Money

The Unprecedented Explosion In The Price Of Silver Can Be Attributed To The AI Boom And The Behavior Of The BRICS Nations

December 9, 2025December 9, 2025 by Michael

$60 silver is here! The exponential rise in the price of silver that we have witnessed in recent months is astounding experts all over the globe. So far in 2025, the price of gold is up about 60 percent, but the price of silver is up more than 100 percent. We have never seen anything like this before, and there are some very specific reasons why this is happening. Fortunately for silver investors, it appears that conditions will continue to be very favorable as we roll through the early months of 2026.

Many of us had been anticipating that the price of silver would smash through the $60 threshold and stay there this week, and that is precisely what occurred on Tuesday…

Gold rose on Tuesday as traders remained optimistic ahead of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision, while silver rose to hit the unprecedented $60 per ounce milestone as the white metal faced supply constraints.

As I write this article, the price of silver is sitting at $61.22 an ounce.

It seems like just yesterday we were talking about $50 silver, and now some analysts are projecting that it will hit 70 dollars an ounce during the first half of next year…

Gold has shrugged off the jobs report, Haberkorn said, and added “we could see silver trade over $70 an ounce in the first half of 2026, and gold is on a path towards $5,000 an ounce.”

This is amazing news for silver investors.

But hardly anyone is talking about the real reasons why this is happening.

Right now, hundreds of giant AI data centers are being constructed all over the United States.

Hundreds of others are going up in various other nations around the world.

Many of these AI data centers are powered by solar energy, and approximately 300 metric tons of silver are required for just one 500 megawatt solar array…

Tech giants have pledged to power their AI data centers with renewable sources. That means an explosion of new solar installations — and each solar panel uses roughly 20 grams of silver in its photovoltaic cells.

A single 500-megawatt solar array — enough to power one hyperscale data center — requires roughly 300 metric tons of silver. Multiply that by the hundreds of new data centers being built worldwide, and the connection between AI and industrial silver demand becomes undeniable.

As long as the AI boom continues, demand for physical silver will remain strong.

Of course silver is used in thousands of other high tech products as well, and that is why it is being anticipated that there will be strong industrial demand for physical silver for at least the remainder of this decade…

“People are anticipating that there’s going to be strong industrial demand for silver for years to come, which is why it’s been bid up, the silver price,” said Fawad Razaqzada, market analyst at City Index and FOREX.com, adding that the buying momentum is strong at the moment.

Sectors including solar energy, electric vehicles and their infrastructure, and data centers and artificial intelligence will drive industrial demand higher through 2030, the Silver Institute industry association said in a research report.

Meanwhile, the behavior of the BRICS nations is also driving the price of silver higher.

Demand for physical silver in India has been off the charts, and it went even higher once the Reserve Bank of India decided to “allow consumers to monetize their physical silver holdings”…

In a report published this summer, Metals Focus noted that India is the world’s second-largest market for physical silver investment, accounting for nearly 80% of global silver bar and coin demand. The research firm also noted that India has long been the world’s largest consumer of silver jewellery and silverware by volume.

In an updated report, the analysts said that over the last five years, Indians — particularly lower-income consumers in rural communities — have purchased an estimated 29,000 tonnes of silver in jewellery and 4,000 tonnes in coins.

Metals Focus added that they see a potential game-changing development for the silver market as a new rule from the Reserve Bank of India will allow consumers to monetize their physical silver holdings.

I don’t think that demand from India is going to slow down any time soon.

Russia is another BRICS nation that is having a sizable impact on the silver market.

In late 2024, Russia’s central bank decided to start purchasing silver for its State Reserve Fund, and since that time the price of silver has dramatically outperformed the price of gold…

Silver is moving out of a long shadow cast by gold, its precious metal sister with hints of a major new buyer, Russia’s central bank, starting to influence the silver price which has risen to a 14-year high.

Data is scarce but since Russia revealed a plan late last year to add silver for the first time to its State Reserve Fund the silver price has outperformed gold.

Last but certainly not least, China recently decided to impose very significant export restrictions on silver starting in 2026…

The Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China (MOFCOM) has issued Announcement 2025-No. 68, imposing stringent conditions on the export of three critical minor metals – tungsten, antimony and silver – for the period 2026-2027. The move reflects China’s intensifying resource-security agenda and tighter export controls over strategic materials.

The Chinese want to ensure that they will have enough physical silver for the data centers that they will need to win the global race for AI dominance.

Supplies of physical silver have been getting tighter and tighter, existing mines can only produce so much, and we are being told that “it takes many years to get a new one up and running”…

The world’s mines are expected to produce only about 813 million ounces of silver this year, slightly less than they did in 2021, according to the Silver Institute. Mines can only produce so much each year, and it takes many years to get a new one up and running — something that puts a cap on supply.

Right now, approximately 50 percent of global silver production comes from Central America and South America.

In fact, Mexico produces more silver than anyone else.

So that suddenly makes Mexico a much more important piece on the global chessboard.

Thanks to the AI boom and the behavior of the BRICS nations, silver is now the hottest precious metal on the entire planet.

And if you think that things have been crazy this year, just wait until you see what happens in 2026.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” 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 “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

This Is How China Is Rapidly Becoming The World’s Most Dominant Economic Superpower

December 8, 2025December 8, 2025 by Michael

I don’t want China to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. I am an American, and so I want the United States to be the world’s most dominant economic superpower. Unfortunately, the facts that I am about to share with you in this article cannot be denied. We consume far more than we produce, and we go into colossal amounts of debt in order to make that possible. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that this makes us an economic superpower. Meanwhile, the Chinese produce far more than they consume, and as a result they have far more money coming in than they do going out. This allows them to loan vast amounts of money to nations all over the planet, and that gives them tremendous economic leverage.

Despite everything that has happened this year, China has run a trade surplus of more than a trillion dollars for the first time ever in 2025…

China’s trade surplus roared above $1 trillion in November for the first time ever, despite the ongoing global trade war that has resulted in a steep drop in exports to the U.S.

In the first 11 months this year, China’s overall exports grew 5.4% compared to the same period in 2024 while imports fell 0.6%, taking its trade surplus to $1.076 trillion this year as of November, up 21.6% year on year.

