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Have you noticed that store shelves are starting to get emptier and emptier? During the panic shopping that was sparked by the start of the COVID pandemic in 2020, there were very intense shortages of certain items, but those shortages did not last very long at all. But now there are widespread shortages in just about every sector of our economy, and they are starting to become quite painful. Unfortunately, we are being told to expect the shortages to intensify as we head into the holiday season. That is extremely alarming, because in many areas the shortages are already quite severe.

I had been away from the news for a couple of days, and when I came back there were lots more stories about our ongoing shortages. For example, the following comes from an excellent piece by Matt Stoller…

There are shortages in everything from ocean shipping containers to chlorine tablets to railroad capacity to black pipe (the piping that houses wires inside buildings) to spicy chicken breasts to specialized plastic bags necessary for making vaccines. Moreover, prices for all sorts of items, from housing to food, are changing in weird ways. Beef, for instance, is at near record highs for consumers, but cattle ranchers are getting paid much less than they used to for their cows.

In my entire life, I have never seen anything like this.

Even the Federal Reserve is admitting that we have a major problem at this point. In fact, in the latest Beige Book the Fed referred to the shortages a whopping 80 times.

In certain parts of the country, these shortages are really beginning to sting. A reader just emailed me about what is going on in his section of Connecticut, and he said that I could share this with all of you…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter

August 25, 2021

The Shortages Are Going To Get Worse Later This Year As Global Supply Chains Increasingly Falter

Have you noticed that it is a lot harder to get certain things these days? Just recently, someone in my local area was surprised when her appointment to get the windshield on her vehicle fixed was canceled because it wasn’t possible to get a replacement windshield. This was a windshield for a very common vehicle, and normally that wouldn’t be a problem at all. But these are not normal times. Thanks to several factors that I will detail in this article, global supply chains are now under more strain than we have ever seen in the post-World War II era, and unfortunately it appears that things are going to get even worse as we approach the holiday season.

I know that most of you probably don’t want to hear that the shortages that we are experiencing now are going to get worse.

So you may be tempted to stop reading this article now because you don’t want to see the bad news.

But it is imperative that you understand what is ahead, and so I urge you to keep reading.

Let’s take this one step at a time. Right now, local news outlets all over the country are doing stories about the shortages in their local areas. Here is one example…

Have you recently gone to the grocery store and found some of the shelves empty? If so, you aren’t alone.

Many people can’t find some of their favorite and essential items since the pandemic started.

As that article points out, the stores are trying to order the products that they need.

They just can’t get them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What Will You Do When Inflation Forces U.S. Households To Spend 40 Percent Of Their Incomes On Food?

May 10, 2021

What Will You Do When Inflation Forces U.S. Households To Spend 40 Percent Of Their Incomes On Food?

Did you know that the price of corn has risen 142 percent in the last 12 months? Of course corn is used in hundreds of different products we buy at the grocery store, and so everyone is going to feel the pain of this price increase. But it isn’t just the price of corn that is going crazy. We are seeing food prices shoot up dramatically all across the industry, and experts are warning that this is just the very beginning. So if you think that food prices are bad now, just wait, because they are going to get a whole lot worse.

Typically, Americans spend approximately 10 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food. The following comes directly from the USDA website…

In 2019, Americans spent an average of 9.5 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food—divided between food at home (4.9 percent) and food away from home (4.6 percent). Between 1960 and 1998, the average share of disposable personal income spent on total food by Americans, on average, fell from 17.0 to 10.1 percent, driven by a declining share of income spent on food at home.

Needless to say, the poorest Americans spend more of their incomes on food than the richest Americans.

