The economic pain that we are witnessing right now is far greater than anything that we witnessed during the last recession. U.S. GDP declined by 32.9 percent on an annualized basis last quarter, more than 100,000 businesses have permanently shut down since the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the United States, and more than 54 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the last 19 weeks. Up until just recently, a $600 weekly unemployment “supplement” and a federal moratorium that prevented many evictions had helped to ease the suffering for millions of American families, but both of those measures have now expired. As a result, a tremendous amount of economic pain which had previously been deferred will now come rushing back with a vengeance. Millions of American families are no longer going to be able to pay their bills, and experts are warning that we could soon see an “eviction crisis” that is absolutely unprecedented in American history. (Read More...)
Economic Downturn
U.S. Job Losses Accelerate: Here Are 10 Big Companies That Are Cutting Jobs Or Laying Off Workers
Job cuts and layoffs are coming fast and furious now as the U.S. economy really starts to slow down. We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008, when millions of Americans lost their jobs in just a matter of months. Things are certainly not that bad yet, but there has been a very noticeable shift over the last couple of months. Back during the summer, everyone was talking about how well the U.S. economy was doing, but now things have dramatically changed. At this point, economic activity has slowed down so much that even Jim Cramer of CNBC is admitting that the U.S. economy has “cooled”. If current trends continue, things will certainly get even worse, and the job losses in this article will be just the tip of the iceberg. (Read More...)
Unprepared: What Do You Think Would Happen If A Greek-Style Crisis Hit America?
In this article, I am going to share with you some statistics that prove that most Americans are completely and totally unprepared for a Greek-style economic crisis. According to one recent survey, an all-time high 72 percent of all Americans are concerned about an economic downturn, and yet the amount of actual preparation that is taking place for the next economic downturn is very low. As 2008 has faded into our memories, most Americans have been lulled into a false sense of security. Most people seem to be far more concerned about the latest exploits and scandals of their favorite celebrities than they are about the very real problems that this nation is steamrolling toward. Hopefully what is going on in Greece right now will serve as a wake up call, because the truth is that similar things could happen in the United States much sooner than most of us would dare to imagine. (Read More...)
Down Goes Britain: The UK Economy Tumbles Deep Into Recession
The economic crisis that is sweeping Europe is starting to hit Britain really hard. Over the last couple of years economists have been warning that we can’t let the “contagion” spread from troubled nations such as Greece and Portugal to the rest of Europe. Well, it is too late for that now. Spain and Italy are coming apart at the seams at this point, and even “stronger” nations such as the UK and France appear to be deeply troubled. According to numbers that were released just this week, the UK economy has now contracted for three quarters in a row. During the second quarter of 2012, the UK economy shrunk by 0.7 percent. That was a much larger contraction than the 0.2 percent contraction that economists were forecasting. At this point we have got a definite trend going. During the fourth quarter of 2011, the UK economy shrunk by 0.4 percent. During the first quarter of 2012, the UK economy shrunk by 0.3 percent. And now in this latest quarter the contraction of the UK economy appears to be accelerating. This economic downturn in the UK is being called “the longest double-dip recession for more than 50 years“. So will Britain soon look like Greece and Spain and Italy or will it be able to pull out of this nosedive in time? (Read More...)
Money Trouble Ahead: 15 Indications That Bad Times Are About To Hit The U.S. Economy
2011 is shaping up to be a really bad year for the U.S. economy. There are all kinds of indications that big trouble is ahead. So far financial markets are weathering all of the chaos around the world fairly well, but just as there were huge flashing warning signs before the 2008 financial crisis there are also huge flashing warning signs now. The price of oil is soaring, the U.S. housing market is experiencing huge problems, the cost of living in America recently hit a new record high and each week the globe seems to become even more unstable. How much pounding can our fragile economic system take before it completely collapses? As the price of oil goes even higher, it is going to cause economic growth to slow down and it is going to cause the prices of the things that we all buy at the stores to go up at the same time. It is very likely that we are entering a period of “stagflation” similar to what we experienced in the 1970s. This is going to cause a huge amount of money trouble for millions of American families. Already there are vast numbers of American families that are barely making it every month. Tens of millions of Americans are already receiving government assistance. So what is going to happen when the next financial crash happens and we experience yet another major economic downturn? (Read More...)
Recession Over Or Just Beginning? 21 “Oh Crap!” Statistics About The U.S. Economy
Is the recession over or is the economic downturn just beginning? Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve have been busy proclaiming that the U.S. economy is back on track, but the sad truth is that our economic problems look like they are about to get a whole lot worse. Without oil, our entire economy would shut down cold. Thanks to the chaos in the Middle East, oil is absolutely exploding in price. In fact, the price of oil in the United States went up more than seven dollars today. The global price of food has risen to record levels over the past 12 months and it is projected to continue to rapidly increase throughout all of 2011. This is going to hit struggling families all over the globe very hard. Meanwhile, thousands of manufacturing facilities and millions of good jobs continue to flee the United States. The gap between the wealth that we consume as a nation and the wealth that we produce as a nation continues to grow. We have attempted to fill this gap with asset sales and with massive amounts of debt, but that is a game that cannot last forever. When we come to the end of every single month, we are poorer as a nation and we are deeper in debt as a nation. From “sea to shining sea” we have become a nation that is flooded with red ink. (Read More...)