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Retail stores are being shut down at a staggering rate all over the country. If we stay on the pace that we are on, the total number of stores closed in 2024 will be nearly 40 percent higher than the total number of stores closed in 2023. That is what you call a crisis! Meanwhile, banks are shuttering hundreds of branches from coast to coast, and a “restaurant apocalypse” is sweeping across the nation. Everywhere around us, “space available” signs are going up on buildings that were once considered to be prime commercial real estate. If someone tries to convince you that the U.S. economy is in good shape, just show them this article and ask them why so many once prosperous businesses are closing. Needless to say, they will not be able to win the argument after that.

According to the Daily Mail, nearly 2,600 store closings were announced during the first four months of 2024…

US retailers have announced the closure of almost 2,600 stores in 2024 – just four months into the year.

Big names including Macy’s, Walmart, Walgreens, Foot Locker and 7-Eleven have all said they are closing shops.

But discount stores like Family Dollar and bankrupt 99 Cents Only have been worst hit, as have drugstores like CVS and Rite Aid.

If the U.S. economy is heading in the right direction, why are many of the largest retail chains in the U.S. shutting down stores?

That wouldn’t make any sense at all.

If this pace remains constant throughout the rest of this year, we would hit a grand total of approximately 7,800 store closing announcements by the end of 2024…

If the closures were to continue at the same rate for the rest of the year they would total 7,800 in 2024 – almost 40 percent more than the total in 2023.

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

European Natural Gas Prices Are 6 Times Higher Than Last Year, And This Is Sparking Widespread Civil Unrest All Over Europe

August 26, 2022

European Natural Gas Prices Are 6 Times Higher Than Last Year, And This Is Sparking Widespread Civil Unrest All Over Europe

This is going to be a bitterly cold winter for a whole lot of people. In particular, things are likely to get really uncomfortable in Europe. Soaring energy prices and concern about potential shortages are causing anxiety all over the continent, and widespread protests have already started to take place. The cost of living has become extremely painful for those on the bottom of the economic food chain, and people want their governments to do something. Of course this is what always happens when nations embrace socialism. There is an expectation that those in charge will solve any and every problem, but this time around the limitations of the socialists running Europe will become very clear.

Thanks to the war in Ukraine and a number of other factors, the price of natural gas in Europe is now approximately six times higher than it was last year…

European natural gas prices are taking a breather amid further signs that soaring energy costs are crippling economic output, heaping pressure on politicians to resolve the crisis with winter just a few months away.

Benchmark futures retreated after settling at a record high on Monday. Prices are still about six times higher than they were at this time last year, with the panic spreading across nations ahead of peak winter demand.

Needless to say, many in Europe are being completely stunned by the size of their energy bills, and a massive backlash has been brewing.

In fact, we are already starting to see very large protests in a number of different countries…

…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…

10 Numbers That Show The U.S. Has Fallen Into A Horrifying Economic Depression

May 19, 2020

10 Numbers That Show The U.S. Has Fallen Into A Horrifying Economic Depression

The last recession was really, really bad, but it was never like this. It is time for us to face reality, and that means admitting that the U.S. economy has plunged into a depression. This is already the worst economic downturn that America has experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and we are right in the middle of the largest spike in unemployment in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin. Of course it was fear of COVID-19 that burst our economic bubble, and fear of this virus is going to be with us for a very long time to come. So we need to brace ourselves for an extended economic crisis, and at this point even Time Magazine is openly referring to this new downturn as an “economic depression”. Needless to say, there will be a tremendous amount of debate about how deep it will eventually become, but everyone should be able to agree that our nation hasn’t seen anything like this since before World War II.

In order to prove my point, let me share the following 10 numbers with you…

#1 According to a study that was just released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, more than 100,000 U.S. businesses have already permanently shut down during this pandemic, and that represents millions of jobs that are never coming back.

#2 The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is now projecting that U.S. GDP will shrink by 42.8 percent during the second quarter…

A new GDP forecast from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta for the three months through June estimates an unprecedented drop of 42.8 percent. The bank describes the data as a “nowcast” or real-time, compared with the official government report of GDP, which is dated. The first-quarter preliminary data, which showed a 4.8 percent dip, included a limited period of impact from COVID-19.