This is what economic dominance looks like.

If you want to have a great economy, you have got to be great at making stuff.

And China is better at making stuff than anyone else.

China sells far more stuff to the rest of the world than it buys from the rest of the world, and that means that it has far more money coming in than it does going out.

This enables China to lend out vast amounts of cash. In fact, at this point the rest of the world owes China about 5 trillion dollars.

It is often said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and that is certainly true in this case.

The primary reason why China sells so much stuff to the rest of the world is because they are able to make things very inexpensively…

“Put simply, China’s price competitiveness is extremely strong,” said Xu Tianchen, a senior economist for the Economist Intelligence Unit in Beijing. “The main reason behind the continued growth of China’s exports … is not … because the overall size of global trade has expanded, but because China is claiming a larger share of the existing trade landscape.”

For a long time, cheap human labor was China’s main competitive edge.

But now Chinese factories are replacing human workers with ultra-efficient robots.

In fact, today there are more robots working in China than the rest of the world combined.

Just think about that for a moment.

That is crazy.

And the gap between China and the western world just continues to grow.

If you can believe it, Chinese factories added almost 10 times as many robots last year as U.S. factories did…

China is the world’s most dominant power in automating its manufacturing — installing nearly 10 times as many robots in its factories as the United States, according to new data.

Last year, more than half a million industrial robots were put to work in global factories — with 54% of them in China alone.

According to the International Federation of Robotics, China, which is home to nearly a third of all global manufacturing capacity, installed 295,000 industrial robots, the highest annual total on record.

We are getting absolutely monkey-hammered by the Chinese.

Shockingly, the total number of robots that U.S. factories added last year was actually lower than the total number for the year before…

In the US, meanwhile, companies put to work just 34,200 robots last year, according to the World Robotics 2025 Report.

The 34,200 figure is 9% lower than the previous year, the report found.

Of course the Chinese are not just using more robots than anyone else.

They are also producing more robots than the rest of the planet combined…

The move comes as Beijing accelerates its broader industrial strategy to lead in advanced manufacturing, a key pillar of the “Made in China 2025” initiative. As bne IntelliNews reported, China now produces more industrial robots than the rest of the world combined, with domestic players rapidly gaining ground in both hardware and AI-driven control systems.

China is moving beyond being just the largest market for robots — it is becoming the core of global robot production. Chinese firms accounted for over 60% of global robot output in 2024, driven by subsidies, procurement programmes, and access to vast domestic datasets for training machine learning models.

Robots do not call in sick.

Robots do not need to take breaks.

Robots never complain.

Robots do not need health plans.

Robots don’t play around on the Internet when they should be working.

Robots do not need to take vacations.

Robots can work 24 hours a day.

And many of the robots that the Chinese are now producing can actually recharge their own batteries.

How can human workers possibly compete?

The Chinese can now make things at about a third of the cost that we can, and that gap is only going to get wider.

When a group of top western executives recently visited China, they were “humbled” and “terrified” by what they witnessed…

Western automotive and green energy executives who visit China are returning humbled — and even terrified.

As The Telegraph reports, the executives are warning that the country’s heavily automated manufacturing industry could quickly leave Western nations behind, especially when it comes to electric vehicles.

“We are in a global competition with China, and it’s not just EVs,” Ford CEO Jim Farley told The Verge last month. “And if we lose this, we do not have a future at Ford.”

Many are hoping that winning the AI race will halt the decline of western economies.

But that is far from certain.

Today, approximately 50 percent of the world’s AI researchers are in China.

We have some really good AI researchers too, but without a doubt it is going to be a very competitive race.

In fact, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang created quite a firestorm of controversy when he recently stated that he believes that “China is going to win the AI race”…

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says Washington has lost its edge in artificial intelligence and warns that China will win the AI race. He cited the West’s cynicism, export controls, and favorable energy circumstances in China as the reason, claiming it is much easier for companies to access energy in the country.

The chief of the most valuable company in the world by market cap has long been saying that the U.S. ban on chip exports is a failure, and that the spread of its advanced semiconductors is vital for it to retain its competitive advantage globally. However, the ongoing trade war between the two powers has resulted in export bans of Blackwell chips from the White House on the one hand, and the CCP banning foreign AI chips from state-funded data centers on the other. Because of this, Nvidia’s market share in China has since dropped to basically zero, which probably led to Huang’s statement to the Financial Times.

“China is going to win the AI race,” Jensen commented. He also added that “we need more optimism,” saying that the West’s cynicism is holding it back.

Winning the AI race is going to require vast amounts of energy, and this is one of the reasons why China may have an edge.

Most Americans don’t even realize that China now produces approximately two and a half times as much energy as the United States does…

Meanwhile, China has dramatically expanded its energy output. The country now produces 2.5 times more power than the U.S., despite surpassing America only 15 years ago, Lord said.

“America can’t out-AI China if China out-powers us, so the U.S. must prioritize developing reliable power,” he said.

The Chinese are feverishly constructing more nuclear power facilities, and they are way ahead of us when it comes to clean nuclear energy research.

The bottom line is that we are in enormous trouble.

We need to stop watching so much Netflix and start getting serious about competing with China.

In 2026, I expect our trade war with China to continue to heat up.

And history has shown us that trade wars have a way of evolving into shooting wars.

Let us hope that a military conflict with China can be avoided for as long as possible, because at this stage I don’t think that such a conflict would go well for us.

Because the Chinese have been rapidly modernizing their military as well.

In just about every area, the Chinese are either catching up with us or have already surpassed us.

Sadly, most Americans are so addicted to entertainment that they don’t even realize that this is happening.

11 Signs That Our World Is Rapidly Becoming A Lot More Orwellian

December 7, 2025December 7, 2025 by Michael

All over the globe, the digital control grid that we are all living in just continues to get even tighter. They are using facial recognition technology to scan our faces, they are using license plate readers to track where we travel, they are systematically monitoring the conversations that we are having on our phones, and they are watching literally everything that we post on social media. At this stage, many of us just assume that nothing that we do or say is ever truly private. We really do live in a “Big Brother society”, and the potential for tyranny is off the charts. In fact, people are already getting arrested for “thought crimes” all over the world. If we do not take a stand now, someday soon we could wake up in a world where there is essentially no freedom left at all.

