The Economic Collapse

Have you checked on the health of your investments lately?  If not, you may be surprised to find out where things currently stand.  As the “everything collapse” accelerates, trillions upon trillions of dollars of wealth is being wiped out.  Many that thought that they were financially set for the rest of their lives are now in panic mode as asset values rapidly crumble.  Just look at what happened to Sam Bankman-Fried.  He was worth 16 billion dollars coming into this month, and now the value of his assets has been “reduced to zero”.  In fact, when you factor in all the money that he owes to creditors, it is likely that his net worth is actually less than zero. (Read More...)

I know that things aren’t great right now, but please try to enjoy the next few days, because it appears that economic conditions could quickly get a whole lot worse after Thanksgiving.  I understand that may be difficult for many of you to hear, because we are already dealing with so much.  The worst inflation crisis in decades has been eviscerating our standard of living, major layoffs are being announced all over the nation, the housing market has started to crash, and the fallout from the collapse of FTX threatens to push over more financial dominoes in the weeks ahead.  Unfortunately, now we potentially have another major problem to add to the list.  One of the largest rail unions just voted down a tentative agreement, and so now a national railroad strike in December is a very real possibility… (Read More...)

I am extremely concerned by what I am seeing in the housing market.  When the Federal Reserve decided that it was going to start aggressively hiking interest rates, it was obvious that there would be a housing crash.  I repeatedly warned my readers that prices would start declining and that home sales would fall precipitously.  Needless to say, that is precisely what has happened.  In fact, last week we learned that home sales have now dropped for nine months in a row… (Read More...)

If you have been to the grocery store lately, you have probably noticed that meat prices have gone up dramatically.  Unfortunately, we are being warned that things could get much worse in 2023.  All over the northern hemisphere, cattle ranchers are dramatically reducing the size of their herds due to relentless drought conditions.  Meanwhile, the bird flu has already resulted in the deaths of nearly 100 million chickens and turkeys in the United States and Europe.  On top of everything else, progressive politicians throughout the western world continue to be absolutely determined to get us all to start eating less meat. (Read More...)

Have you noticed that the pace of layoff announcements has gotten rather fast and furious lately?  Many of the biggest companies in the entire country are now conducting mass firings, and this is reminding many analysts of what we witnessed back in 2008.  During the “Great Recession”, millions of Americans ultimately lost their jobs.  Will we see a similar thing happen this time around?  Let’s hope not, but right now the signs are not encouraging.  The following are 10 major layoff announcements which have all happened within the past 10 days… (Read More...)

Will this be the last “somewhat normal” holiday season for U.S. retailers?  Normally, the holiday season is the most profitable time of the year for our retailers, but it has become clear that holiday spending is going to be way down in 2022.  Meanwhile, there are a couple of long-term trends that won’t be going away any time soon that are squeezing the life out of the industry from both sides.  If those long-term trends cannot be reversed, we will soon see a lot more decaying buildings with boarded up windows where thriving retail establishments once existed.  The health of the retail industry is critical to the health of the overall U.S. economy, and right now the outlook for the future of the industry is not good. (Read More...)

We never seem to learn from our mistakes.  Just before the financial markets crashed and the economy plunged into a horrifying recession in 2008, U.S. consumers went on a debt binge of epic proportions.  Mortgage debt, auto loan debt and credit card debt all skyrocketed, and so when the economy finally crashed all of a sudden there were millions of Americans drowning in bills that they were unable to pay.  Well, now it is happening again.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, during the third quarter of 2022 household debt increased at the fastest pace that we have seen since the first quarter of 2008… (Read More...)

The global energy crisis has entered an alarming new stage.  In recent months, natural gas prices have risen to absurd heights and supplies have been getting tighter and tighter all over the planet.  But I did not expect that we would see any rationing yet.  It had been my opinion that we could possibly see some limited rationing once we reached the worst moments of the winter, but apparently things are worse than I thought.  In fact, when I heard about what is going on in Pakistan right now I was absolutely horrified… (Read More...)