosions that were so large they “shook the houses”…

Alarms sounded in Abu Qrenat near Dimona in southern Israel early Thursday morning, the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit reported.

Residents from across the country, including central Israel and Jerusalem, reported hearing “loud explosions” that “shook the houses.”

According to the Jerusalem Post, an Israeli military official insists that there was just one explosion and that it was caused by a Syrian surface to air missile that just happened to land in the southern Negev…

Brig.Gen. Hidai Zilberman later told reporters that the explosion was due to the firing of an SA-5 surface to air missile that was fired towards Israel and that it exploded in the southern Negev.

The firing of the missile came during Israeli air strikes in the south of Syria. The missile was not directed towards any target, Zilberman said.

But that wouldn’t seem to explain the multiple “explosions” that residents of central Israel reported on Thursday morning.

In any event, we are seeing fighting on an almost daily basis now. After hitting pro-Iranian targets inside Syria about 50 times in 2020, Israeli airstrikes have become even more frequent in 2021.

In addition, Israel has conducted a series of extremely bold attacks inside Iran itself over the last nine months. The following comes from the New York Times…

In less than nine months, an assassin on a motorbike fatally shot an Al Qaeda commander given refuge in Tehran, Iran’s chief nuclear scientist was machine-gunned on a country road, and two separate, mysterious explosions rocked a key Iranian nuclear facility in the desert, striking the heart of the country’s efforts to enrich uranium.

The steady drumbeat of attacks, which intelligence officials said were carried out by Israel, highlighted the seeming ease with which Israeli intelligence was able to reach deep inside Iran’s borders and repeatedly strike its most heavily guarded targets, often with the help of turncoat Iranians.

The most dramatic incident was the attack on the Natanz nuclear facility. It turns out that attack caused far more damage than we were originally told…

The latest sabotage incident on April 11 caused a blackout at the Natanz facility and major damage. The attack, widely believed to be orchestrated by Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, took out a number of Iran’s older and “least efficient” IR-1 centrifuge machines, according to Iranian foreign ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh. Meanwhile, Alireza Zakani, head of the Parliament Research Center, has noted that “several thousands” of centrifuges were damaged or destroyed.

The Iranians vowed “revenge” after that incident, and they have attacked Israeli ships multiple times since then. Here is one example…

An Israeli-owned ship was attacked near Fujairah in the United Arab Emirates, the Lebanese Al Mayadeen news channel reported on Tuesday.

Israeli defense sources confirmed that a ship partially was attacked on Tuesday, and said they were certain that Iran is behind the attack. The attack took place in international waters, likely by an unmanned drone or a missile strike, they said, noting that only minor damage was caused.

That was the third such attack on an Israeli-owned ship, and more attacks are expected in the future.

The good news is that a full-blown war between Israel and Iran has not erupted yet.

But such a war is coming. It is just a matter of time at this point.

Inevitably, someone will escalate things a little bit too much, and then thousands of missiles will start flying.

Iranian-backed Hezbollah has 150,000 missiles pointed at Israel right now, and the Iranians are fully capable of doing immense damage to major Israeli cities.

Of course the Israeli military is even more powerful. In the event of a full-blown war, Israel could literally level every single major city in Iran, Syria and Lebanon.

Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine remain on the brink of war. It is being reported that Russia now has more than 100,000 troops in the conflict zone, and Vladimir Putin just warned that western countries that choose to provoke a conflict “will regret their deeds in a way they have not regretted anything else for a long time”…

Speaking as part of his annual address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow on Wednesday, Putin said that his government “wants to have positive relationships with everyone on the international stage, including those with whom relations have broken down recently. We really don’t want to burn bridges.”

At the same time, however, he cautioned that “those who mistake this stance for weakness need to know that Russia’s response [to any aggression] will be asymmetrical, swift and harsh.” Those planning provocations, he said, “will regret their deeds in a way they have not regretted anything else for a long time.”

I don’t know why the warmongers in the Biden administration have decided that it is a good idea to provoke Russia and China simultaneously. They are not intimidated by us, and they are not going to back down as a result of our threats.

Foreign policy takes a great deal of finesse, but unfortunately the guy in the White House is a hothead in an advanced state of cognitive decline, and he is surrounded by an all-star team of warmongers.

I know that a lot of people are puzzled when I talk about Biden and his team in this manner, because not even Fox News uses the term “warmonger” to describe anyone in the Biden administration.

If you don’t understand what I am talking about yet, just be patient, because time will reveal the truth.

Our world is steamrolling toward war, and it won’t be anything like the relatively minor conflicts that we started in Afghanistan and Iraq.

At this moment, the seeds of World War 3 are being planted, and eventually those seeds will blossom into a conflict that will be far more horrific than most people would dare to imagine.

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

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