The exponential growth of AI technology is allowing authorities to watch, track, monitor and control us like never before. If you are not alarmed by this, you might want to check if you are still alive. The following are 11 signs that our world is rapidly becoming a lot more Orwellian…

#1 UK authorities are rolling out “a country-wide facial recognition system” that will use AI facial recognition cameras to watch the entire population…

On Thursday, officials in the UK pledged to roll out a country-wide facial recognition system to help police track down criminals. The country’s ministers have launched a 10-week consultation to analyze the regulatory and privacy framework of their AI-powered surveillance panopticon — but one way or another, the all-seeing eye is on its way.

There’s just one tiny wrinkle: the AI facial recognition cameras have a tendency to misidentify non-white people.

New reporting by The Guardian notes that testing of the AI tech conducted by the National Physical Laboratory (NPL) found that it‘s “more likely to incorrectly include some demographic groups in its search results” — specifically Black and Asian people.

#2 Of course the control freaks in the UK also monitor everything that gets posted on social media. One British man recently found this out the hard way when he was arrested for posing with a legally-owned gun in the United States…

A Yorkshire man was arrested over a photo he posted on social media featuring him holding a legally owned gun in the US.

Jon Richelieu-Booth posted a photo of himself in August holding a gun on LinkedIn while he was on a holiday in Florida.

He said he held the firearm lawfully, on private land and with full permission from its owner.

#3 If you do not believe that “thought crime” is real, just consider this next example. 11 police officers recently barged in and arrested a 34-year-old woman that was sitting naked in her own bathtub because she used offensive words while texting another woman on her phone…

The United Kingdom has become an authoritarian nightmare, and the United States must remain vigilant if it does not want to go down the same course.

Elizabeth Kinney, a 34-year-old care assistant, was naked in the bathtub when 11 police officers barged into her home to arrest her.

Her crime was sending insults to another woman via text.

How would you feel if 11 police officers were staring at you while you were naked?

As she was being informed that she had engaged in “malicious communications”, tears started flowing from Kinney’s eyes…

Kinney burst into tears as male officers denied her any privacy, and a female officer informed her that she was being arrested for “malicious communications and hate crime.” “The Crown place this offense in the highest category of its type due to the effect related to sexual orientation and the greater harm because it had moderate impact,” prosecutors insisted. Kinney faced ten years in prison, but her attorney begged for leniency. She has been ordered to perform seventy-two hours of community service, attend ten days of rehabilitation, and pay a fine of several hundred pounds.

#4 French President Emmanuel Macron wants the power to determine which media outlets will be allowed to speak to the public and which media outlets will be silenced…

Macron has in the last weeks intensified warnings on the risks of disinformation, on Friday calling for changes to French legislation that would allow “false information” online to be urgently blocked.

He has also called for “professional certification” of outlets to distinguish sites and networks that provide reliable information according to ethical rules from others that do not.

But at the weekend, the Journal du Dimanche Sunday newspaper, part of the influential media stable of right-wing tycoon Vincent Bollore, accused Macron in a front-page story of a “totalitarian drift” on the issue.

#5 Because he is a champion of free speech, the EU has been coming after Elon Musk for years. So it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the European Commission just fined his company 140 million dollars for supposed violations of the Digital Services Act…

The European Commission has issued a $140 million fine to Elon Musk’s X for violating the EU’s controversial Digital Services Act (DSA). The fine is likely to escalate tensions between the EU and America over free speech online.

Bloomberg reports that the European Commission has imposed a €120 million ($140 million) fine on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, for breaching the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). This marks the first penalty issued under the new censorship law, which aims to regulate online platforms and “protect” users from illegal content and disinformation.

#6 In recent years, we have seen so many controversial voices suddenly have their bank accounts shut down. Shockingly, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon is now publicly admitting that his company does “debank” people…

As JPMorgan Chase Bank is under investigation by the state of Florida for alleged coordination with the Biden Department of Justice and Operation Arctic Frost, the chairman of the company is admitting to debanking certain customers, but says it has nothing to do with their political or religious affiliations.

“We do debank them,” said JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon who appeared on “Sunday Morning Futures” with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox News Channel.

“People have to grow up here and stop making up things and stuff like that. I can’t talk about an individual account.

#7 India wants to require that phone location services are always on so that the government can track people through their phones wherever they go…

You know what they say: If at first you don’t succeed at mass government surveillance, try, try again. Only two days after India backpedaled on its plan to force smartphone makers to preinstall a state-run “cybersecurity” app, Reuters reports that the country is back at it. It’s said to be considering a telecom industry proposal with another draconian requirement. This one would require smartphone makers to enable always-on satellite-based location tracking (Assisted GPS).

The measure would require location services to remain on at all times, with no option to switch them off. The telecom industry also wants phone makers to disable notifications that alert users when their carriers have accessed their location. According to Reuters, India’s home ministry was set to meet with smartphone industry executives on Friday, but the meeting was postponed.

#8 A journalist in the Netherlands has tested AI-powered glasses “that can instantly identify strangers on the street”…

A Dutch journalist just tested a pair of AI-powered glasses that can instantly identify strangers on the street.

No government database. No police system. Just public data and off-the-shelf AI.

You look at someone and in seconds, their name, LinkedIn, and background appear before your eyes.

The scariest part? You can’t really stop it.

You can ban it, regulate it, add blinking red lights… but once tech like this exists, someone will always find a way to use it.

Once these sorts of devices become widely available, there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

#9 A nationwide digital ID is being introduced in the UK, and soon you will not be able to get a new job without one…

Once introduced, digital ID will be used to verify a person’s right to live and work in the UK.

It will take the form of an app-based system, stored on smartphones in a similar way to the NHS App or digital bank cards.

The ID will include information on the holders’ residency status, name, date of birth, nationality and their photo.