According to the USDA, the poorest households spent an average of 36 percent of their disposable personal incomes on food in 2019…

As their incomes rise, households spend more money on food, but it represents a smaller overall budget share. In 2019, households in the lowest income quintile spent an average of $4,400 on food (representing 36.0 percent of income), while households in the highest income quintile spent an average of $13,987 on food (representing 8.0 percent of income).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

9 Signs That Chess Pieces Are Being Moved Into Place For A Major War In The Middle East

March 9, 2021

9 Signs That Chess Pieces Are Being Moved Into Place For A Major War In The Middle East

The American people are really going to regret putting the warmongers back in control. Joe Biden has been in the White House for less than two months, and the warmongers that Biden has surrounded himself with have been feverishly setting the stage for the next war in the Middle East. I do not believe that it will start within the next week, but I do believe that it is inevitable. While President Trump was in the White House for four years, the U.S. didn’t start any new conflicts, but now the Biden administration is quite determined to start projecting “American influence” all over the globe once again. Most Americans don’t understand the bigger picture, but the truth is that this is going to have very serious implications over the next few years.

In this article, I would like to examine some of the chess moves that have been made since Joe Biden entered the White House. As you will see, a very troubling picture emerges once you start putting all of the pieces together.

#1 Literally one day after Biden was inaugurated, a massive U.S. military convoy rolled into Syria…

A large US military convoy entered northeastern Syria on Thursday, Syrian state news agency SANA reports, citing sources on the ground.

According to the report, the convoy included some 40 trucks and armored vehicles and was backed from the air by helicopters.

President Trump had tried very hard to disengage from the war in Syria, but Biden has made it crystal clear that the U.S. will be heavily involved in that conflict moving forward.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Temporary Collapse Of Texas Is Foreshadowing The Total Collapse Of The United States

February 20, 2021

The Temporary Collapse Of Texas Is Foreshadowing The Total Collapse Of The United States

We are getting a very short preview of what will eventually happen to the United States as a whole. America’s infrastructure is aging and crumbling. Our power grids were never intended to support so many people, our water systems are a complete joke, and it has become utterly apparent that we would be completely lost if a major long-term national emergency ever struck. Texas has immense wealth and vast energy resources, but now it is being called a “failed state”. If it can’t even handle a few days of cold weather, what is the rest of America going to look like when things really start to get chaotic in this country?

At this point, it has become clear that the power grid in Texas is in far worse shape than anyone ever imagined. When extremely cold weather hit the state, demand for energy surged dramatically. At the same time, about half of the wind turbines that Texas relies upon froze, and the rest of the system simply could not handle the massive increase in demand.

Millions of Texans were without power for days, and hundreds of thousands are still without power as I write this article.

And now we are learning that Texas was literally just moments away from “a catastrophic failure” that could have resulted in blackouts “for months”…

Texas’ power grid was “seconds and minutes” away from a catastrophic failure that could have left Texans in the dark for months, officials with the entity that operates the grid said Thursday.

As millions of customers throughout the state begin to have power restored after days of massive blackouts, officials with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, or ERCOT, which operates the power grid that covers most of the state, said Texas was dangerously close to a worst-case scenario: uncontrolled blackouts across the state.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘Tis The Season For Bankruptcies, Store Closings And Tent Cities…

January 1, 2021

‘Tis The Season For Bankruptcies, Store Closings And Tent Cities…

We need to make 2021 a year of hope, because right now there is more economic suffering in America than we have seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. More than 100,000 businesses have permanently closed down since the pandemic began, many of our most iconic chains have filed for bankruptcy over the past 12 months, and tent cities are popping up in major cities all across the country. Coming into this year, the suicide rate in the U.S. was already at an all-time record high, and a Gallup survey recently discovered that the mental health of Americans is at an all-time low. If we can’t find a way to give people hope, multitudes of Americans will decide that life is no longer worth living just like Anthony Quinn Warner did. The explosion in Nashville should be a wake up call for all of us, because there are countless others out there that are feeling the hopelessness that Warner did.

In 2020, we saw retail stores close their doors at a pace that we have never seen before. According to the New York Post, NYC lost more than 1,000 chain stores all by itself…

The Big Apple saw almost one in seven nationally recognized chain-store branches close their doors as the pandemic sent consumers scurrying for cover, according to a new report.

A record high 1,057 chain stores — including 70 Duane Reades, 49 Starbucks and 22 Papyruses — have waved the white flag over the past 12 months, according to the Center for an Urban Future’s annual “State of the Chains” report, set to be released Wednesday.

