The Economic Collapse

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...)

Sometimes I think that we truly are living in Bizarro World.  We just witnessed one of the most horrible financial disasters in years, and economic activity is dramatically slowing down all around us, but Wall Street is celebrating.  In fact, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 1,200 points on Thursday.  Despite everything else that is going wrong, investors were absolutely giddy because the inflation number that was just released was slightly lower than what most experts were anticipating.  A lot of people seem to think that this could mean that the Federal Reserve will soon stop hiking interest rates, but that isn’t going to happen.  Jerome Powell continues to insist that rates will keep going higher until the official inflation rate is back down to about 2 percent, and we are a long, long way from there. (Read More...)

Another domino has fallen.  We are being told that the failure of FTX “would be kind of like a Lehman Brothers event”, and at this hour FTX is on the verge of collapse.  There was a chance that FTX could survive when Binance announced a shocking rescue plan, but after looking at the books Binance has reportedly backed out of the deal.  As a result, investors that have poured billions into FTX are likely to lose everything.  And many believe that FTX’s heavily promoted token, FTT, is going to zero.  If you have been waiting for a financial disaster to happen, this certainly qualifies.  A lot of people that were “crypto millionaires” not too long ago are going to be totally wiped out. (Read More...)

This holiday season is certainly going to be far less jolly for millions of Americans.  Yesterday, I detailed 11 signs that economic activity in the U.S. is rapidly declining.  Well, today we have gotten even more bad news.  Thanks to deteriorating economic conditions, Americans plan to buy a lot less stuff this holiday season.  In fact, one survey that was just released has discovered that approximately half the country plans to “buy fewer things” this year… (Read More...)