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

States Are Now Wrestling With The Biggest Budget Crisis They Have Faced In All Of U.S. History

May 14, 2020

States Are Now Wrestling With The Biggest Budget Crisis They Have Faced In All Of U.S. History

Most U.S. states are seeing tax revenues completely and utterly collapse during this COVID-19 pandemic, and some are already begging the federal government for bailout money. Because if dramatic intervention does not happen, many states are going to have to start savagely slashing their expenditures, and that could mean unprecedented job losses on the state government level. Typically, state government bureaucrats make above average salaries and those jobs often come with very nice benefit packages. Once those jobs have been eliminated, they will not be easy to replace.

The tax revenue numbers that are starting to come in are nothing short of shocking. Just consider these examples…

Georgia is showing a decline of more than $100 million in sales tax, fuel tax and other tax revenue compared with the same period a year ago. Tennessee’s tax revenue is down more than $120 million. Pennsylvania’s is off by more $760 million, and Texas, which also has been hammered by the downturn in oil prices, has seen tax collections plummet by nearly $1 billion.

And New Jersey officials just reported that tax revenue in their state fell a whopping 60 percent during the month of April compared to a year ago.

These are unprecedented figures, and they have created gaping holes in state budgets all over the nation…

Colorado faces a gap of nearly a quarter of the state’s general budget. The projected gap in California is more than a fifth of its spending plan and in Oklahoma, a sixth. The governor of Oregon is preparing to cut 17% of her budget. Michigan may have to slash up to a quarter of the money it sends to schools.

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

A Taste Of What Is Coming – Food Prices Just Increased By The Most That We Have Seen Since 1974

May 13, 2020

A Taste Of What Is Coming – Food Prices Just Increased By The Most That We Have Seen Since 1974

Get ready to pay much more for groceries. I have been warning that the flood of new money that the Federal Reserve and Congress have been pumping into the system would have very serious consequences, and I have also been warning that food prices would be shooting higher. When things start getting really crazy, demand for food and other basic essentials goes way up, and meanwhile this pandemic has significantly disrupted production of certain products. So even though most of the economy is currently still in a deflationary phase, food prices are beginning to spike. In fact, the U.S. Labor Department says that we just witnessed the largest one month increase since February 1974…

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that prices U.S. consumers paid for groceries jumped 2.6% in April, the largest one-month pop since February 1974. The spike in supermarket prices was broad based and impacted items from broccoli and ham to oatmeal and tuna.
The price of the meats, poultry, fish and eggs category rose 4.3%, fruits and vegetables climbed 1.5%, cereals and bakery products advanced 2.9%, and dairy goods gained 1.5%.

Sadly, this is just the beginning.

Prior to this pandemic, Americans spent about 10 percent of their incomes on food.

As this new economic depression deepens, expect that number to eventually more than double.

We live at a time when global food supplies are becoming increasing stressed for a variety of reasons. In wealthy countries this is going to force food prices aggressively higher, and in poor countries this is going to mean that a lot of people simply will not have enough to eat.

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

This Is What Economic Collapse Looks Like

April 3, 2020

This Is What Economic Collapse Looks Like

Approximately ten million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the past two weeks. To put that in perspective, the all-time record for a single week before this coronavirus pandemic hit was just 695,000. So needless to say, 6.6 million claims in a single week puts us in uncharted territory. Just check out this chart. We have never seen a week like this before, and we may never see a week quite this bad again. Of course millions more jobs will be lost in the months ahead as this pandemic stretches on, but it is hard to imagine another spike like we just had. When you add the last two weeks together, somewhere around 10 million Americans have filed new unemployment claims during that time period…

The torrent of Americans filing for unemployment insurance skyrocketed last week as more than 6.6 million new claims were filed, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That brings to 10 million the total Americans who filed over the past two weeks.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had expected 3.1 million for last week, one week after 3.3 million filings in the first wave of what has been a record-shattering swelling of the jobless ranks. The previous week’s total was revised higher by 24,000.

As I have documented repeatedly in my articles, survey after survey has shown that most Americans were living paycheck to paycheck even during the “good times”.

Now that those paychecks aren’t coming in anymore for millions of Americans, a lot of bills aren’t going to get paid.