If you go back to 2018, 0.3 percent of all chain stores in the city shut down permanently.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If You Feel Like Something Really, Really Bad Is About To Happen, You Are Definitely Not Alone

September 13, 2020

If You Feel Like Something Really, Really Bad Is About To Happen, You Are Definitely Not Alone

If this is “the recovery”, what are things going to look like once economic conditions start to deteriorate again? As you will see below, more than half of all households in some of our largest cities “are facing serious financial problems”, and Americans continue to file for unemployment benefits at a rate that the United States had never seen before prior to 2020. When 695,000 workers filed for unemployment benefits during a single week in 1982, it established a record which stood for nearly 38 years. But now we have been way above that old record for 25 weeks in a row. On Thursday, we learned that another 884,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week…

Weekly jobless claims were worse than expected last week amid a plodding climb for the U.S. labor market from the damage inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Labor Department on Thursday reported 884,000 first-time filings for unemployment insurance, compared with 850,000 expected by economists surveyed by Dow Jones. The total was unchanged from the previous week.

Of course it is always important to look at the non-adjusted numbers, and according to those numbers we actually saw an increase over the previous week…

The Labor Department changed its methodology in how it seasonally adjusts the numbers, so the past two weeks’ totals are not directly comparable to the reports from earlier in the pandemic. Claims not adjusted for seasonal factors totaled 857,148, an increase of 20,140 from the previous week.

This is the second week in a row that the non-seasonally adjusted initial claims have risen.

That definitely wasn’t supposed to happen.

We are supposedly in a “recovery” right now, and things are supposed to be getting better.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Global Elite Have Far More Control Over Us Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine

August 21, 2020

The Global Elite Have Far More Control Over Us Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine

No matter where you fall on the political spectrum, you probably agree that the global elite have too much power and influence. It has been said that “money is power”, and today that seems to be more true than ever. Those at the very, very top of the pyramid dictate the rules of the game for the rest of us, and there isn’t too much that the rest of us can do about it. When we talk about how the global elite dominate our lives, the focus tends to be on how they influence national governments, but the truth is that is one of the areas where the global elite have the least control. I know that may sound strange, but I believe that things will become clearer by the end of this article.

I would submit that corporations are the primary vehicle that the elite use to control our lives. In fact, many global corporations are now larger and more powerful than most national governments, and collectively the network of global corporations that dominates the planet is far larger and far more powerful than any single national government.

A number of years ago, a remarkable study was conducted that closely examined the interconnecting relationships of major corporations all over the world. That study discovered that a network of 1,318 enormous companies dominated the global economy, and it also found that 147 colossal corporations at the core of that web formed a “super-entity” that controlled 40 percent of the entire network…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Underground Bunker Business Is Booming As Global Events Spiral Out Of Control

August 5, 2020

The Underground Bunker Business Is Booming As Global Events Spiral Out Of Control

This is a really good time to be selling underground bunkers. The COVID-19 pandemic, civil unrest in major U.S. cities, and concern about what else may be coming have combined to create a tremendous amount of demand for “survival real estate”. In all my years of writing, I have never seen anything like this. I have been hearing from so many people that suddenly feel a great urgency to prepare for the total collapse of society, and quite a few of them have either recently relocated or plan to do so in the near future. For some, moving entirely out of the country seems like the best option, but for most others the goal is to find a way to survive the coming chaos here in the United States.

Of course a lot of people are still tied to major population centers by their jobs, and for a lot of those individuals a “survival bunker” in a remote location that they can bug out to if things get crazy enough is an attractive option.

