Home » Posts tagged 'michael snyder' (Page 7)
Tag Archives: michael snyder
North America’s Bird Population Is Collapsing – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Have Been Wiped Out Since 1970
North America’s Bird Population Is Collapsing – Nearly 3 Billion Birds Have Been Wiped Out Since 1970
All around us, our world is literally in a state of collapse, but most people don’t seem to care. I spend much of my time writing about the inevitable collapse of our economic and financial systems, but they are only one part of the story. These days, millions upon millions of us are spending countless hours in this “virtual world” that we have created, and that is preventing many of us from understanding what is really going on in “the real world”. Where I live, I can literally keep the doors wide open for hours without worrying about bugs coming in, because insect populations are disappearing at a pace that is frightening. They are calling it “the insect apocalypse”, and some scientists are warning that they could all be gone in 100 years. And this dramatic decline in the insect population is one of the main reasons why North America’s bird population is collapsing. In the old days, I remember the singing of birds often greeting me in the morning, but these days I am never awakened by birds. That might make sense if I lived right in the middle of a major city, but I don’t. I live in a very rural location, and I do see birds out here, but not nearly as many as I would expect.
Sadly, the scientific evidence is confirming what many of us had feared. According to a scientific study that was just released, North America’s bird population has fallen by “nearly 3 billion birds since 1970″…
If you’ve noticed fewer birds in your backyard than you used to, you’re not mistaken.
North America has lost nearly 3 billion birds since 1970, a study said Thursday, which also found significant population declines among hundreds of bird species, including those once considered plentiful.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Insists There Won’t Be A Recession When All The Evidence Suggests Otherwise
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell Insists There Won’t Be A Recession When All The Evidence Suggests Otherwise
It’s happening again. Just like last time around, the head of the Federal Reserve is telling us that there won’t be a recession even though all of the evidence suggests otherwise. Just before the recession of 2008, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke told the country that “the Federal Reserve is not currently forecasting a recession”, and shortly thereafter we plunged into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. This time, it is Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell that is attempting to prop things up by making positive statements that are not backed up by reality. Speaking to a group at the University of Zurich, Powell insisted that the Fed is “not at all” anticipating that there will be a recession…
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Friday that he doesn’t “at all” expect the U.S. to enter a recession, though he hinted the central bank will likely cut interest rates as expected this month.
“Our main expectation is not at all that there will be a recession,” Powell said in a panel discussion at the University of Zurich.
Meanwhile, things are literally falling apart all around us. Just a few days ago, I put together a list of 28 data points that clearly indicate that a recession is imminent, and since then we have gotten even more bad news.
For instance, we just learned that Fred’s will be filing for bankruptcy and closing more than 500 stores…
Discount merchandise retailer and pharmacy chain Fred’s filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy Monday with plans to close all of its stores.
The company plans to liquidate its assets, punctuating a swift collapse of its operations that involved a cascading series of store closures in recent months.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
28 Signs Of Economic Doom As The Pivotal Month Of September Begins
28 Signs Of Economic Doom As The Pivotal Month Of September Begins
Since the end of the last recession, the outlook for the U.S. economy has never been as dire as it is right now. Everywhere you look, economic red flags are popping up, and the mainstream media is suddenly full of stories about “the coming recession”. After several years of relative economic stability, things appear to be changing dramatically for the U.S. economy and the global economy as a whole. Over and over again, we are seeing things happen that we have not witnessed since the last recession, and many analysts expect our troubles to accelerate as we head into the final months of 2019.
We should certainly hope that things will soon turn around, but at this point that does not appear likely. The following are 28 signs of economic doom as the pivotal month of September begins…
#1 The U.S. and China just slapped painful new tariffs on one another, thus escalating the trade war to an entirely new level.
#2 JPMorgan Chase is projecting that the trade war will cost “the average U.S. household” $1,000 per year.
#3 Yield curve inversions have preceded every single U.S. recession since the 1950s, and the fact that it has happened again is one of the big reasons why Wall Street is freaking out so much lately.
#4 We just witnessed the largest decline in U.S. consumer sentiment in 7 years.
#5 Mortgage defaults are rising at the fastest pace that we have seen since the last financial crisis.
#6 Sales of luxury homes valued at $1.5 million or higher were down five percentduring the second quarter of 2019.
