The Economic Collapse

This is my rebuttal to those in the federal government and elsewhere that are attempting to claim that the job market is in good shape.  No matter how many workers get laid off, the Bureau of Labor Statistics always seems to find a way to post a positive jobs number each month.  We were told that the U.S. economy somehow added 256,000 jobs in November even though Challenger, Gray & Christmas determined that the number of layoffs in November 2022 was actually 417 percent higher than it was during the same month a year earlier.  And even though the tsunami of layoffs continued in December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics is telling us that the U.S. economy somehow added 223,000 jobs last month.  It is almost as if there is a certain number that the BLS refuses to go below.  For each of the last five months, the number of jobs that the U.S. has “added” has miraculously come in between 200,000 and 300,000 each time.  But meanwhile large companies all over America have been laying off workers at a staggering rate. (Read More...)

How bad do things have to get before people start realizing that we are in the midst of a full-blown economic crisis?  The “experts” on television are endlessly debating about whether or not we are going to have a “recession” this year, and meanwhile economic activity is imploding all around us.  The number of homes being sold in this country each month has already fallen by a third.  The number of job cuts in November was 417 percent higher than it was during the same month a year earlier, and at this point even Amazon is laying off thousands of workers.  The Federal Reserve has declared war on inflation, but prices continue to spiral out of control.  In fact, vegetables are 80 percent more expensive now than they were 12 months ago.  Meanwhile, the financial markets continue to plunge.  A third of the value of the Nasdaq has already been wiped out, and more than two-thirds of the value of all cryptocurrencies is already gone. (Read More...)

A lot of people tend to use the phrase “here we go” when they think that something really good is about to happen, and others tend to use it when they think that something really bad is about to happen.  Needless to say, in this case I am using the phrase “here we go” as my overall theme for 2023 because I believe that we are going to be facing a really rough year.  I expect that so many of the trends that have been percolating throughout 2022 will greatly accelerate over the next 12 months.  So if you were not pleased with 2022, it is likely that you are really not going to enjoy what is ahead of us in 2023. (Read More...)

I hope that I am wrong about our immediate economic future, and I hope that all of the other respected voices that are warning of economic doom in 2023 are wrong too.  It would be wonderful if things turn in a positive direction at some point during the next 12 months and 2023 turns out to be a year of peace and prosperity for the entire world.  Of course virtually nobody is expecting the year to start well.  As I discussed yesterday, there is a growing consensus among the “experts” that the months ahead will be quite rough.  But even though it has become exceedingly obvious that short-term economic conditions will not be good, some optimists are still trying to put a positive spin on things.  For example, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi is trying to convince us that we will only have to endure a “slowcession” before things finally turn around… (Read More...)

There is a growing consensus that 2023 is going to be a miserable year for the U.S. economy and for the global economy as a whole.  In fact, in all the years that I have been writing I have never seen so many big names on Wall Street be so incredibly pessimistic about the coming year.  Of course much of that pessimism is due to the fact that 2022 went so poorly.  The cryptocurrency industry imploded, trillions of dollars in stock market wealth evaporated, inflation became a major problem all over the industrialized world, and a new housing crash suddenly erupted.  Considering all of the pain that we have experienced over the past 12 months, it is only natural for the experts to have a negative view of 2023.  The following are 11 ominous warnings that they have issued for the year ahead… (Read More...)

It amazes me that so many people still cannot understand what is happening.  2022 was supposedly going to be a year when America entered a new golden age of prosperity, but that didn’t happen.  Instead, it was a complete and utter disaster.  Stock prices fell by the most that we have seen since 2008, the cryptocurrency industry came apart at the seams, inflation soared to absurd heights, and home sales just kept declining all throughout the year.  Without a doubt, 2022 represented a major turning point.  Americans have already collectively lost trillions of dollars, and many experts are telling us that 2023 will be even worse. (Read More...)

The Federal Reserve giveth, and the Federal Reserve taketh away.  In a desperate attempt to help the U.S. economy recover from the horrific economic crisis of 2008 and 2009, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor and kept them at or near the floor until 2022.  During that same time period, the Fed also created trillions of dollars out of thin air and pumped it into the financial system.  All of this new money had to go somewhere, and it created colossal financial bubbles that were unlike anything we had ever seen before.  There were a few voices that were warning that all of this foolishness would end very badly, but those voices were mostly drowned out by those that were super happy that asset values were absolutely exploding.  The Fed had essentially created the ultimate “get rich quick scheme”, and countless Americans were more than happy to take advantage of it. (Read More...)

I suppose that this is a fitting way to end the year.  2022 has been a year of war, plagues, natural disasters, shortages and severe economic troubles, but up until this month we had not been able to add “an apocalyptic winter storm” to the list yet.  Unfortunately, what we have just been through over the last week definitely qualifies.  A “monster storm” that covered almost the entire country at one point brought blizzard conditions to much of the U.S. over the past several days.  Temperatures dipped down to minus 50 degrees in some areas, and extremely high winds and heavy snow combined to create truly nightmarish conditions in certain cities.  For example, we are being told that this was the “most devastating storm in Buffalo’s long storied history”… (Read More...)