Showing posts with label Michael Snyder. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Michael Snyder. Show all posts

Thursday, August 15, 2019

We Just Witnessed The 4th Largest Single Day Point Decline In U.S. Stock Market History - Michael Snyder

We Just Witnessed The 4th Largest Single Day Point Decline In U.S. Stock Market History

You had better buckle up, because it looks like we are in for a bumpy ride.  On Wednesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down a whopping 800 points.  Not only was that the worst day of 2019, but as you will see below, there have only been three days in U.S. history that have been worse.  An inversion of the yield curve sent investors into panic mode, and the selling was fast and furious.  And of course back on August 5th we witnessed a 767 point decline.  So this is now the second historic decline that we have seen so far this month, and the month is only about half over.  Could it be possible that we are on the verge of a major stock market meltdown?
An 800 point drop is definitely rare.  According to CNN, the following were the 10 largest single day point declines for the Dow Jones Industrial Average prior to Wednesday…
02/05/2018 … -1,175.21
02/08/2018 … -1,032.89
10/10/2018 … -831.83
12/04/2018 … -799.36
09/29/2008 … -777.68
08/05/2019 … -767.27
10/15/2008 … -733.08
03/22/2018 … -724.42
09/17/2001 … -684.81
12/01/2008 … -679.95
So that means that Wednesday’s plunge was officially the 4th largest single day plunge that we have ever seen.
The “too big to fail” banks were on the cutting edge of the decline, and some of the biggest names in banking got absolutely monkeyhammered
Bank stocks led the declines as it gets tougher for the group to make a profit lending money in such an environment. Bank of America and Citigroup fell 4.7% and 5.2%, respectively, while J.P. Morgan also dropped 4.15%. The S&P 500 Financials Sector dipped into correction territory on an intraday basis.
If you will remember, bank stocks also led the way down in 2008.
Is history about to repeat itself?
The primary thing that set off this fresh wave of panic on Wall Street was a yield curve inversion
The U.S. government bond market sounded alarms Wednesday as investors fleeing riskier assets drove the 30-year bond’s yield to a record low and the 10-year yield fell below the rate on the two-year for the first time since 2007.
The 10-year Treasury yield dipped as much as 1.9 basis points below the two-year yield in what’s considered a harbinger of a U.S. economic recession beginning in the next 18 months.
When longer-duration bonds are yielding less than shorter-duration bonds, that is a sign that investors are anticipating that economic conditions will be deteriorating.  And as history has shown us, recessions are almost always preceded by yield curve inversions, and so many are taking this as an extremely troubling sign.
So now all eyes are on the Federal Reserve and other global central banks, and many analysts are strongly urging them to do something
“The bond market is saying central banks are behind the curve,” said Marc Ostwald, global strategist at ADM Investor Services in London. “It’s all doom and gloom on the global economy.”
Personally, I don’t really like to use the term “gloom and doom”, but it is definitely an appropriate phrase for what we are witnessing at the moment.  On Wednesday, we got some more really bad economic news from Germany and from China
Economic output in Germany, the world’s fourth-largest economy, contracted in the second quarter, according to a report Wednesday, while a report on factory output in China, the second-largest economy, came in lower than expected.
“It’s almost like we’re starting to see a textbook version of a pre-recessionary period,” Nicholas Akins, chief executive of Ohio-based American Electric Power Co. , said in an interview Wednesday. The company provides electricity to industrial, commercial and residential customers in 11 states.
Of course the more everyone on Wall Street talks about a “recession”, the more everyone is going to start acting like one is coming, and that is actually going to make one more likely.
And it isn’t just Wall Street that is buzzing about the potential for an economic slowdown.  According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the odds of a recession happening during the next 12 months are now the highest they have been since the last financial crisis
The curve isn’t the only thing flashing high alert. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s index showing the probability of a U.S. recession over the next 12 months is close to its highest level since the global financial crisis, at around 31%.
Over and over again, we are seeing things happen that have not happened since the last recession.  At first the mainstream media was slow to catch on, but now just about everybody is acknowledging the warning signs that are all around us.
Unfortunately, the financial bubble that we are facing today is far, far larger than the one that burst in 2008.  And so when this one also bursts, the pain will be much greater than we experienced the last time around.
Many are fearing the worst.  For example, just check out what Martin Armstrong is saying
I am overseas as a crisis is brewing which many might rename the “Lehman Moment” to something more up to date. Clearly, the stakes are far higher to the world economy than anyone may truly appreciate. We are cascading toward a perfect financial storm.
Hmm – there is yet another prominent name that is using the words “perfect” and “storm” together.
Very interesting.
We’ll see where things go from here.  Since the Dow is already so ridiculously high, an 800 point drop is definitely not the end of the world.  But without a doubt, the market’s downward momentum is beginning to pick up speed, and it isn’t going to take much to turn this into a full-blown crash.
As I have stated numerous times, our financial markets are more primed for a crash right now than they were in 2008.  And when this “everything bubble” finally completely bursts, the financial carnage is going to be off the charts.  I very much encourage you to get your financial house in order, because it looks like the chaos could start escalating quite rapidly.
Every major stock market bubble in U.S. history has ended badly, and this one will too.  We have been waiting for this twisted game to start unraveling for quite some time now, and it may be starting to happen.
About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared NowThe Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Middle Class Death Spiral: Consumers Have Never Been In More Debt, And Bankruptcies Are Surging - Michael Snyder