#7 The U.S. manufacturing sector has contracted for the very first time since September 2009.
#8 The Cass Freight Index has been falling for a number of months. According to CNBC, it fell “5.9% in July, following a 5.3% decline in June and a 6% drop in May.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
“Monster” Hurricane Dorian Is Projected To Be “A Very Big Hurricane, Perhaps One Of The Biggest”
“Monster” Hurricane Dorian Is Projected To Be “A Very Big Hurricane, Perhaps One Of The Biggest”
Well, that certainly escalated quickly. On Wednesday we were told that Hurricane Dorian would only be a Category 3 storm when it hits the Florida coastline, but now we are being told that it will be a Category 4 storm. Hurricane Dorian is rapidly gaining strength over very warm waters in the Atlantic Ocean, and the latest forecast has it making landfall somewhere along the east coast of Florida on Monday. If it is officially a Category 4 storm when it arrives, it will be the most powerful storm to hit the east coast of Florida since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Dorian is being described as a “monster hurricane”, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already declared a state of emergency for all 67 counties in the state of Florida.
We will see how things develop over the next several days, but at this point it has become clear that Dorian has the potential to be an exceedingly dangerous storm.
In fact, President Trump himself is telling us that Dorian could be “perhaps one of the biggest” hurricanes that the U.S. has ever seen…
Hurricane Dorian looks like it will be hitting Florida late Sunday night. Be prepared and please follow State and Federal instructions, it will be a very big Hurricane, perhaps one of the biggest!
The reason why meteorologists are so concerned is because Dorian will be traveling over extremely warm waters for the next 48 hours, and that means that we should see “steady intensification during the next 2 to 3 days”…
“The warmer the water, the more moisture is in the air,’’ the website for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says. “And that could mean bigger and stronger hurricanes.’’
The weather service said current conditions in the Atlantic “should allow for at least steady intensification during the next 2 to 3 days.’’
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
An Indicator With A 100% Perfect Track Record Of Predicting Recessions Says That Another One Is Coming
An Indicator With A 100% Perfect Track Record Of Predicting Recessions Says That Another One Is Coming
You can believe that we will somehow beat the odds this time if you want, but history is completely against you. One of the biggest reasons why there is so much anxiety on Wall Street right now is because of how the yield curve is behaving. We have seen yield curve inversions before each of the last seven U.S. recessions, and now it has happened again. Perhaps this helps to explain why insiders are dumping stocks right now as if there will be no tomorrow. If you were looking for a giant waving red flag to tell you that it is time to run for the exits, it doesn’t get much better than this. This week, we watched the yield curve do something that it hasn’t done in 12 years…
The spread between the 10-year Treasury yield and the 2-year rate fell to negative 5 basis points, its lowest level since 2007. This is called a yield curve inversion. Experts fear it because in the past it has preceded recessionary periods. The 3-month Treasury bill rate also traded higher than the 30-year bond yield.
“The primary thing is yields are going down and going down with some acceleration,” said Art Cashin, the director of floor operations at UBS.
In addition, the spread between 3 month Treasury bonds and 10 year Treasury bonds just hit negative 50 basis points. We haven’t seen that happen since March 2007.
And as David Rosenberg has noted, when the spread between 3 month Treasury bonds and 10 year Treasury bonds goes negative for at least three months, we have a recession 100% of the time…
We now have had three months of a 3-mo/10-yr yield curve inversion. The track record this has had in predicting recessions: 100%.
Preparing For A Financial Apocalypse: Insiders Are Selling “$600 Million Of Stock Per Day In August”
Preparing For A Financial Apocalypse: Insiders Are Selling “$600 Million Of Stock Per Day In August”
In the U.S., corporate insiders have been selling stocks at an average rate of 600 million dollars per day during the month of August. This kind of wild selling indicates that there is a tremendous amount of fear among corporate insiders right now, and such selling would only make sense if a stock market crash is imminent. And without a doubt, we have already seen volatility return to Wall Street in a major way as our trade war with China has dramatically escalated. Many Americans are hoping that things will start to calm down and that our trade conflict with China can be resolved calmly, because if things take a bad turn many analysts are warning that we could soon be facing the worst financial crisis since 2008. Here is one example…
Remember the brutal sell-off last year when stocks suffered their worst December since the Great Depression? Something worse than that could happen in days, a Nomura analyst said.