Just like we witnessed in 2008, mortgage defaults are about to skyrocket, and Wall Street is bracing for the worst…

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

Stocks Crater – 3.5 Trillion Dollars In Global Market Cap Wiped Out – China Considers “Dumping U.S. Treasuries”

May 14, 2019

Stocks Crater – 3.5 Trillion Dollars In Global Market Cap Wiped Out – China Considers “Dumping U.S. Treasuries”

Wall Street responded to our escalating trade war with China by throwing a bit of a temper tantrum. On Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 617 points, and that was the worst day for the Dow since January 3rd. But things were even worse for the Nasdaq. It had its worst day since December 4th, and overall the Nasdaq is now down 6.3 percent in just the last six trading sessions. Of course it isn’t just in the United States that stocks are declining. Since last Monday, a total of approximately $3.5 trillion in market cap has been wiped out on global stock markets. And since it doesn’t look like we are going to get any sort of a trade deal any time soon, this could potentially be just the beginning of our problems.

China fired a shot that was heard around the world on Monday when they announced that they would be dramatically raising tariffs on U.S. goods…

China will raise tariffs on $60 billion in U.S. goods in retaliation for the U.S. decision to hike duties on Chinese goods, the Chinese Finance Ministry said Monday.
Beijing will increase tariffs on more than 5,000 products to as high as 25%. Duties on some other goods will increase to 20%. Those rates will rise from either 10% or 5% previously.

According to CNBC, these new tariffs are going to be particularly damaging for U.S. farmers…

The duties in large part target U.S. farmers, who largely supported Trump in 2016 but suffered from previous shots in the Trump administration’s trade war with China. The thousands of products include peanuts, sugar, wheat, chicken and turkey.

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

2 Aircraft Carriers Have Left Port – Are The USS Eisenhower And The USS Roosevelt Headed South Toward Venezuela?

May 1, 2019

2 Aircraft Carriers Have Left Port – Are The USS Eisenhower And The USS Roosevelt Headed South Toward Venezuela?

Juan Guaido has initiated a violent uprising in an attempt to overthrow Nicolas Maduro, and it appears that the U.S. may be preparing to intervene in the conflict militarily. The USNI News Fleet and Marine Tracker accurately tracks the current positions of U.S. naval assets, and according to them the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower has left port on the east coast and the USS Theodore Roosevelt has left port on the west coast. In both cases, each aircraft carrier was originally slated for “training” exercises, but now there is lots of speculation that they are both steaming south toward Venezuela. Since there has been no official confirmation from Washington, let me stress that once again that any talk about the potential destination of these carriers is just speculation. But considering what is taking place in Venezuela at this moment, it certainly would not surprise anyone if the waters off Venezuela is precisely where they are heading.

Earlier today, the Intel_Radar Twitter account created quite a stir with a series of seven tweets…

BREAKING: US Navy deploys two aircraft carriers, both southbound, one from each coast, amid Venezuela crisis. #Venezuela #Maduro #Guaido
Update 1 : Eisenhower left Virginia headed South, on the same day Roosevelt deployed out of San Diego headed for the Panama Canal. #Venezuela #Freedom #Guaido #Maduro #Cuba#USNavy
Update 2 : US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (MMSI:368962000|CS:NIKE) departed Norfolk ~2019-04-26, was off AIS for 4 days, and seems to be headed South, off the US East Coast. #Venezuela #Maduro #Guaido#Freedom #US_Navy
Update 3 : American Roll-on Roll-off Carrier (ARC) RoRo Integrity (IMO:8919934|MMSI:367063310) departed Mexico with a fake destination, “hiding their destination”.

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

California Hit By 39 Earthquakes Within 24 Hours As Scientists Warn Of “Movement Along The San Andreas Fault”

November 3, 2018

California Hit By 39 Earthquakes Within 24 Hours As Scientists Warn Of “Movement Along The San Andreas Fault”

A series of large earthquakes has rattled California over the last 24 hours, and scientists are telling us that the shaking was the result of “movement along the San Andreas Fault system”. In recent months there has been an alarming amount of seismic activity all along “the Ring of Fire”, and there have been times when the number of global earthquakes has been way above normal. Could it be possible that all of this unusual seismic activity is leading up to something? As you will see below, experts are telling us that we are overdue for the “Big One” to hit California. And when it does eventually strike, it could be far worse than most people would dare to imagine.