In South Dakota, one company has established the “largest survival community on Earth”, and the New York Post recently interviewed a 69-year-old man named Tom Soulsby that purchased one of the very first underground bunkers in that community…

Tom Soulsby, 69, and his wife, Mary, were one of the first to buy a bunker at Vivos xPoint — the self-proclaimed “largest survival community on Earth” — near the South Dakota town of Edgemont. In 2017, he made a $25,000 down payment and signed a 99-year land lease (with fees of $1,000 per year) to occupy an elliptical-shaped, 2,200 square-foot underground concrete bunker once used as a military fortress during World War II to store weapons and ammunition.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

We Are Experiencing Economic Devastation On A Scale That America Has Never Seen Before

July 31, 2020

We Are Experiencing Economic Devastation On A Scale That America Has Never Seen Before

For a very long time we have been warned that a U.S. economic collapse was inevitably coming, and now it is here. Fear of COVID-19 and unprecedented civil unrest in our major cities have combined to plunge us into a historic economic downturn, and nobody is exactly sure what is going to happen next. On Thursday, we learned that U.S. GDP was down 32.9 percent on an annualized basis last quarter. That officially makes last quarter the worst quarter in all of U.S. history, and many people believe that this new economic depression is just getting started. But of course not all areas of the country are being affected equally. According to USA Today, states such as Hawaii, Nevada, Michigan and New York were hit particularly hard last quarter…

Every state was walloped last quarter, though ones that rely heavily on travel and tourism, such as Hawaii and Nevada, were hit hardest by the downturn, according to employment figures analyzed by economist Adam Kamins of Moody’s Analytics. Michigan, the heart of the nation’s auto industry, was slammed as consumers put off car purchases. And densely populated Northeast states struck by the most severe virus outbreaks – like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts – absorbed among the heaviest economic losses as governors shut down earlier and residents stayed home.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Numbers Tell Us That The ‘Economic Recovery’ Is Dead And Businesses Are Failing At A Staggering Pace

July 25, 2020

The Numbers Tell Us That The ‘Economic Recovery’ Is Dead And Businesses Are Failing At A Staggering Pace

Even though economic conditions were absolutely awful, during the month of June the mainstream media kept insisting that the U.S. economy was “recovering” and the stock market kept surging on every hint of good news. But now the “economic recovery” narrative is completely dead, because the numbers clearly show that the U.S. economy is rapidly moving in the wrong direction. On Thursday, the Labor Department announced that another 1.416 million Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week. Prior to this year, the all-time record for a single week was just 695,000, and so we are talking about a level of unemployment that is absolutely catastrophic. But what is really alarming many analysts is that the number for last week was quite a bit higher than the number for the week before. Many states are rolling out new restrictions as the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases continues to surge, and this is having a huge impact on economic activity. For months I have been warning that fear of COVID-19 would prevent economic activity from returning to normal levels for the foreseeable future, and that is precisely what has happened.

Overall, more than 52 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the past 18 weeks, and that makes this the biggest spike in unemployment in U.S. history by a very wide margin.

In fact, this dwarfs all previous spikes by so much that the others are not even worth mentioning.

Of course it isn’t just the employment numbers that are depressingly bad. According to Jefferies, in late June 19 percent of all U.S. small businesses were closed, but now that number has risen to 24.5 percent…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A List Of 50 Things You Should Get Right Now To Prepare For The Chaotic Events Of The Next 12 Months

July 21, 2020

A List Of 50 Things You Should Get Right Now To Prepare For The Chaotic Events Of The Next 12 Months

People have been asking me to do an article like this for quite some time. In all the years that I have been writing, I have never seen so many of my readers so alarmed about our immediate future. Over and over again, I have been getting emails from people asking for advice about how to prepare for what is ahead, and so many of them are using the word “urgency” to describe what they are feeling. And I can definitely identify with that, because around the middle of last year that is a word that I started using constantly. I felt an urgency about 2020 that I had never felt about any other upcoming year, and there were certain things that I knew that I had to get done. One of those things that I had to get done was my new book, and it is now finished. The plan is to release it this month, and after reading it there will be no doubt about why I have been feeling such a sense of urgency in recent months.

I want to warn you in advance that the list below is not an exhaustive list.