When he first announced the scheme, Sir Keir said: “You will not be able to work in the United Kingdom if you do not have digital ID. It’s as simple as that.”

#10 The digital ID program in France “is moving from pilot to scale”…

France’s national digital identity app, France Identité, has enabled the creation of more than 3.2 million digital IDs, according to new figures.

Among these, approximately 525,000 identities have been fully certified, meaning that users have completed an in-person verification process at their local town halls. This means that more than half a million French digital IDs are ready for the EU Digital Identity (EUDI) Wallet, according to Joerg Lenz, head of marketing at Namirial Group.

“France Identité is moving from pilot to scale,” Lenz wrote on LinkedIn, following the TRUSTECH Event held in Paris on Wednesday.

#11 In Illinois, there is such overwhelming demand for digital IDs that some people are being forced to wait…

Mobile IDs became available in Illinois on Wednesday, but due to the high demand, some residents are finding themselves waiting a little bit longer.

A number of residents trying to download the digital ID to their Apple wallet received the following message: “Due to the high volume, your state’s service is currently busy.”

Users can then answer the question, “Do you want to be notified when it becomes available?”

This is where the entire world is heading.

As the Big Brother control grid gets tighter and tighter, the stage is being set for unprecedented tyranny on a global scale.

Tyrants of the past could only dream of having the sort of AI-powered tools that we possess today.

If you do not submit to the digital gulag that is being constructed all around us, eventually you may not be able to buy, sell, get a job or open a bank account without proper digital identification.

What would you do then?

You might want to start thinking about that, because things are only going to get crazier from here.

Announced Job Cuts Hit 1.17 Million In 2025 – 54 Percent Higher Than Last Year

December 4, 2025 by Michael

It is getting very hard to deny that the U.S. economy is moving in the wrong direction. Yesterday, ADP reported that the U.S. economy shed tens of thousands of jobs last month. Today, Challenger, Gray & Christmas is reporting that U.S. employers announced a grand total of 1.17 million job cuts through the first 11 months of 2025. That represents a 54 percent increase from the first 11 months of last year…

U.S.-based employers have cut more than 1.17 million jobs so far in 2025, the highest level since the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

From January to November of this year, employers cut 1,170,821 jobs, a 54 percent increase from the 761,358 jobs cut during the first 11 months of 2024.

In 2020, large numbers of Americans were being temporarily laid off due to the lockdowns.

But we don’t have any lockdowns in 2025.

What we have instead is a rapidly deteriorating economy.

Traditionally, employers have been hesitant to lay off workers just before the holiday season because it can mean bad publicity.

But this November employers were not as hesitant to swing the axe as usual, and the telecom industry led the way…

Telecom alone slashed 15,139 jobs, its worst month since April 2020, when the pandemic forced widespread shutdowns.

For the year, telecom layoffs are up a staggering 268 percent.

Other industries aren’t doing much better: tech job losses are up 17 percent in 2025, food distributors (especially those that produce beef) are up 26 percent, and service-sector layoffs have climbed 64 percent.

The primary reason why the total for the telecom industry was so high last month is because Verizon suddenly decided to fire more than 13,000 employees…

Verizon is set to lay off over 13,000 workers in the coming weeks as part of a cost-cutting and restructuring initiative.

“Today, we will begin reducing our workforce by more than 13,000 employees across the organization, and significantly reduce our outsourced and other outside labor expenses,” newly appointed CEO Dan Schulman writes in a memo to employees that it also published online. “Every part of the company will experience some level of change.”

Verizon had just over 100,000 employees as of Sept. 30, meaning the layoff will reduce the headcount by 13%.

Perhaps Verizon’s new management can turn the company around.

But considering the trajectory that Verizon is currently on, it will take a miracle.

If you are searching for a job in this very tough economic environment, I feel very badly for you.

We are being told that 30 percent of all job postings are fake, and competition for any decent jobs that are available has become extremely fierce.

In the old days, having a college degree would give you an edge, but now that is a lot less true than it once was…

College graduates may be losing their edge in the labor market, as the unemployment gap between them and workers with only high school degrees has narrowed and reached its lowest level in decades, according to a new report.

The Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland analyzed unemployment trends for high school and college graduates between the ages of 22 and 27, as high school graduates have typically experienced relatively higher levels of unemployment.

The Cleveland Fed economists found that the unemployment gap has continually declined since the 2008 financial crisis and recently reached its lowest level since the late 1970s.

In September, 25 percent of all unemployed Americans actually had a college degree.

Things are particularly tough for new graduates.

As I discussed the other day, Nikki Haley’s son says that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to land a job yet.

How can anyone spin that to make it sound good?

It can’t be done.

We have a giant mess on our hands, and more businesses are going belly up with each passing day.

In fact, a restaurant chain that had been in business for 88 years just closed their final 8 locations…

Another family restaurant chain has abruptly closed all of its locations for good.

K&W Cafeteria — an 88-year-old institution across North Carolina and Virginia — closed its final eight restaurants on December 1, marking the end of a dining tradition generations grew up with.

‘It is with a heavy heart that we share this news,’ the owners posted on Facebook.

When I first started writing about America’s “restaurant apocalypse”, some of the skeptics thought that I was exaggerating.

Of course nobody thinks that I am exaggerating now because thousands of locations have been getting permanently shuttered.

U.S. manufacturing has fallen on hard times too.

In fact, the Institute for Supply Management is telling us that U.S. manufacturing activity has now fallen for nine months in a row…

American manufacturing contracted for the ninth straight month, a survey showed, as uncertainty tied to ever-changing tariffs and a historic government shutdown weighed on business.

A closely followed manufacturing index fell to a four-month low of 48.2% in November from 48.7% in the prior month, the Institute for Supply Management said Monday. Any number below 50% signals contraction.

As I have been detailing for weeks, just about every single economic number indicates that a major economic downturn is upon us.

Some pundits are using the term “recession” to describe what is ahead, but the truth is that this crisis isn’t just going to be another bump in the road.

As I stated yesterday, we are more than 104 trillion dollars in debt.

I hope that the “prosperity” that we enjoyed during the past several decades was worth it, because now we are going to pay a very great price.

Of course it isn’t just us.