Most of the 39 significant earthquakes that have struck California within the last 24 hours have happened along the San Andreas Fault. The following comes from CBS News…

A swarm of earthquakes along the San Andreas Fault, the largest measuring a 4.1 magnitude, rumbled through the Hollister area and the Salinas Valley Friday morning. CBS San Francisco, citing officials, reports the quakes rattled nerves but caused no major damage.

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the 4.1 quake hit at 5:58 a.m. PDT 12 miles southwest of the small community of Tres Pinos. It was followed by quakes measuring 3.6, 3.2 and 3.0.

Officials are saying that this shaking was caused by “movement along the San Andreas Fault system”, and the initial magnitude 4.1 quake was quickly followed by a series of more than 20 aftershocks…

After a magnitude 4.1 earthquake struck 12 miles from Hollister at 5:58 a.m., more than 20 aftershocks rattled the area in the following hours. The smaller quakes registered as high as 3.6 magnitude and were felt as far away as Monterey and Santa Cruz.

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

Economic Doom Returns: Emerging Market Currencies Collapse To Record Lows As Global Financial Chaos Accelerates

September 1, 2018

Economic Doom Returns: Emerging Market Currencies Collapse To Record Lows As Global Financial Chaos Accelerates

After a little bit of a lull, the international currency crisis is back with a vengeance. Currencies are collapsing in Argentina, Brazil, India, Turkey and other emerging markets, and central banks are springing into action. It is being hoped that the financial chaos can be confined to emerging markets so that it will not spread to the United States and Europe. But of course the global financial system is more interconnected today than ever before, and a massive wave of debt defaults in emerging markets would inevitably have extremely serious consequences all over the planet. It would be difficult to overstate the potential danger that this new crisis poses for all of us. Emerging market economies went on an unprecedented debt binge over the past decade, and a high percentage of those debts were denominated in U.S. dollars. As emerging market currencies collapse, it is going to become nearly impossible to service any debts denominated in U.S. dollars, and that could ultimately mean absolutely enormous losses for international lenders. Our system tends to do fairly well as long as everybody is paying their debts, but once the dominoes begin to tumble things can get messy really quickly.

Let’s start our roundup today with India. While India is currently not in as bad shape as some of the other emerging markets, the truth is that they could get there pretty rapidly if they keep going down this path.

On Thursday, concerns about rising oil prices drove the Indian rupee to a brand new all-time record low…

The Indian rupee fell to a record low on Thursday morning, following a declining trend all year — which economists attributed to rising oil prices, broader emerging market concerns, and strong month-end dollar demand.

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

If You Read Between The Lines, Global Economic Leaders Are Telling Us Exactly What Is Coming

August 22, 2018

If You Read Between The Lines, Global Economic Leaders Are Telling Us Exactly What Is Coming

Sometimes, a strongly-worded denial is the most damning evidence of all that something is seriously wrong. And when things start to really get crazy, “the spin” is often the exact opposite of the truth. In recent days we have seen a lot of troubling headlines and a lot of chaos in the global financial marketplace, but authorities continue to assure us that everything is going to be just fine. Of course we witnessed precisely the same thing just prior to the great financial crisis of 2008. Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke insisted that a recession was not coming, and we proceeded to plunge into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Is our society experiencing a similar state of denial about what is ahead of us here in 2018?

Let me give you a few examples of some recent things that global economic leaders have said, and what they really meant…

–Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk: “We are definitely not going bankrupt.”

Translation: “We are definitely going bankrupt.”

Tesla is a company that is supposedly worth 51 billion dollars, but the reality is that they are going to zero. They have been bleeding massive amounts of cash for years, and now a day of reckoning has finally arrived. A severe liquidity crunch has forced the company to delay payments or to ask for enormous discounts from suppliers, and many of those suppliers are now concerned that Tesla is on the verge of collapse…

Specifically, a recent survey sent privately by a well-regarded automotive supplier association to top executives, and seen by the WS , found that 18 of 22 respondents believe that Tesla is now a financial risk to their companies.