Instead, it is meant to be a very basic starting guide. There are many other things that could (and probably should) be added to this list, and I very much encourage readers to leave comments after this article with their own suggestions and recommendations. We should always be willing to learn from one another, because nobody is an expert on everything.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

There Are Nationwide Shortages Of Aluminum Cans, Soda, Flour, Canned Soup, Pasta And Rice

July 15, 2020

There Are Nationwide Shortages Of Aluminum Cans, Soda, Flour, Canned Soup, Pasta And Rice

I had no idea that things had gotten so bad. Earlier today, my wife spoke with the manager of a local grocery store because she wanted to place a large order for some canned goods. What she was told surprised her, and it certainly surprised me. The manager of this local grocery store told her that there are numerous nationwide shortages going on at this moment, and he indicated that there are lots of products that he simply cannot get right now. When my wife told me what he had said, I decided that I had to look into this, because I hadn’t heard that canned goods were in short supply. Well, it turns out that the manager that my wife spoke with was right on target, and that should deeply alarm all of us.

One thing that my wife was specifically told was that there is a nationwide shortage of aluminum cans, and this is having a tremendous impact on the soda industry.

In fact, things have gotten so bad that Coca-Cola has been forced to publicly address the situation…

Coke Life, Mello Yellow, Sprite Zero, Fresca and more. These are among some of the products you may have had trouble locating on store shelves in recent weeks.

And you’re not alone.

When asked about the situation, Coca-Cola told one Twitter follower: “We are seeing greater demand for products consumed at home & taking measures to adapt, working to mitigate the challenge during this unprecedented time. We appreciate your loyalty to our beverages; please know that we’re working hard to keep the products you love on the shelves.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why Every Person In America Needs To Become A Prepper During The Second Half Of 2020

June 27, 2020

Why Every Person In America Needs To Become A Prepper During The Second Half Of 2020

It has been on my heart to write this article for a few days, but I knew that it wouldn’t be easy to write. 2020 has already been one of the worst years in modern U.S. history, and it looks like the next six months are going to be extremely challenging as well. But even though most Americans are expecting that things will return to “normal” in 2021 and beyond, the truth is that the “perfect storm” that we are witnessing is only in the very early stages. All of the old cycles are ending, all of the bubbles are bursting, and we are starting to experience the consequences of decades of incredibly foolish decisions. So even though the remaining months of 2020 will be chaotic, the truth is that things are going to get progressively worse as the years move along. That means that you should use this period of time to prepare for what is ahead of us, because at some point the window of opportunity to prepare will be closed for good.

COVID-19 should have been a wake up call for all of us. Lockdowns were implemented very suddenly once the virus started to spread in the U.S., and shortages of key items began to happen. To this day, many retailers are still limiting the number of items that you can buy in certain categories. Hopefully this has helped people to understand that if you have not stocked up in advance, you may not be able to go out and get what you need when a major crisis strikes.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Americans Have Already Skipped Payments On More Than 100 Million Loans, And Job Losses Continue To Escalate

June 19, 2020

Americans Have Already Skipped Payments On More Than 100 Million Loans, And Job Losses Continue To Escalate

Those that have been hoping for some sort of a “V-shaped recovery” have had their hopes completely dashed. U.S. workers continue to lose jobs at a staggering rate, and economic activity continues to remain at deeply suppressed levels all over the nation. Of course this wasn’t supposed to happen now that states have been “reopening” their economies. We were told that things would soon be getting back to normal and that the economic numbers would rebound dramatically. But that is not happening. In fact, the number of Americans that filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week was much higher than expected…

Weekly jobless claims stayed above 1 million for the 13th consecutive week as the coronavirus pandemic continued to hammer the U.S. economy.
First-time claims totaled 1.5 million last week, higher than the 1.3 million that economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting. The government report’s total was 58,000 lower than the previous week’s 1.566 million, which was revised up by 24,000.

To put this in perspective, let me once again remind my readers that prior to this year the all-time record for a single week was just 695,000. So even though more than 44 million Americans had already filed initial claims for unemployment benefits before this latest report, there were still enough new people losing jobs to more than double that old record from 1982.

That is just astounding. We were told that the economy would be regaining huge amounts of jobs by now, but instead job losses remain at a catastrophic level that is unlike anything that we have ever seen before in all of U.S. history.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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