The U.S. Trade War With China Officially Goes To The Next Level As Financial Markets Around The World Continue To Implode

Up until now, the U.S. trade war with China has simply been a bunch of threats and counter-threats, but now things are about to get very real.  On Friday, the first round of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods becomes official, and these tariffs are going to fundamentally alter the economic relationship between the two largest economies on the entire planet.  Over the past several decades, U.S. consumers have loved gobbling up super-cheap goods from China, and the Chinese have used many of the dollars that they have been accumulating to fund our exploding national debt.  This symbiotic relationship has been bad for the United States in a lot of ways, and something had to be done, but in the short-term this trade war is going to be enormously painful.  Sadly, most Americans are completely oblivious to what is happening.  The following comes from Bloomberg… (Read More...)

We Are Witnessing Unusual Stock Market Behavior That Is Unlike Anything That We Have Seen Since 2008

We have not seen Wall Street this jumpy since just before the great financial crisis of 2008.  As I have explained so many times before, when the waters are calm and there is low volatility, markets tend to go up.  And when the waters are choppy and volatility starts to spike, markets tend to go down.  That is why the behavior that we have been witnessing from investors during the first two quarters of 2018 is so alarming.  A high level of market turnover is often a sign of big trouble ahead, and according to Bloomberg our financial markets “are churning at the fastest rate since 2008″… (Read More...)

America’s Rapidly Accelerating Retail Apocalypse Is Being Fueled By One Enormously Painful Economic Problem

We are in the midst of the worst retail apocalypse in American history, and it seems to be getting worse with each passing month.  Many of the “experts” blame the growth of online retailers, and without a doubt online retail sales have been surging.  In fact, I sell far more through Amazon.com than I do through any other channel.  But the truth is that online retailers are not exactly taking over the world.  At this point, 91 percent of all retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar stores, and that means that online retailers only account for about 9 percent of all retail sales.  Sadly, there is a much bigger reason why thousands of retail stores are closing down and millions upon millions of square feet of retail space is now sitting empty all over America.  The mighty U.S. consumer base was once primarily made up of middle class Americans, but the middle class in America has been on a slow, steady death spiral for many years. (Read More...)

Civil Unrest Is Here: Violence Erupts In American Streets As Progressive Leaders Urge Their Followers To “Rise Up” And Prepare For A “Summer Of Rage”

On Friday, Michael Moore went on Bill Maher’s HBO show and suggested that the U.S. military would side with progressives in a civil war against Donald Trump.  You can watch Moore make these comments on YouTube right here.  The very next day, Antifa thugs violently clashed with pro-Trump conservatives that had gathered for a prayer rally on the streets of Portland, Oregon.  Flash-bang grenades were thrown by Antifa activists, the police confiscated “mace, clubs, gloves with reinforced knuckles, batons, knives and handgun clips”, and many were injured and had to be taken to the hospital.  The violence was so dramatic that some are actually calling this the first skirmish in America’s next civil war.  Last week, a shocking poll found that 31 percent of all Americans believe that there will be a civil war in America within the next five years and that 59 percent of Americans believe that Donald Trump’s opponents will resort to violence.  But after the events of this past weekend, we no longer have to wonder if civil unrest is coming to America.  Civil unrest is already here, and it is going to get much worse in the months ahead. (Read More...)

Why Are Investors Pulling Money Out Of Global Stock Funds At The Fastest Pace Since The Last Financial Crisis?

We haven’t seen anything like this since the financial crisis of 2008.  Investors are taking money out of global stock funds at a pace that we haven’t seen in 10 years, and many believe that this is a harbinger of tough times ahead.  Global stocks lost about 10 trillion dollars in value during the first half of 2018, and an even worse performance during the second half of the year will almost certainly push the global financial system into panic mode.  U.S. stocks have been relatively stable, and so most Americans are not too alarmed about what is happening just yet.  But if you look back throughout history, emerging market chaos is often an early warning signal that a major global crisis is on the horizon, and that is precisely what is happening right now.  Financial markets in emerging markets all over the planet are in the process of melting down, and the losses are becoming quite dramatic. (Read More...)

While Many On The Right Are Sleeping, Many On The Left Are Promising To Bring War To The Streets Of America

You might want to start taking the radical left seriously.  When they tell us “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” and that “this is just the beginning”, they are making threats that they intend to back up.  There have been other times in modern American history when the left has resorted to physical intimidation and violence, but I believe that what is coming is going to far surpass anything that we have ever experienced before.  Of course not everyone agrees with me.  On Monday I authored a piece about the “civil war” that is rapidly approaching, and there were some that loudly criticized me for it.  They insisted that we didn’t have anything to worry about from the left and that I was blowing things out of proportion.  As you read the rest of this article, I hope that everyone will start to see that I am not exaggerating the threat one bit.  And what we should all be able to agree on is that the radical left is super energized right now.  Just look at what happened on Tuesday.  28-year-old radical socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez absolutely crushed 10-term congressman Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary in New York.  She was outspent 18 to 1, and in normal times something like that would never happen. (Read More...)

Here It Comes – The Warnings About A “Civil War In America” Are Becoming Much Louder

Civil conflict is coming to America, and it is going to tear our nation apart. Earlier today I received an email from a good friend about the rising tide of anger and frustration that we are currently witnessing in America. After thinking about it for a few moments, I wrote back and told him that I don’t know if there is any way to stop what is coming at this point. In my entire lifetime, we have never been closer to a “civil war” in this country than we are right now. Let us work for peace, but it would be foolish to ignore the forces that are ripping the fabric of our society to shreds. In this day and age, the coming conflict will not be between two armies from specific geographical locations. Rather, it will be between groups of Americans with fundamentally different ideologies. However, just like in our first civil war, American cities will burn before it is all said and done. First there will be massive protests, then there will be widespread violence, and ultimately there will be mobs of lunatics running around smashing things, looting, stealing, killing and setting things on fire. (Read More...)

Things Just Went Nuclear In Our Trade War With China, And A Giant Shockwave Is About To Hit The U.S. Economy

It is difficult to find the words to describe just how serious America’s trade war with China is becoming.  As you will see below, the two largest economies on the entire planet are on a self-destructive course that almost seems irreversible at this point.  The only way that this trade war is going to come to a rapid conclusion is if one side is willing to totally submit and accept an extremely bitter and humiliating defeat on the global stage, and that is not likely to happen.  So in the short-term, and probably beyond that, we are going to experience a tremendous amount of economic pain.  In fact, if one wanted to create a recipe for economic disaster, it would be hard to beat having the Federal Reserve dramatically raise interest rates at the exact same time that the U.S. government is starting trade wars with all of the other major economic powers simultaneously.  Unless something drastically changes in the very near future, there is no way that the U.S. is going to be able to get through this without experiencing severe pain. (Read More...)

+ More