Macro and quant strategist Masanari Takada turned heads earlier this month with his bold call for a “Lehman-like” plunge. He’s sticking with this prediction as market sentiment shows no signs of improving, leading him to believe a monster sell-off could arrive this week.
With chilling forecasts like that being thrown around on a regular basis these days, it is understandable that corporate insiders would be tempted to get out of the market, and right now they are racing for the exits at a pace that is absolutely breathtaking. The following comes from CNN…
Corporate insiders have sold an average of $600 million of stock per day in August, according to TrimTabs Investment Research, which tracks stock market liquidity.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
11 Reasons Why So Many Experts Believe That A U.S. Economic Crisis Is Imminent
11 Reasons Why So Many Experts Believe That A U.S. Economic Crisis Is Imminent
The numbers are telling us that we have never been closer to the next recession than we are right now. The storm clouds that were gathering on the horizon are now directly above us, and suddenly the mainstream media is filled with storiesabout when the next recession will begin and the effect that this may have on President Trump’s chances of winning in 2020. In fact, there has been so much chatter about this that even President Trump is talking about it. All over television, experts are breathlessly speculating about when the coming recession will begin, and they are dispensing lots of advice about how people should be preparing for it.
So what evidence has led so many of these talking heads to come to such a conclusion?
Well, the following are 11 reasons why so many experts now believe that a U.S. economic crisis is imminent…
#1 Last week, the “spread between the U.S. 2-year and 10-year yields” turned negative for the very first time in 12 years. An inversion of the yield curve has occurred prior to every single U.S. recession since the 1950s, and this is one of the most important economic signals that we have seen yet.
#2 U.S. consumer sentiment just fell to the lowest level that we have seen in all of 2019.
#3 74 percent of the economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics believe that a recession will begin in the United States by the end of 2021.
#4 U.S. industrial production just slipped back into contraction territory.
#5 The IHS Markit Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index just fell to the lowest level that we have seen since September 2009.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Guess Who China Is Blaming For The Riots In Hong Kong?
Guess Who China Is Blaming For The Riots In Hong Kong?
This is not going to end well. As a result of our ongoing trade war, U.S. relations with China were already rapidly deteriorating, but now the chaos in Hong Kong threatens to completely wreck them. Violence between political protesters and riot police is making headlines all over the globe, and as you will see below, the Chinese are squarely blaming the United States for what is happening. On Tuesday, flights at Hong Kong International Airport were canceled for a second day in a row, and riot police stormed the airport in an attempt to evict the thousands of protesters that were occupying it. This resulted in extremely violent clashes, and you can see raw video of one of these confrontations right here. Needless to say, the Chinese government is extremely alarmed by these developments. According to ABC News, one top official told the press that these protests in Hong Kong “have begun to show signs of terrorism”…
The clashes appeared to represent an escalation 10 weeks after the protest’s massive, peaceful beginnings in early June, when hundreds of thousands marched in the semi-autonomous city against a now-suspended extradition bill. A Chinese official said Tuesday that protesters “have begun to show signs of terrorism,” and China appeared to be weighing a crackdown on the democratic movement.
Bolstered by anger over the crackdown by Hong Kong police, the protests has grown more confrontational in recent weeks and reached new levels last Monday with a city-wide strike that disrupting traffic and hundreds of flights.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
$1,400,000,000,000 Gone In Less Than A Week – Stock Market In Turmoil As The Trade War Dramatically Escalates
$1,400,000,000,000 Gone In Less Than A Week – Stock Market In Turmoil As The Trade War Dramatically Escalates
Our trade war with China has begun to spiral out of control, and as a result global financial markets have been thrown into a state of turmoil. On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 767 points, and that represented the sixth-largest single day stock market decline in all of U.S. history. To put that into perspective, the biggest single day decline during the financial crisis of 2008 was just 777 points. So what we witnessed on Monday was definitely very serious. And the Nasdaq just got absolutely monkey-hammered as well. On a percentage basis, it was down even more than the Dow was, and it has now fallen for six days in a row. We have not seen a losing streak that long for the Nasdaq since President Trump was elected, and some analysts are convinced that even more chaos is on the way.
Overall, 1.4 trillion dollars in stock market wealth has been completely wiped out in less than a week…
It took just four brutal trading days for a $1.4 trillion wipeout in the S&P 500 stock value. From the Federal Reserve’s disappointing comments on the future of interest rates to President Donald Trump’s surprise tariffs to China’s weaponizing of the yuan, the record-long bull market took a big hit in a relatively short time.