As Glenn Beck has aptly pointed out, this is the first time in world history when every major civilization is simultaneously facing a historic debt crisis…

“For the FIRST time in recorded history, EVERY major civilization—America, China, Europe, Japan—is hitting the absolute peak of the debt super-cycle AT THE EXACT SAME MOMENT. There is no rising power waiting in the wings like there always has been. When this resets, it won’t be regional. It will be global, systemic, and sudden.”

I have never had anyone explain to me in rational terms how this is going to end well.

We all know that the system is going to collapse.

It is just a matter of when it will happen.

Considering how rapidly things are starting to unravel in 2025, it may happen a lot sooner than many people think.

Do You Agree That It Takes A Minimum Of $136,500 A Year For A Family Of Four To Afford The Basics In America Today?

December 3, 2025December 3, 2025 by Michael

If your household is struggling to pay the bills right now, you are far from alone. The cost of just about everything that Americans regularly spend money on has been soaring, and as a result our standard of living has been steadily declining. Over the past couple of decades, our politicians borrowed and spent trillions of dollars that we did not have, the Federal Reserve shoveled giant mountains of money that were created out of thin air into the financial system, and our leaders treated the reserve currency of the world like toilet paper. So now the value of the U.S. dollar has gone way down, our paychecks don’t stretch as far as they once did, and most of the country is barely scraping by from month to month.

This week, an excellent article that was authored by Michael Green is getting a ton of attention. In that article, he calculates that a “basic needs budget” for a typical family of four in the United States would come to a grand total of $136,500 a year…

I wanted to see what would happen if I ignored the official stats and simply calculated the cost of existing. I built a Basic Needs budget for a family of four (two earners, two kids). No vacations, no Netflix, no luxury. Just the “Participation Tickets” required to hold a job and raise kids in 2024.

Using conservative, national-average data:

Childcare: $32,773

Housing: $23,267

Food: $14,717

Transportation: $14,828

Healthcare: $10,567

Other essentials: $21,857

Required net income: $118,009

Add federal, state, and FICA taxes of roughly $18,500, and you arrive at a required gross income of $136,500.

Do you agree with these figures?

I very much appreciate the effort that he put into his analysis, but I certainly do not agree with some of these numbers.

The national average for child care for a single child is about $975 per month. So for two children for an entire year the total should be less than $24,000.

So we can eliminate more than $8,000 from his budget right there.

And if your kids are old enough, you may not need to spend anything on child care at all.

On the other hand, I think that his figure for housing is too low.

The average home price in the U.S. now exceeds $500,000.

Taking out a $500,000 mortgage at 6.2 percent would result in a mortgage payment of $3,047.41 a month.

So Green’s budget completely rules out owning a typical home in many areas of the country.

Instead, it would allow for renting a two bedroom apartment which averages about $1,800 a month right now.

And I think that Green’s figure for health care is also too low.

The average monthly health insurance premium for a family of four in the U.S. now exceeds $2,000.

Yes, a hypothetical family of four could save money by going without health insurance or by living in a van, but that is not the point.

It is time for everyone to admit that a middle class lifestyle has become out of reach for a majority of American households.

Green’s analysis may not be entirely accurate, but others have come up with similar results.

For example, the Economic Policy Institute has determined that it takes approximately $123,000 a year for a family of four to live a middle class lifestyle in Essex County, New Jersey…

The Economic Policy Institute offers a Family Budget Calculator. It says a family of four would need about $123,000 a year to attain “a modest yet adequate standard of living” in Essex County, New Jersey.

And Investopedia has determined that it now takes approximately 5 million dollars to live the American Dream over the course of a lifetime…

Investopedia, the financial journalism site, uses similar calculations to estimate how much emergency savings a family should hold (about $35,000, on average) and the lifetime costs of fulfilling the American dream (roughly $5 million).

Needless to say, most Americans don’t have a prayer of making 5 million dollars during their lifetimes.

And the cost of just about everything is only going to go even higher.

Right now, our rapidly rising power bills are making a lot of headlines…

The numbers are as stark as a slate-grey November sky. Household spending on electricity for heating is expected to rise 10% this winter to more than $1,200. Utilities requested a $29 billion rate increase in the first half of 2025, double last year’s rate rise. Residential electricity rates rose 6.6% year-on-year as of June 2025, according to Utility Dive, after already rising nearly 30% between 2021 and 2024.

Meanwhile, the job market just continues to get even tighter.

On Wednesday, ADP reported that the U.S. economy lost 32,000 jobs last month…

The U.S. labor market slowdown intensified in November as private companies cut 32,000 workers, with small businesses hit the hardest, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday.
Larger businesses, entailing companies with 50 or more employees, actually reported a net gain of 90,000 workers. However, establishments with fewer than 50 saw a decline of 120,000.
The ADP report is the last monthly jobs picture the Federal Reserve gets before it meets Dec. 9-10.

Most experts were expecting that the ADP report would show that the U.S. economy actually added jobs last month.

So this is really bad news.

The three month average has now plunged into negative territory.

This is the very first time that has happened since August 2020.

Back then, we had a pandemic to blame for our problems.

What is our excuse this time around?

It is easy to say that unemployed people should just go out and “get a job”, but the truth is that even the mainstream media is admitting that “job hunting feels impossible right now”…

You’re not imagining it. Job hunting feels impossible right now because it actually is. You’ve polished your resume, customized cover letters and applied for hundreds of roles only to hear nothing back.

I know that many of you can identify with that.

Month after month, a lot of unemployed workers have been unable to find anything no matter how hard they have tried.

It can be absolutely soul crushing what you are in that position.

There is speculation that the latest ADP report may make it more likely that the Fed will give us another interest rate cut…

But Kenwell said the latest report should help push America’s central bank to cut interest rates for the third time in 2025.

The Fed, currently led by chair Jerome Powell, has a dual mandate to lower inflation and increase job growth through the government’s borrowing rates.

Rates are used as a blunt tool, swinging higher when prices climb, and plunging when unemployment accelerates.

Hopefully the Fed will do the right thing.

But a quarter point rate cut is not going to significantly alter our current economic trajectory.