Posted: 12 Aug 2019 Michael Snyder

This wasn’t supposed to happen.  During the relative economic stability of the past few years, the middle class was supposed to experience a resurgence, but instead, it has just continued to be hollowed out.  The cost of living has risen much faster than wages have, and as a result, hard-working families all over America are being stretched financially like never before.  Even though most of us are working, 59 percent of all Americans are currently living paycheck to paycheck, and almost 50 million Americans are living in poverty.  In a desperate attempt to continue their middle-class lifestyles, many Americans have been piling up mountains of debt, and it has gotten to the point where we have a major crisis on our hands.

According to the New York Post, the total amount of debt that U.S. households have accumulated is about to cross the 14 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…
Meanwhile, record American household debt, near $14 trillion including mortgages and student loans, is some $1 trillion higher than during the Great Recession of 2008. Credit card debt of $1 trillion also exceeds the 2008 peak.
Americans are spending heavily, again — and often recklessly, say analysts.
This is the exact opposite of what U.S. consumers should be doing.  We can see signs of a fresh economic slowdown all around us, and consumers should be feverishly trying to get out of debt as fast as they can.

But instead, debt levels just keep setting record after record.  In fact, total student loan debt just hit a brand new record high of 1.605 trillion dollars, and auto loan debt just hit a brand new record high of 1.174 trillion dollars.

It would be one thing if we could handle all of this debt, but that isn’t the case.  Bankruptcies have been steadily rising, and according to the latest figures the number of bankruptcy filings shot up another 5 percent in the month of July
Bankruptcy petitions for consumers and businesses are on the rise. There was a 5% increase in total bankruptcy filings in July 2019 from the previous month, the American Bankruptcy Institute said this week. There were 64,283 bankruptcy filings, up from 62,241 for the same period last year.
Unfortunately, this is probably just the beginning.

Right now, most of the country is living on the edge financially, and so a major economic slowdown would inevitably cause another enormous tsunami of consumer bankruptcies like we saw in 2008.

Even now, things are already so bad that many hard working “middle class” workers in high-cost cities such as New York are so financially stretched that they have to rely on free food from local food banks
“In high-cost cities like New York, personal incomes are not often enough to pay the household bills,” Zac Hall, vice president of anti-poverty programs at the Food Bank For New York City, told The Post. “We are seeing people using consumer debt as a way to make ends meet when they come here,” he added, citing the pressures his nonprofit faces to keep up the distribution of food and meals at no cost to some 1.5 million New Yorkers.
If 1.5 million people in New York are being fed by foodbanks now while things are still relatively stable, how bad will things be when the economy really starts to tank?
For decades, the “almighty U.S. consumer” was one of the fundamental pillars of our economy, but now that is no longer true.

U.S. consumers simply do not have a lot of discretionary income to spend these days, and this is killing major retailers all over the nation.  We are on pace to absolutely shatter the all-time record for store closings in a single year, and within the past 7 days more big retailers have announced that they will be permanently shutting down stores.

For example, Walgreens just announced that they will be closing “approximately 200 U.S. stores”
Walgreens plans to close approximately 200 U.S. stores, the company announced Tuesday in an SEC filing.
According to the document posted Tuesday on the Securities and Exchange Commission website, the move to close stores follows “a review of the real estate footprint in the United States.”
That wouldn’t be happening if the U.S. economy really was “booming”.

Here is another example that comes to us from Wolf Street
A’Gaci, a young women’s fashion retailer based in Texas, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, for the second time, after having filed for the first time in January 2018. This time, it will liquidate. All its remaining 54 stores in seven states and Puerto Rico will be closed – the “bulk” of them by the end of this month.
In addition, we just learned that Party City is going to be closing more stores than expected in 2019
Party City is increasing the number of stores expected to shutter this year.
The New Jersey-based party supplies company said it was looking to close 55 stores throughout the year, up 10 from the May estimate of 45 stores.
I honestly don’t know what malls and shopping centers all over the U.S. are going to do.  I once warned of a future in which America’s landscape would be littered with abandoned stores, and that future has now arrived.