European stocks have been getting clobbered as well. In fact, they just experienced their largest two day decline in three years.
After Trump imposed another wave of tariffs on China at the end of last week, we knew that the Chinese would retaliate. But we expected that the retaliation would be at least somewhat proportional.
Instead, they decided to bring down the hammer.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer
America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer
Whenever a tragic act of violence makes national headlines, the calls to give up more of our freedoms and liberties in exchange for the promise of increased security become deafening. But if we take another step toward becoming an authoritarian society every time something horrible happens, eventually we won’t have any of the basic liberties and freedoms that previous generations of Americans fought so hard to secure for us. Unfortunately, voices like mine are becoming increasingly rare, and the American people seem to want a society that will shelter them from anything that could possibly go wrong. Of course there has never been such a society in all of human history, and we won’t be able to create one either. No governmental system can eliminate the problem of evil, and bad things sometimes happen to good people. And without a doubt, the mass shootings that we witnessed over the weekend were absolutely horrific. In less than 24 hours, 29 American lives were lost between these two mass shootings, and this has greatly shaken the entire nation…
On Sunday, Americans woke up to news of a shooting rampage in an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio, where a man wearing body armor shot and killed nine people, including his own sister. Hours earlier, a 21-year-old with a rifle entered a Walmart in El Paso and killed 20 people.
In a country that has become nearly numb to men with guns opening fire in schools, at concerts and in churches, the back-to-back bursts of gun violence in less than 24 hours were enough to leave the public stunned and shaken.
Sadly, these are not isolated incidents. As our society has become less moral, we have seen an escalation of violence all over the country.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
China Is Extremely Angry, And They Now Consider The United States To Be Enemy #1
China Is Extremely Angry, And They Now Consider The United States To Be Enemy #1
Have relations between the United States and China finally reached the point of no return? At this moment, it would be difficult to overstate how angry the Chinese are with the United States. Chinese officials are firmly blaming the United States for the enormous political protests that we have witnessed in Hong Kong in recent weeks, and on Thursday President Trump slapped another round of tariffs on Chinese imports. Sadly, most Americans aren’t even paying much attention to these developments, but over in China everyone is talking about these things. And of course the truth is that they aren’t just talking – the Chinese are absolutely seething with anger toward the U.S., and they aren’t afraid to express it.
Let me give you a perfect example of what I am talking about. One of the most highly respected news anchors in China, Kang Hui, actually used an expletive when referring to the United States during a news broadcast earlier this week. Normally I would never have such language in one of my articles, but this comment made headlines all over the globe, and I think that it is very important for all of us to understand what the Chinese are saying about us. So since this is a news item of critical importance, I have decided not to censor this quote at all. The following comes from the New York Times…
“They stir up more troubles and crave the whole world to be in chaos, acting like a shit-stirring stick,” Mr. Kang said on the usually stolid 7 p.m. national news program on CCTV, China’s state broadcaster. The expletive quickly became one of the most-searched-for phrases on Chinese social media.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
A Large Solar Storm Will Hit Earth On July 31 Or August 1 At The Same Time That The “Black Supermoon” Happens
A Large Solar Storm Will Hit Earth On July 31 Or August 1 At The Same Time That The “Black Supermoon” Happens
An absolutely massive hole has formed in the upper atmosphere of the Sun, and our planet will align with that hole later this week. Once the alignment happens, Earth will be bombarded by a “solar storm”, and nobody is quite sure yet how bad it will be. If the storm is relatively minor, we could just experience a few disruptions to satellite communications and see some pretty lights in the sky. But if the storm is really severe, our electrical grid could be fried and we could experience widespread power outages. According to the Express, “the solar storm will hit Earth on July 31 or August 1″…
Earth’s orbit around the Sun will soon align with a coronal hole – a hole in the Sun’s upper atmosphere – and solar particles will subsequently bombard the planet after they have made their way through space. Experts predict that the solar storm will hit Earth on July 31 or August 1. People in the northern hemisphere are likely to be treated to northern lights – or aurora borealis – as the solar winds bombard the upper reaches of the planet.
Of course North America is in the northern hemisphere, and so we could be in for a direct hit.