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

18 Times The Fed Has Gone Through A Rate Hiking Cycle, And 18 Times It Has Caused A Huge Stock Market Decline And/Or A Recession

June 8, 2018

18 Times The Fed Has Gone Through A Rate Hiking Cycle, And 18 Times It Has Caused A Huge Stock Market Decline And/Or A Recession

Since 1913, the Federal Reserve has engaged in 18 distinct interest rate hiking campaigns, and in every single one of those instances the end result was a large stock market decline, a recession, or both. Now we are in the 19th rate tightening cycle since 1913, but many of the experts are insisting that things will somehow be different this time. They assure us that the U.S. economy will continue to grow and that stock prices will continue to soar. Of course the truth is that if something happens 18 times in a row, there is a really, really good chance that it will happen on the 19th time too. For years I have been trying to get people to understand that our country has been on an endless roller coaster ride ever since the Fed was created back in 1913. Things can seem quite pleasant when the economy is on one of the upswings, but the downswings can be extremely painful.

It was economist Lance Roberts that pointed out this correlation between rate hiking cycles and economic troubles. When I came across his most recent article, it really got my attention…

A sustained interest rate hiking campaign, as undertaken by the Fed, has always resulted in negative stock market returns.

Always. Not usually, not might-be-correlated-to. Always. As in, 18 out of 18 times. Until now. When we’ve had the single highest percentage increase in history (93.33% peak to trough, so far).

To support his claims, he posted this chart…

So far, however, there hasn’t been a huge stock market drop or a recession during this rate hiking cycle.

Has something changed?

Is the 19th time going to be fundamentally different?

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

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

May 28, 2018

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

Today, America is nearly 70 trillion dollars in debt, and that debt is shooting higher at an exponential rate. Usually most of the focus in on the national debt, which is now 21 trillion dollars and rising, but when you total all forms of debt in our society together it comes to a grand total just short of 70 trillion dollars. Many people seem to believe that the debt imbalances that existed prior to the great financial crisis of 2008 have been solved, but that is not the case at all. We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in history, and with each passing day that mountain of debt just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. It simply is not mathematically possible for debt to keep on growing at a pace that is many times greater than GDP growth, and at some point this absurd bubble will come to an abrupt end. So those that are forecasting many years of prosperity to come are simply being delusional. Our current standard of living is very heavily fueled by debt, and at some point we are going to hit a wall.

Let’s talk about consumer debt first. Excluding mortgage debt, consumer debt is projected to hit the 4 trillion dollar mark by the end of the year…

Americans are in a borrowing mood, and their total tab for consumer debt could reach a record $4 trillion by the end of 2018.

That’s according to LendingTree, a loan comparison website, which analyzed data from the Federal Reserve on nonmortgage debts including credit cards, and auto, personal and student loans.

Americans owe more than 26 percent of their annual income to this debt. That’s up from 22 percent in 2010. It’s also higher than debt levels during the mid-2000s when credit availability soared.

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

This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet

March 7, 2018

This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet

In recent weeks, we have witnessed an unprecedented social media crackdown on conservative voices. YouTube’s war with Alex Jones has gotten the most attention, but literally hundreds of conservative content creators have had their accounts penalized, suspended or deleted by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants. There appears to be a coordinated effort to target conservative viewpoints, because similar voices on the left are not receiving equal treatment. If I win my race for Congress on May 15th, I am going to make fighting this sort of censorship one of my top priorities once I get to Washington.

How would you feel if you spent years creating videos and building up a subscriber base only to have all of that work wiped out in a single moment by a leftist YouTube moderator?

Sadly, that is precisely what is happening to dozens upon dozens of conservatives right now…

Writing for Polygon.com, Julia Alexander noted that, “Whenever YouTube institutes a tougher moderation stance, a common debate emerges over censorship—especially from notable conservative voices.”

Specifically, she explained, “Questions over YouTube’s moderators and the power they hold were raised this week after notable conservative pundits, gun advocates, conspiracy channels and other right-wing voices received community strikes or were locked out of their channels. Creators who are affected by lockouts, strikes and suspensions are referring to it as the ‘YouTube Purge,’ claiming that YouTube is purging all right-wing or pro-gun content. The move follows the company’s attempt to clamp down on dangerous content following the Parkland shooting.”

One of the most disturbing examples of censorship was what happened to the Health Ranger channel. Mike Adams is a personal friend, and I am extremely upset about what YouTube has done to him…

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

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