We aren’t just heading into another recession.

We are heading into a full-blown meltdown.

When you total up all forms of debt in this country, we are more than 104 trillion dollars in the red.

It is the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and now a time of reckoning is here.

So please try to enjoy these “bad times” while we still have them, because it won’t be too long before things get a whole lot worse.

U.S. Businesses Are Going Bankrupt At An Absolutely Blistering Pace

December 2, 2025December 2, 2025 by Michael

Why is the number of business bankruptcies in the United States rising so rapidly? It isn’t because the economy is doing well. Every day there are more news stories about businesses that have failed, and this is clearly reflected in the numbers that I am about to share with you. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession, and if our economic troubles continue to accelerate during the months ahead 2026 is going to be a very messy year.

Earlier today I came across an article which explained that the number of small businesses that are filing for Subchapter V bankruptcy has set a brand new record high in 2025…

A six-year-old federal program designed to help the smallest American businesses cut debt and get a fresh start has set a record for the number of cases filed, court data show.

More than 2,200 people and small firms filed bankruptcy this year under the so-called Subchapter V rules, which make it cheaper and faster to win relief from creditors, according to data provider Epiq Bankruptcy Analytics.

“Creditors are just breathing down their necks,” said Carol Fox, a court-approved trustee who oversees more than two dozen cases filed in Southern Florida.

This is really bad news.

Small businesses are traditionally the primary engine for job growth in this country.

So the fact that so many of them are going belly up is not a good sign at all.

Meanwhile, large businesses are going bankrupt at a very alarming pace as well.

In fact, through the first seven months of this year the number of corporate bankruptcies in the United States was at the highest level that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic…

The U.S. saw a sharp increase in corporate bankruptcy filings in July, according to a recent report, reaching a post-COVID peak and placing 2025 on track to surpass last year’s total.

S&P Global Market Intelligence, the research and data arm of the credit-rating agency, found that filings by large public and private companies rose to 71 last month from 66 in June, marking the highest monthly tally since July 2020. So far in 2025, meanwhile, the total of 446 bankruptcy filings is the highest for this seven-month stretch since 2010.

When large numbers of businesses fail, hiring slows down and we typically see large scale layoffs all over the nation.

And that is precisely what is happening.

During a recent interview with Fox News, Nikki Haley’s son admitted that not a single one of his friends that recently graduated from college has been able to get a job…

“My friend group all graduated with great degrees in great schools, and not one of them has a job – not one. So it’s frustrating because they did everything that they were supposed to do. They put in the time, the effort, the money to get educated, and they don’t have a job to show for it. They have to compete with foreign workers who are willing to work for half their salary and AI, which is a supercomputer, so how can we compete with that?“

I was stunned when I read that.

I knew that things were bad for our recent college graduates, but I didn’t realize that they were this bad.

The job market is freezing up, and this is especially true for entry-level workers.

At this stage, AI is already doing much of the work that vast numbers of entry-level workers once did.

And a recent MIT study concluded that current AI technology could potentially replace 20 million more American workers…

In the midst of a soggy job market, there’s been a lengthy debate over whether contemporary AI is actually replacing workers — or just providing bosses with an excuse to lay off certain employees and offload their responsibilities onto the ones who remain.

The answer isn’t clear, but a new study out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is sure to add fuel to the fire. Analyzing 151 million American workers, the researchers calculated that today’s AI systems are already mature enough to automate the tasks of more than 20 million American workers, or 11.7 percent of the entire labor force, if they were fully deployed across the country.

So what is going to happen when AI and robots can do almost everything more efficiently than human workers can?

What will we be needed for then?

Our society is changing at a pace that is difficult to comprehend.

One tech worker that got laid off by Meta earlier this year still has not been able to find work nine months later…

When I got hired at Meta in 2020, it was life-changing for me as a single mom. It represented safety and stability — a place to work hard at and retire from.

So, when I was let go in February in a round of layoffs aimed at “low-performers,” it felt like a punch in the gut.

Nine months later, my severance and savings have run dry, I’m struggling to find a tech job, and I feel that the low-performer “label” is part of the reason. I’m no longer the same happy-go-lucky person I used to be, applying for jobs with excitement.

A few years ago, it was pretty easy to find a good paying job.

But now things have completely flipped around.

And even many of those that are employed are not making enough to be able to afford a decent lifestyle…

An American retail worker earns 51.6 percent less than the amount required to afford a typical rental apartment, real estate brokerage Redfin said in a statement released on Nov. 26.

“The typical retail worker in America earns $34,436 per year,” the company said.

“A renter would need to earn $71,172 to afford the typical apartment, which costs $1,779 per month.”

If you don’t make enough money to be able to pay rent on an apartment, what are your options?

I suppose that you could move in with your parents or live in a van down by the river.

By the way, there are millions of young Americans that are living in cars, vans and RVs today. This is something that I have discussed extensively in previous articles.

Our standard of living is being eviscerated.

Meanwhile, those at the very top of the economic pyramid have more money than they know what to do with…

The top 1% have seen their wealth increase by $4 trillion over the past year, an increase of 7%. Their wealth hit a record $52 trillion in the second quarter.

The top 0.1% saw their wealth grow by 10% over the past year. Since the pandemic, the top 0.1%, or those with a net worth of at least $46 million, have seen their total wealth nearly double to over $23 trillion.

I keep trying to warn everyone that this is not going to end well.

There are millions upon millions of Americans that cannot make a decent living no matter how hard they try.

And the same thing is happening in countless other nations all over the globe.

I have never seen so much economic frustration among young adults as I am seeing right now.

Their anger is percolating just under the surface, and it won’t be too long before it explodes.

