If We Are Experiencing Severe Shortages Now, How Bad Will Things Get When The Economy Starts Tanking Again?

Inflation and shortages are the two big stories for the U.S. economy this week.  In recent days I have done multiple articles about inflation, and so today I want to focus on the widespread shortages that we are currently witnessing.  At this moment, the U.S. economy is experiencing more shortages than it did at any point during 2020.  I know that statement sounds quite outlandish, but it is true.  During the early stages of the pandemic, there were temporary shortages of toilet paper, hand sanitizer and other items, but now there are severe shortages throughout many sectors of the economy, and quite a few of those shortages will not be so temporary.

On Thursday, Business Insider published a list of some of the most serious shortages that we are going through at the moment…

-Computer chips
-Used cars and rental cars
-Gas
-Plastics and palm oil
-Truckers and rideshare drivers
-Homes and vacation houses
-Lumber
-Household products like toilet paper and tampons
-Furniture
-Chicken
-Bacon and hot dogs
-Imported foods like cheese, coffee, and olive oil
-Chlorine
-Corn

That is quite a list!

The COVID pandemic suppressed output for many industries for an extended period of time, and meanwhile our “leaders” have been pumping trillions and trillions of fresh dollars into the system.

So now we have way too many dollars chasing way too few goods and services, and this is causing tremendous inflation and very painful shortages.

Just look at what is happening to the steel industry.  Changes in supply and demand have pushed up the price of steel to “nearly triple the 20-year average”

After bottoming out around $460 last year, US benchmark hot-rolled coil steel prices are now sitting at around $1,500 a ton, a record high that is nearly triple the 20-year average.

Steel stocks are on fire. US Steel (X), which crashed to a record low last March amid bankruptcy fears, has skyrocketed 200% in just 12 months. Nucor (NUE) has spiked 76% this year alone.

Much more importantly for the average American, there are now chicken shortages all over the country, and prices have soared into the stratosphere

After a year promoting takeout wings and crispy chicken sandwiches, restaurants including KFC, Wingstop Inc. and Buffalo Wild Wings Inc. say they are paying steep prices for scarce poultry. Some are running out of or limiting sales of tenders, filets and wings, cutting into some of their most reliable sales.

Independent eateries and bars have gone weeks without wings, owners say. Chicken breast prices have more than doubled since the beginning of the year, and wing prices have hit records, according to market-research firm Urner Barry.

“Weeks without wings?”

Oh the humanity!

If we don’t get this crisis under control soon, the U.S. may not be able to set yet another all-time record for obesity in 2021.

Propane tanks and chlorine tablets are also in short supply.  As a result, many Americans may not be able to enjoy their grills and their pools as they normally do this summer

A nationwide shortage of pool products is making chlorine tablets and propane tanks hard to come by and increasing prices right as the summer months approach.

“In this heat, if you don’t take care of your pool properly algae will start growing,” said David Sarafyan, a pool supply store employee. “Your pool will pretty much become a swamp.”

Hopefully at least some of these shortages will start to disappear in the weeks ahead.

But if we are seeing this many shortages during a “recovery”, what in the world is our economy going to look like when things start getting really bad again?

This should be a wake up call for all of us, because things are going to start getting really bad again a lot sooner than many people think.

But for now, Americans are swimming in cash thanks to the trillions and trillions of dollars that have been showered on them.

All of that money has to go somewhere, and unfortunately it is going into some of the most ridiculous things imaginable.

My regular readers already know how I feel about Dogecoin.  It is not a “currency” by any stretch of the imagination.  I have been tempted to call it a “collectible”, but normally a “collectible” is something that you can hold in your hands.

At least speculators were chasing something real during “Tulip mania” in 1636 and 1637.  Dogecoin is just a bunch of digital ones and zeros.

Dogecoin does not have any innate value whatsoever, but thanks to Elon Musk and a bunch of Reddit fanboys, the price of Dogecoin is up more than 100 percent this week alone.

For the year, it is up more than 14,000 percent

That means an investor who paid in $1,000 on January 1 would now have around $120,000.

This year alone it has soared over 14,000%, from $0.00468 on December 31, taking it past more widely used cryptocurrencies such as the Tether stablecoin and XRP to become the fourth-largest by market capitalization.

Yesterday I wrote about something that makes me want to vomit, but now I think that I have found something that may make me want to vomit even more.

If you can believe it, Dogecoin now has a market capitalization that is greater than Moderna, Ford Motor Company or Twitter

A market capitalization of $78 billion puts Dogecoin, founded in 2013, ahead of other more well established brands and companies including Sherwin-Williams which is valued at $75.8 billion; Dell Technologies, value $75 billion; Moderna, value $63.1 billion; Ford Motor Company, valued $45.2 billion; and Twitter, value $42.1 billion.

The mascot from Pets.com eventually came to symbolize the collapse of the dotcom bubble, and I think that the stupid dog on the Dogecoin logo should symbolize this current financial bubble when it finally implodes.

Tomorrow, more keyboard commandos will pour their stimulus checks into Dogecoin hoping to get rich quick.

Those that invested early and get out in time will make a killing.  But anyone that does not get out in time is going to take a major bath.

Of course the exact same thing could be said for our financial markets as a whole.  Everyone knows that a crash is inevitable, and when it happens it will be the greatest loss of paper wealth in all of U.S. history.

But for now, speculators look like geniuses, and happy days are here again on Wall Street.