Since our satellites are outside our atmosphere, they are the most vulnerable during a solar storm. If some of our satellites get fried, that could affect GPS navigation, cell phone communication, and satellite television services…
For the most part, the Earth’s magnetic field protects humans from the barrage of radiation, but solar storms can affect satellite-based technology.
Solar winds can heat the Earth’s outer atmosphere, causing it to expand.
This can affect satellites in orbit, potentially leading to a lack of GPS navigation, mobile phone signal and satellite TV such as Sky.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If The Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates Now, It Will Be An Admission That A Recession Is Coming
If The Federal Reserve Cuts Interest Rates Now, It Will Be An Admission That A Recession Is Coming
So there is a lot of buzz that the Federal Reserve is about to cut interest rates – and it might actually happen. We’ll see. But if it does happen, it will directly contradict the carefully crafted narrative about the economy that the Federal Reserve has been perpetuating all this time. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. economy is in great shape even when there has been a tremendous amount of evidence indicating otherwise. And of course President Trump has been repeatedly telling us that this is “the greatest economy in the history of our country”, but now he is loudly calling for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates as well. Something doesn’t seem to add up here. If the U.S. economy really was “booming”, there is no way that the Fed should cut interest rates. Right now interest rates are already low by historical standards, and theoretically it is during the “boom” times that interest rates should be normalized. But if the U.S. economy is actually slowing down and heading into a recession, then a rate cut would make perfect sense. And if that is the reality of what we are facing, then the economic optimists have been proven dead wrong, and people like me that have been warning of an economic slowdown have been proven right.
If the talking heads on television are correct, we’ll probably see a rate cut. In fact, apparently there are some people that are even pushing “for a 50 basis point cut”…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Elizabeth Warren Is Warning That An “Economic Crash” Is Coming
Elizabeth Warren Is Warning That An “Economic Crash” Is Coming
Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren is sounding the alarm. In an opinion piece that she put out on Monday, she boldly warned that an “economic crash” is coming. Actually, much of her article sounds like it could have come directly from the pages of the Economic Collapse Blog, and her analysis of the current state of the U.S. economy was right on the money. Of course her proposed “solutions” are completely and totally nuts, and we will discuss that later in the article. But it is quite remarkable that a woman that has a really, really good chance of becoming the next president of the United States is saying so many of the exact same things that I have been saying. For example, just consider this paragraph…
When I look at the economy today, I see a lot to worry about again. I see a manufacturing sector in recession. I see a precarious economy that is built on debt — both household debt and corporate debt — and that is vulnerable to shocks. And I see a number of serious shocks on the horizon that could cause our economy’s shaky foundation to crumble.
Everything that she said there is true. The manufacturing sector is definitely slowing down, and without a doubt U.S. households are drowning in debt.
In another paragraph, Warren elaborated on the unprecedented debt problems that U.S. families are currently facing…
A generation of stagnant wages and rising costs for basics like housing, child care, and education have forced American families to take on more debt than ever before. The student debt load has “more than doubled since the financial crisis.” American credit card debt matches its 2008 peak.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The U.S. Is Staging Troops At A Key Saudi Military Base That It Used During All Of Our Previous Middle East Wars
The U.S. Is Staging Troops At A Key Saudi Military Base That It Used During All Of Our Previous Middle East Wars
The U.S. military is following many of the exact same patterns that we witnessed during our previous wars in the Middle East, and that even includes setting up shop at a key military base deep in the heart of the Arabian peninsula. After the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. military abandoned Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, but now they are back. Hundreds of U.S. troops are already there working hard to get the base operational, and as you will see below, a tremendous amount of new construction is planned. The base covers “well over a hundred square miles”, and so it has more than enough room to serve as a central hub for a new Middle East war. Tensions with Iran have escalated dramatically over the past few weeks, but apparently somebody anticipated that the U.S. would need to use this base even before then, because according to NBC News U.S. troops were already arriving back in June…
In June the U.S. military began moving equipment and hundreds of troops back to a military base in Saudi Arabia that the U.S. deserted more than 15 years ago, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the deployment.
Over the coming weeks the deployment to Prince Sultan Air Base, intended to counter the threat from Iran, will grow to include fighter jets and Patriot long-range missile defense systems, the officials said. The Patriots have already arrived at the base and should be operational in mid-July, while the aircraft are expected to arrive in August.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