Extreme Carnage! Crypto Investors Lose $800,000,000,000 In Just 1 Month As Forced Liquidations Reset The Market

December 1, 2025December 1, 2025 by Michael

It’s a bloodbath out there right now. On Monday alone, crypto investors lost about $200,000,000,000 in just 24 hours. Overall, crypto investors have lost about $800,000,000,000 over the last month. In this article, I want to try to explain why this is happening and what is coming next. You see, the truth is that the era of easy money is ending. For a long time, investors could borrow yen at ultra-low interest rates and use that money to purchase cryptocurrency and make amazing returns. But now Japanese bond yields are going nuts and all variations of the “yen carry trade” are starting to unwind…

For years, a lucrative trade for global investors has been to borrow yen to buy high-yielding assets like US stocks, or in this case, cryptocurrencies. Interest rates in Japan had been low or at zero, making borrowing yen relatively cheap and creating a sweet opportunity for traders. It’s known as the “yen carry trade.”

However, the Bank of Japan has signaled it could raise interest rates, in part to address stubborn inflation, continuing a recent shift away from years of ultra-low rates. Yields on benchmark Japanese bonds just hit their highest level since 2008, signaling expectations for higher rates. As rates in Japan rise, it can boost the value of the yen. That makes borrowing yen less affordable, eating into the profitability of the carry trade.

That could pressure traders to sell their bitcoin and stocks now to repay their loans and prevent the risk of further losses. In addition to a sell-off, it could lead to less cash flowing into crypto and stocks.

On Sunday night, Japanese bond yields spiked again, and this caused another round of panic for crypto investors.

And we all saw what happened once the selling started.

For years, crypto investors laughed at the rest of us as they enjoyed the ride up as the bubble inflated.

But now the bubble is bursting, and the ride down is going to be far more messy that the ride up due to the extreme leverage in the cryptocurrency market…

Ben Emons, founder and CIO of Fedwatch Advisors, said that people remain “nervous” following the recent bitcoin sell-off, adding that Monday’s reversal has broadly been attributed to a $400 million exchange liquidation.

Speaking with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Monday, he highlighted the sizable leverage across bitcoin exchanges, which is up to 200x in some instances. With an estimated $787 billion outstanding leverage in perpetual crypto futures, against some $135 billion outstanding in ETFs, “you can do the math,” Emons said.

“There is still a lot of leverage in bitcoin out there. We can expect to some more of these liquidations if bitcoin prices don’t get off the lows from here,” he added.

As long as crypto prices just kept going up, everything was going to be fine.

But now that crypto prices are going down, we are seeing wave after wave of forced liquidations.

Yet another wave of forced liquidations is what pushed crypto prices down so rapidly on Monday.

At this point, things are so bad that even the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin may soon be forced to start selling…

The biggest corporate holder of bitcoin has announced a U.S. dollar dividend reserve of more than $1 billion, days after its top executive laid out what might force the company to sell some of its $56 billion in bitcoin holdings.

Strategy, formerly known as MicroStrategy, announced Monday that it will establish a $1.44 billion reserve “to support the payment of dividends on its preferred stock and interest on its outstanding indebtedness.” The reserve was funded by sales of its Class A common stock, and Strategy plans to keep sufficient reserves to fund its dividends for at least 12 months.

What we are witnessing is not just a temporary correction.

As Shanaka Anslem Perera laid out very clearly in an excellent social media post, the entire system is being forced to reset because Japanese bond yields are soaring. I have reproduced his entire social media post below…

JAPAN JUST KILLED THE GLOBAL MONEY PRINTER AND NOBODY NOTICED

The most dangerous number in finance right now is 1.71%.

That’s Japan’s 10-year bond yield. Highest since 2008. Here’s why your retirement just got obliterated:

For 30 years, Japan printed infinity money at 0% rates and exported it worldwide. $3.4 trillion flowed into US Treasuries, European debt, emerging markets. This invisible bid kept YOUR mortgage cheap, YOUR stocks inflated, YOUR government solvent.

November 10th, 2025: The bid disappeared.

Japan’s yield hit 1.71%. They’re pumping $110 billion stimulus into their economy while debt sits at 263% of GDP. The math just became impossible. At 1.7% rates, Japan pays $27 billion MORE in interest. Every. Single. Year.

Here’s the extinction event nobody sees coming:

Japanese pension funds are pulling $1.1 trillion OUT of US Treasuries right now because keeping money in America LOSES them money after hedging costs. The largest foreign buyer of American debt is becoming a seller.

When Japan stops buying, interest rates don’t stay flat. They explode. US 10-year yields will jump 40 basis points minimum from flow dynamics alone. Your 7% mortgage becomes 8%. Corporate debt refinancing costs spike 60%. Zombie companies holding $3 trillion in junk bonds start defaulting in waves.

The yen carry trade just reversed. $1.2 trillion in borrowed yen funding crypto, stocks, emerging markets must unwind. Every hedge fund, every momentum trade, every leveraged bet built on free Japanese money is getting margin called simultaneously.

This breaks in three places:

Stock valuations were built for 2% bond yields forever. At 3.5% yields, the S&P 500 fair value drops 35%. Emerging market currencies collapse without Japanese capital inflows. Europe’s debt crisis returns because Italy and Spain lose their silent buyer.

December 18th the Bank of Japan meets. 50% chance they hike again. If they do, sell everything not nailed down.

Your 401k doesn’t price this in yet. The Fed can’t stop this. No central bank can.

The world’s biggest piggy bank just cracked open and the money is flowing backwards.

Position accordingly or get destroyed.

When he originally posted that, the yield on 10 year Japanese bonds was 1.71 percent.

Now it has risen to 1.85 percent, which is the highest level since 2008…

Japan just sent a shock through global markets.

The country’s 10-year government bond yield jumped to 1.85%, its highest level since 2008, marking a major break from the ultra-low rate environment Japan has lived in for decades. The move is already being called one of the most important signals for global liquidity heading into 2026.

To say that we are potentially facing a major liquidity crisis would be a massive understatement.

For the moment, it is crypto prices that are plunging, but lots of yen was borrowed to buy stocks too.

So let’s keep a very close eye on U.S. stock prices in the days ahead.

Meanwhile, the price of silver continues to go parabolic.

As I write this article, the price of silver is sitting at $58.40 an ounce.

Will it hit 60 dollars this week?

There are some analysts that are now openly speculating about when silver will hit 80 dollars an ounce.

Earlier today, I heard from a reader that is having a truly exceptional year because he held on to his silver all this time.