Enjoy it while it lasts, because it is just a matter of time before the bubble bursts, and then the pain will begin.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The EndGet Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on FacebookTwitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

Dogecoin Is The Perfect Currency For The United States Of America In 2021

If you wanted to design a perfect currency for the farce that our financial system has become, you couldn’t do better than Dogecoin.  It was created as a joke, it has no real value, but investors are feverishly gobbling it up as if it was the greatest investment that any of us have ever seen.  A lot of people talk about the “Bitcoin bubble”, but Bitcoin is only up about 600 percent over the last 12 months.  Dogecoin is up about 18,000 percent over the past year even though there is no restriction on how many Dogecoins can eventually be created.  There is absolutely no reason why any rational investor should be putting a single red cent into Dogecoin, and yet it just keeps going up.  In fact, at one point this week Dogecoin had a total market value “of almost $42 billion”

Initially started as a joke in 2013, dogecoin is now the sixth-largest digital coin with a total market value of almost $42 billion, according to CoinGecko. It takes its name and branding from the “Doge” meme, which depicts a Shiba Inu dog alongside nonsensical phrases in multicolored text.

It is hard for me to believe that “investors” are being so incredibly stupid.

Dogecoin was just supposed to be a meme, but thanks to relentless promotion by the “Dogefather”, one “investor” has seen the value of his Dogecoin holdings rise to 11 billion dollars

THE world’s first dogecoin billionaire watched their stock soar to $11 BILLION as the “joke” cryptocurrency boomed after Elon Musk dubbed himself the “Dogefather”.

Its value rocketed after the Tesla tycoon spoke out ahead of a much-hyped appearance on SNL suggesting he might talk about it on the hit show watched by millions.

This explosion in interest in Dogecoin is obviously going to spur Dogecoin miners to work harder than ever before.

And unlike Bitcoin, Dogecoin miners can keep creating more tokens forever and ever

Originally, Dogecoin had a hard limit of 100 billion tokens, similar to Bitcoin’s cap of 21 million tokens. However, the developers changed their plans in 2014, eliminating the supply constraints. In other words, as long as miners continue to build the blockchain, more Dogecoin will continue to wink into existence.

In fact, each time a block is verified, the miner receives a fixed reward of 10,000 Dogecoin tokens. Unless the code is rewritten, this will go on forever.

That’s a critical flaw.

“A critical flaw”?

That is quite an understatement.

But of course what is happening to Dogecoin is the same thing that is happening to our financial system as a whole.  Our leaders in Washington have been creating, borrowing and spending money at an absolutely insane pace, and the numbers that we are now witnessing would have been unimaginable at one time

On the fiscal side, Congress has allocated some $5.3 trillion toward enhanced unemployment compensation along with a variety of other spending programs that helped push the federal budget deficit to $1.7 trillion in the first half of fiscal 2021 and has sent the national debt soaring to $28.1 trillion. Congress also is considering a $1.8 trillion infrastructure plan from the White House.

The Fed also has come through, cutting its benchmark short-term borrowing rate to near zero and buying nearly $4 trillion worth of bonds, pushing its balance sheet to just shy of $8 trillion.

Almost everyone is cheering the fact that the Fed balance sheet is ballooning dramatically.

And almost everyone is cheering all of the “free money” that the federal government is handing out.

But the truth is that we are going down the same road that so many other troubled nations have gone down throughout history, and there is no way that this story is going to end well.

As I have been detailing in recent articles, we are already starting to see very painful inflation, and major corporations are now warning that even more inflation is on the way

Toilet paper, baby care products, soft drinks and many other everyday products are about to get more expensive.

Procter & Gamble, Kimberly-Clark and Coca-Cola have all warned that they’ll raise prices on many of their products as raw material costs rise. Plastic, paper, sugar, grain and other commodities are all getting more expensive as demand outpaces supply. Companies are also paying more for shipping as fuel costs rise and ports experience longer delays because of congestion.

Yes, you may cheer when you get a check for a few thousand dollars in the mail from the government, but that is just a temporary sugar high.

Unfortunately, the dramatic increase in the cost of living that we are starting to experience will be permanent.

Of course it isn’t just the U.S. government that is engaging in this sort of behavior.  Governments all over the globe have been flooding their financial systems with money, and this is setting the stage for much higher food prices and “periods of social unrest”

Today, DB’s Jim Reid picked that chart as his “Chart of the day”, repeating what readers already know, namely that Bloomberg’s agriculture spot index has risen by c.76% year-on-year, noting that “that’s the biggest annual rise in nearly a decade, and there are only a couple of other comparable episodes since the index begins back in 1991.”

Like us, Reid then patiently tries to explain to all the idiots – like those employed in the Marriner Eccles building – that the importance of this record surge “extends far beyond your weekly shop, as there’s an extensive literature connecting higher food prices to periods of social unrest.”

Needless to say, the scenario that we are seeing play out right in front of our eyes is perfectly in line with warnings that I issued in my most recent book.

At this point, the powers that be have shown no indications that they plan to reverse course, and so that means that we will be steamrolling into a future of much higher prices, growing global hunger and widespread civil unrest.

That is what is real.

What isn’t real are all of the absolutely ridiculous bubbles that we are witnessing in the financial markets.

Dogecoin may be the most absurd of them all, but every single one of them will end up bursting by the time it is all said and done.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The EndGet Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned)  By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe.  I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.  I encourage you to follow me on social media on FacebookTwitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.  During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.