The Economic Collapse

It was nice while it lasted.  Nations all over the globe had until August 1st to agree to a trade deal with the Trump administration.  Some of them made deals, but most of them did not.  Those that did not will now be hit by a “wall of tariffs”, with individual rates being determined at the discretion of the White House.  So how will this “wall of tariffs” affect the U.S. economy?  Ultimately, it is going to take some time for this drama to fully play out.  The products that will be in our stores this month were brought into our country well before deadline day.  The products that will be brought into our country after deadline day will start showing up in our stores during the months ahead, and that is when we could start experiencing price hikes on certain things. (Read More...)

Oops, they did it again.  Even though the housing market has been in a depressed state for an extended period of time and even though economic conditions are slowing down all over the country, the Federal Reserve has once again refused to lower interest rates.  What in the world are they thinking?  I certainly share President Trump’s frustration with the Fed.  Central banks all over the world have been cutting rates, but our central bank just won’t budge.  Have Fed officials gone completely insane, or are they purposely trying to destroy the U.S. economy? (Read More...)

Did you know that U.S. households are carrying $1.18 trillion in credit card debt? Considering the fact that the average rate of interest on credit card balances is now over 20 percent, that is not good news at all. Sadly, most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month in this very harsh economic environment, and turning to credit cards for some relief can be extremely tempting. A thousand dollar credit card balance can turn into four or five thousand dollars in the blink of an eye, and once you get that deep into the hole it can be very difficult to ever dig yourself out. Of course if you end up losing your job or having a major medical emergency, that can be enough to push you completely over the edge financially. Today, that is happening to an alarming number of Americans. (Read More...)

If you want to get a really good indication of where the U.S. economy is heading, just look at what is happening in Las Vegas.  During good times, hotel occupancy rates are very high and lots of money is thrown around in the casinos.  But when times are getting tough, less people head to Las Vegas and those that do go tend to be tighter with their money.  We saw a perfect example of this during the Great Recession.  Once the global financial crisis hit, gambling revenues in Las Vegas plunged.  The following comes from an ABC News article that was published in 2009… (Read More...)

How much flooding is it going to take before people realize that something truly out of the ordinary is going on?  This month, we have been hammered by “1,000 year storms” and “1,000 year floods” over and over again.  In a previous article, I documented 13 catastrophic flooding events in just 13 days.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t the end of it.  In fact, we were just hit by 4 more catastrophic flooding events in just 48 hours.  In the entire history of our country, we have never seen anything like we have witnessed this month.  Every region of the U.S. has been repeatedly hit by major flooding, and there seems to be no end in sight. (Read More...)

The birth rate in the United States just keeps setting one dismal record after another.  In fact, according to the CDC it just dropped to the lowest level ever recorded.  We are literally not even replacing ourselves, and that has all sorts of implications for our future.  For instance, if we don’t produce enough offspring, there simply will not be enough workers to support Social Security and Medicare and those programs will inevitably collapse.  A society with lots of old people and relatively few young people will result in poverty for everyone.  So the truth is that the birth rate crisis is going to ultimately affect all of us. (Read More...)

If you ask 1,000 different Americans about the state of the U.S. economy, you will get 1,000 different opinions.  But what is the truth?  In this article, I am going to share information with you that is indisputable.  I like to examine things from an analytical point of view, and so I always want to know what the cold, hard numbers are telling me.  And what the cold, hard numbers are telling me is very troubling.  The following are 10 economic facts that nobody can deny… (Read More...)

You don’t have to convince insurance companies that 2025 has been “the year of the disaster”, because they have been getting pummeled by record high losses. As you will see below, there have been tens of thousands of wildfires in the U.S. so far this year, and we just keep getting hit by one “1,000 year storm” after another.  Nobody can deny that what we have been experiencing is not even close to normal.  Of course if someone actually did want to try to make the argument that “everything is fine”, that individual would have to explain why insurance companies are facing “record-high global insurance losses” from the first six months of this year… (Read More...)