America’s “Food Lines” Are Being Measured In Miles As Desperation Sets In All Over The Country

When I repeatedly warned that a large portion of the population was completely and utterly unprepared for any sort of a serious economic downturn, I was not exaggerating one bit.  A survey that was taken last August found that 59 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck at that time, and that wasn’t going to be a major problem as long as the paychecks kept rolling in.  But now we have seen the biggest spike in unemployment in the history of our country, and millions of workers suddenly don’t have paychecks coming in anymore.  In just a matter of weeks, economic desperation on a massive scale has erupted from coast to coast, and the stress that this is putting on food banks and other charities that work with the poor has been unprecedented. (Read More...)

Supplies Are Starting To Get Really Tight Nationwide As Food Distribution Systems Break Down

All across America, store shelves are emptying and people are becoming increasingly frustrated because they can’t get their hands on needed supplies.  Most Americans are blaming “hoarders” for the current mess, but it is actually much more complicated than that.  Normally, Americans get a lot of their food from restaurants.  In fact, during normal times 36 percent of all Americans eat at a fast food restaurant on any given day.  But now that approximately 75 percent of the U.S. is under some sort of a “shelter-in-place” order and most of our restaurants have shut down, things have completely changed.  Suddenly our grocery stores are being flooded with unexpected traffic, and many people are buying far more than usual in anticipation of a long pandemic.  Unfortunately, our food distribution systems were not designed to handle this sort of a surge, and things are really starting to get crazy out there. (Read More...)

Why Did Hundreds Of CEOs Resign Just Before The World Started Going Absolutely Crazy?

In the months prior to the most ferocious stock market crash in history and the eruption of the biggest public health crisis of our generation, we witnessed the biggest exodus of corporate CEOs that we have ever seen.  And as you will see below, corporate insiders also sold off billions of dollars worth of shares in their own companies just before the stock market imploded.  In life, timing can be everything, and sometimes people simply get lucky.  But it does seem odd that so many among the corporate elite would be so exceedingly “lucky” all at the same time.  In this article I am not claiming to know the motivations of any of these individuals, but I am pointing out certain patterns that I believe are worth investigating. (Read More...)

More Than 70 Million Americans Have Been Locked Down So Far, And This Is Just The Beginning…

It seems like just yesterday that I was warning that the same sort of lockdowns that were occurring in Italy and China would soon be instituted here, and now it is actually happening.  As you will see below, more than 70 million Americans have already been locked down, and more states will likely follow suit in the days ahead.  Of course our politicians are attempting to put a positive spin on their directives by referring to them as “shelter-in-place” orders, and they are promising us that they are only “temporary”.  But less than 300 Americans have died during this pandemic so far, and many medical experts are warning that this is only the very beginning of this crisis.  As long as the number of confirmed cases and the death toll are both rising at an exponential rate, these “shelter-in place” orders will remain in effect, and Americans will become increasingly frustrated about having to remain in their own homes. (Read More...)

63 Percent Of All U.S. Jobs Created Since 1990 Have Been Low Wage Jobs

If you have a good paying job, you should probably try to hold on to it as hard as you can, because those types of jobs are steadily becoming rarer.  Since 1990, the U.S. economy has produced millions of jobs, but as you will see below nearly two-thirds of them have been low wage jobs.  Of course this is one of the biggest factors causing the systematic erosion of the American middle class.  Today, half of all U.S. workers make less than $33,000 a year, but meanwhile the cost of living has been steadily increasing.  Housing costs, health insurance and other basic necessities have been rising much faster than our paychecks have, and this has put an enormous amount of financial stress on hard working American families. (Read More...)

Historic Midwest Blizzard Has Farmers “Expecting Massive Crop Losses – As Devastating As We’ve Ever Seen”

An unprecedented October blizzard that hit just before harvest time has absolutely devastated farms all across the U.S. heartland.  As you will see below, one state lawmaker in North Dakota is saying that the crop losses will be “as devastating as we’ve ever seen”.  This is the exact scenario that I have been warning about for months, and now it has materialized.  Due to endless rain and horrific flooding early in the year, many farmers in the middle of the country faced very serious delays in getting their crops planted.  So we really needed good weather at the end of the season so that the crops could mature and be harvested in time, and that did not happen.  Instead, the historic blizzard that we just witnessed dumped up to 2 feet of snow from Colorado to Minnesota.  In fact, one city in North Dakota actually got 30 inches of snow.  In the end, this is going to go down as one of the worst crop disasters that the Midwest has ever seen, and ultimately this crisis is going to affect all of us. (Read More...)

China Takes A Comprehensive Trade Deal Off The Table, And That Is Disastrous News For The U.S. Economy

The Chinese never intended to make a deal, and now they are publicly admitting it.  For months, I have been warning readers of The Economic Collapse Blog that a comprehensive trade deal with China will not happen before the 2020 presidential election, and the reason why this is the case is actually very simple.  The Chinese have concluded that President Trump will never give them the kind of deal that they are looking for, and so their entire goal has been to run out the clock on the Trump administration so that they can finally get to a Democrat that will be much more “reasonable” to deal with.  Of course if Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders wins the election, they won’t be very “reasonable” either, and so the best case scenario for the Chinese is for either Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton to emerge victorious in November 2020.  In any event, the Chinese are now being very clear about the fact that they are never, ever going to agree to Trump’s core demands.  The following comes from CNBC(Read More...)

The Average U.S. Farm Is $1,300,000 In Debt, And Now The Worst Farming Crisis In Modern History Is Upon Us

We haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Leading up to this year, farm incomes had been trending lower for most of the past decade, and meanwhile farm debt levels have been absolutely exploding.  So U.S. farmers were desperate for a really good year, but instead 2019 has been a total disaster.  As I have been carefully documenting, due to endless rain and catastrophic flooding millions of acres of prime farmland didn’t get planted at all this year, and the yields on tens of millions of other acres are expected to be way, way below normal.  As a result, we are facing the worst farming crisis in modern American history, and this comes at a time when U.S. farms are drowning in more debt than ever before.  In fact, the latest numbers that we have show that the average U.S. farm is 1.3 million dollars in debt(Read More...)