For the moment, those at the very top of the economic pyramid are still doing okay, but the middle class is eroding a little bit more with each passing day.  For much more on this, I would encourage you to check out this Youtube video by Jeremiah Babe.



I have been writing about the evisceration of the U.S. middle class for a decade, and the condition of the middle class right now is as bad as I have ever seen it.

And as we plunge into this new economic downturn, things are only going to get worse.  The middle class is absolutely drowning in debt, and even a mild recession would be enough to financially wipe out millions of American families.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared NowThe Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters

His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

The post Middle-Class Death Spiral: Consumers Have Never Been In More Debt, And Bankruptcies Are Surging appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Monday, August 5, 2019

America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer - Michael Snyder

Posted: 04 Aug 2019 08:54 PM PDT

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.

According to USA Today, so far in 2019 there have been more mass shootings than days in the year…
As gunfire ripped through America in an unprecedented 24 hours, a bleak milestone in a nation pocked by gun violence was marked: There have been 251 mass shootings in 2019, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
shooting spree early Sunday at an entertainment district in Dayton, Ohio – which left at least nine dead and more than two dozen injured – notched an even darker statistic: It occurred on the 216th day of the year, meaning there have been more mass shootings than days so far this year.
As I have been warning for years, the thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is steadily disappearing.

At one time, you could walk down the streets in most communities in America without worrying that someone would suddenly gun you down, but that is no longer a safe assumption.

And in some areas, things are getting really, really bad.  Just check out what happened in Chicago over the weekend
In Chicago at least three people have been killed and 37 more injured since Friday evening in shootings within city limits, including 22 people shot Sunday in less than four hours, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
In particular, a mass shooting that took place near a children’s playground was particularly tragic
As The Epoch Times’ Jack Phillips reportsat least seven people were shot and wounded on Aug. 4 as they gathered near a children’s playground on Chicago’s West Side. The people gathered at 1:20 a.m. as they stood in the park on the 2900 West Roosevelt Road when a person opened fire from a black Chevy Camaro, said Chicago Police.
So why didn’t this mass shooting get the same kind of coverage that the other mass shootings received?

Could it be that it is because it didn’t neatly fit the agenda that the mainstream media is trying to promote?

The city of Baltimore is another major American city where violence is completely and utterly out of control.  In fact, there is only one nation on the entire planet that has a higher homicide rate than Baltimore
Only one country in the world has a higher per capita homicide rate than the city of Baltimore.
According to WorldAtlas, the murder capital of the globe is Honduras — where there are 90.4 homicides per 100,000 people.
Baltimore, with 56 homicides per 100,000 people, edges out the number two spot ahead of Venezuela, where there are 53.7 homicides per 100,000 people.
As the violence across our country continues to escalate, the calls to restrict our 2nd Amendment rights are going to become overwhelming.

But taking away our 2nd Amendment rights is not going to solve the problem.  Instead, it will just take the guns out of the hands of law-abiding citizens.

The truth is that the El Paso shooter picked a gun-free zone for a reason.  When they know that their targets will be sitting ducks, that just makes things even easier for the mass shooters.

And the bad guys will always find ways to get guns.  Just look at the city of Chicago – they have some of the harshest gun laws in the entire nation, but they also lead the country in gun deaths.

Unfortunately, logic doesn’t tend to work with those that love authoritarianism.  Whenever something happens, they want the government to do “something”, and that “something” almost always involves eroding our most basic rights.

I wish that it wasn’t true, but this is where our country is heading.  Americans have been trained to believe that the government should take care of them from the cradle to the grave and should do all that it can to shield them from everything bad that can possibly happen in life.

Sadly, every time such a totalitarian “utopia” has been attempted throughout human history, it has always ended very badly, and that will be the case here as well.


About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared NowThe Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.
The post America Is Not Going To Be A Free And Open Society Any Longer appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Monday, July 29, 2019

More Than 80,000 Earthquakes Have Hit California Since July 4th - Michael Snyder


More Than 80,000 Earthquakes Have Hit California Since July 4th, And The Aftershocks Are Headed “Toward The Garlock Fault”