As I mentioned yesterday, if you purchased silver in December 2008 it has more than quintupled in value.

But many of those that got in at the peak of the cryptocurrency bubble are being completely and utterly wiped out.

History has shown us that gold and silver will retain their value over time.

History has also shown us that every irrational financial bubble eventually comes to an end.

The Price Of Silver Goes Parabolic As The Cost Of Living Spikes And Mass Layoffs Occur All Over The Nation

November 30, 2025November 30, 2025 by Michael

For a long time we were warned that when the financial system finally started melting down, the price of silver would explode. It appears that those that predicted this were quite prescient. The yen carry trade is unwinding, more than a trillion dollars in cryptocurrency wealth has been wiped out, stocks and bonds have been extremely volatile, and the U.S. dollar has plummeted in value since the beginning of the year. Meanwhile, the price of silver has nearly doubled since January 1st…

In just 11 months, the price of silver has almost doubled. While gold stole the spotlight in 2025, it is silver that has gained more than the yellow metal. Compared to gold, silver has moved sharply higher over the last 12 months.

Over the last year, gold has increased by 59%, while silver has jumped nearly 87%. Even in 2025, so far gold has gained 60%, while silver is already up 94%.

As I write this article, silver is trading at $57.16 an ounce.

I never imagined that the price of silver would go so high in 2025, but here we are.

When there is a lot of uncertainty in the air, demand for silver tends to go up.

And right now there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the air.

Just about everyone expected that the price of silver would rise, but we have never seen anything quite like this.

It is being reported that the vaults in London are rapidly emptying…

Yet, London’s vaults have been emptying rapidly for the past few years. In June 2022, the London Bullion Market Association held 31,023 metric tons of silver. By March 2025, volumes had fallen by around a third to 22,126 metric tons — its lowest point in years.

“What isn’t necessarily so visible to people is what’s happening in the vaults,” said O’Connell. “And that had reached a point where there was basically there was no available metal left in London.”

On the other side of the planet, China’s physical stockpile of silver has hit a 10 year low.

This is a huge red flag, but most people don’t seem to realize this.

Global supplies of physical silver are becoming extremely tight, and this has been creating quite a bit of chaos…

“Some people were having to transport silver by plane rather than on cargo ships to meet delivery demand,” Paul Syms, head of EMEA ETF Fixed Income and commodity product management at Invesco, told CNBC.

Of course this is just the beginning.

Silver is used in thousands of different products, and this includes electric vehicles.

If current trends continue, demand for physical silver is only going to accelerate…

“At the moment, a standard electric vehicle has about 25 grams of silver, maybe the larger EVs have 50 grams of silver as part of their components,” said Syms.

“If we move into these solid-state silver batteries, each electric vehicle might require a kilo or more of silver,” he added.

And with silver having a high thermal conductivity and a higher electrical conductivity than other metals, as well as increasing demand for EVs, AI and renewables, the metal’s value is likely to keep shining.

There is no telling how high the price of silver could eventually go.

But that is not good news for the economy.

In fact, that is really bad news for the economy.

Investors tend to flock to silver when things are not going well.

And this year the value of the dollar has been tanking, our standard of living has been going down, and the cost of just about everything has been going up.

For example, the data center boom has been one of the primary forces that has driven power bills into unprecedented territory…

The data centers that power the artificial intelligence revolution are driving up electricity prices for households — and price relief may not be coming anytime soon, according to energy experts.

Residential retail electricity prices in September were up 7.4%, to about 18 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the most recent data from the Energy Information Administration.

It is being projected that thousands more data centers will be constructed in the U.S. by the year 2030.

So what we are experiencing now is just the tip of the iceberg.

Health care costs are also soaring, and this is particularly true for those that are on Obamacare…

Americans are expected to see skyrocketing health care prices as the open enrollment period for insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace begins on Saturday.

About 24 million people buy health insurance through the marketplace, the majority of whom used to receive tax credits to lower the monthly price of insurance.

Without credits, the monthly cost could rise by 114% on average, according to health research nonprofit KFF. This could mean an extra $1,000 a year, and in some cases much more.

One family in Utah could see their monthly premiums go from 495 dollars a month to 2,168 dollars a month…

Stacy Cox and her husband, who are small business owners in Utah, were paying $495 (£376) a month for health insurance.

Ms Cox said that without the tax credits, their monthly premiums are estimated to rise to $2,168, a 338% increase.

“It’s horrific to actually see real numbers,” she said.

Who can afford to pay 2,000 dollars a month for health insurance?

I don’t know anyone that could afford to do that.

Of course vast numbers of U.S. workers will soon be without any health coverage at all because they are losing their jobs.

FedEx was once one of America’s hottest companies, but now hundreds of workers will be getting the axe...

America’s hottest corporate trend is layoffs.

FedEx, America’s second-largest shipping and logistics company, is shutting down a logistics operation in Coppell, Texas, and laying off nearly 900 workers, according to a WARN notice filed with the Texas Workforce Commission.

Hewlett-Packard is another household name that is brutally slashing workers…

A household name in tech is the latest to announce a wave of layoffs.

On Tuesday, Hewlett-Packard — the 86-year-old California tech giant better known as HP — said it plans to let go of between 4,000 and 6,000 employees worldwide.

That is roughly 10 percent of its workforce, with notices rolling out through 2028.

Meanwhile, stores continue to close down at a staggering pace all over the country.

American Signature operated over 120 stores and employed approximately 3,000 workers, but now it has gone belly up…

Another furniture chain has declared bankruptcy — as cash-strapped Americans hold off on home improvement projects.

On Sunday, American Signature, a 75-year-old furniture chain that operates Value City Furniture and American Signature Furniture stores, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The retailer operates more than 120 stores and employs about 3,000 people.

Day after day, we see more stories like this.

And that is because the U.S. economy really is coming apart at the seams.

What we are experiencing reminds me so much of 2008.

But of course so much has changed since that time.

If you purchased silver in December 2008 and held it until today, it has more than quintupled in value.

Amazingly, along the way there were many that accused those of us that spoke highly of silver of being wrong.

But in the end, time has revealed who was right after all.

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