The recent seismic activity in the state of California has taken a strange turn.  According to the Los Angeles Times, there have been more than 80,000 earthquakes in the state since July 4th, and most of those quakes were aftershocks of the two very large events that hit the Ridgecrest area early in the month.  Over the past couple of weeks, however, a very unusual pattern has begun to emerge.  We have started to see aftershocks creep toward two of the largest fault lines in southern California, and this is making seismologists very nervous.  The fact that we are seeing aftershocks “approaching the Owens Valley fault” is definitely alarming, but of far more concern is the fact that the Ridgecrest aftershocks are also headed “toward the Garlock fault”.  
The following comes from a local California news source
According to a Los Angeles Times article , aftershocks of the magnitude 7.1 earthquake near Ridgecrest have been creeping into areas close to two major earthquake faults which is concerning for some seismologists on whether it could trigger another huge temblor.
“Some aftershocks have rumbled northwest of the Searles Valley earthquake, approaching the Owens Valley fault. That fault triggered an earthquake of perhaps magnitude 7.8 or 7.9 in 1872, one of the largest in California’s modern record,” the article explains. “The Ridgecrest aftershocks have also headed southeast toward the Garlock fault, a lesser-known fault capable of producing an earthquake of magnitude 8 or more. The fault along the northern edge of the Mojave Desert can send shaking south and west into Bakersfield and Ventura and Los Angeles counties.”
In the end, this could turn out to be nothing, but there are a couple of reasons why we want to keep a very close eye on the Garlock fault.
First of all, the Garlock fault is the second largest fault line in the entire state of California, and it is a major threat to southern California.
Secondly, the Garlock fault runs directly into the San Andreas fault, and many believe that a major quake along one could potentially trigger a major quake along the other.
If you are not familiar with the Garlock fault, the following is some basic information from Wikipedia
The Garlock Fault marks the northern boundary of the area known as the Mojave Block, as well as the southern ends of the Sierra Nevada and the valleys of the westernmost Basin and Range province. Stretching for 250 kilometers (160 mi), it is the second-longest fault in California and one of the most prominent geological features in the southern part of the state.
The Garlock Fault runs from a junction with the San Andreas Faultin the Antelope Valley, eastward to a junction with the Death Valley Fault Zone in the eastern Mojave Desert. It is named after the historic mining town of Garlock, founded in 1894 by Eugene Garlock and now a ghost town.
So exactly what would a major quake along the Garlock fault look like?
Here is how the Los Angeles Times described what a “worst-case scenario” would look like…
A worst-case scenario would be a magnitude 7.7 earthquake that begins on the eastern end of the Garlock fault in eastern San Bernardino County and unlocks the fault to the southwest, bringing severe shaking to towns such as California City and Tehachapi; Edwards Air Force Base and Lancaster would see very strong shaking. Even Santa Clarita and the San Fernando Valley would see strong shaking, with much of the L.A. Basin and the San Gabriel Valley seeing moderate shaking — worse than what L.A. encountered last week.
No, that is definitely not a “worst-case scenario” for the Garlock fault, but without a doubt a major quake along the fault would be far more destructive than the earthquakes that we just witnessed on July 4th and 5th.
We were told that those earthquakes “did not cause much damage”, but now we are learning that those quakes actually “caused an estimated $200 million in damage”
The powerful earthquake that rocked California earlier this month caused an estimated $200 million in damage.
The cost of damage from the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that hit southeastern California on July 5 and foreshocks that came a day earlier was estimated by catastrophe modeling business Karen Clark & Company.
So if relatively minor earthquakes can cause that much economic damage, what would an earthquake 1,000 times more powerful do?
Because someday “the Big One” is going to hit the San Andreas fault, and it is going to release so much energy that the quakes that we witnessed this month won’t even be worth comparing to it.  In fact, if a magnitude 9.1 earthquake were to hit southern California, it would be exactly 1000 times more powerful than the magnitude 7.1 quake that happened back on July 5th.
And even though it isn’t likely, scientists did admit that the large earthquakes that happened earlier this month could trigger a quake on the San Andreas fault
Scientists knew almost immediately that two large quakes that hit near Ridgecrest earlier this month did not come from the San Andreas. But ever since, they’ve been studying whether the quakes could cause more seismic activity from other faults — including the San Andreas nearly 100 miles away. A new calculation conducted in recent weeks at the U.S. Geological Survey showed that there’s an extremely remote chance the San Andreas could be triggered from the Ridgecrest quakes.
Hopefully, it will not happen any time soon, but seismologists assure us that it is only a matter of time before “the Big One” strikes California.  They have repeatedly warned us that the San Andreas fault is “locked and loaded” and that it has the potential to “unzip all at once”.  And when that day finally arrives, scientists have determined that the ground level could drop by up to 3 feet, and that would result in vast portions of southern California suddenly being covered by the Pacific Ocean.
We live at a time when our planet is becoming increasingly unstable, and we are witnessing major earthquakes and enormous volcanic eruptions all over the globe on a daily basis now.
For a long time, the United States had been spared, but on July 4th and 5th that suddenly changed.
Since that time, there have been more than 80,000 earthquakes in the state of California, and this is just the beginning of the shaking that is coming.
About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared NowThe Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse BlogEnd Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. 
If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.