Just A Coincidence?: The Dow Goes From Being 567 Points Down To 567 Points Up At The Closing Bell - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Just A Coincidence?: The Dow Goes From Being 567 Points Down To 567 Points Up At The Closing Bell

Posted: 06 Feb 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Seriously?  We were expecting that Tuesday would be an unusual day on Wall Street, and that was definitely the case.  At the low point, the Dow Jones industrial average was down 567 points, but at the closing bell it was up 567 points.  That is a swing of more than 1000 points, but what is more surprising is the exact symmetry of those numbers.  Is this just some sort of bizarre coincidence?

At the opening bell, stock prices collapsed and many were concerned that we were heading for another really bad day for investors.  According to CNBC, the Dow was down 567 points at the lowest point…

The Dow Jones industrial average opened with a big whoosh lower, then rallied all the way back. As of 3:41 p.m. ET, the Dow is 600 points higher and trading at a new session high. At its session low it was down by 567 points.

But then momentum shifted and the Dow soared.  By the end of the Day, the Dow Jones industrial average was up 567 points.  The following comes from CNN…

The Dow plunged 567 points at the open on Tuesday and briefly sank into correction territory — a drop of 10% from its record high. But those losses quickly vanished, and the index ended the day up 567.
It was the Dow’s biggest point gain since August 2015 and the fourth-largest in history. The percentage gain of 2.3% is the biggest since January 2016.

It is not unusual to see market swings of this magnitude during times of high volatility. 

Even during times of panic, at some point the sellers get exhausted and investors looking for buying opportunities come surging in.  On Tuesday, this shift in momentum came almost immediately after the opening…

“I thought we were going to see the bottom within five minutes of when we opened. I think that’s basically what we’re seeing,” said Ed Keon, portfolio manager at QMA, the quantitative and dynamic asset allocation business of PGIM. “At these levels, stocks represent pretty good value and we’re adding to equity exposure.” Keon said it’s too early to call a bottom but he expects that the worse is over.

But just because the Dow was up more than 500 points today does not mean that the crisis is over.

It is important to remember that there are wild swings both ways during any market crisis.  For example, 9 of the 20 best days in stock market history were right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008.  So if a new financial crisis is indeed brewing, we would certainly expect to see days when the Dow rises dramatically.

Markets tend to do well when things are calm, and they tend to go down when things get choppy.  So the fact that there was such volatility on Wall Street today is not a good sign.
Hopefully things will settle down, because the markets will not be able to handle too much more shaking.  There is so much leverage on Wall Street today, and as Carl Icahn recently told CNBC, one of these days all of this leverage is “going to blow up the market”…

Billionaire Carl Icahn told CNBC on Tuesday there are too many exotic, leveraged products for investors to trade, and one day these securities are going to blow up the market.
The market is a “casino on steroids” with all these exchange-traded funds and exchange-traded notes, he said.
These funds, especially the leveraged ones, are the “fault lines” that will eventually lead to an earthquake on Wall Street, he said. “These are just the beginnings of a rumbling.”

Wednesday will be a key day.  If the markets are nice and calm, that will be a really good sign.

But if we see tremendous movement in one direction or the other, that could indicate that more shaking is on the way.

In any event, the absurdly inflated stock prices of today are simply not sustainable.  Stock valuations always return to their long-term averages eventually, and that will be true in this case as well.

What goes up must come down, and we have certainly witnessed this with Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies lately.  As far as stocks are concerned, the best that we can hope for in the long-term is a soft landing, but history tells us that is usually not how giant financial bubbles come to an end.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Strong Earthquakes Hit San Francisco And Mount St. Helens And Experts Warn They May Be Foreshocks For ‘Something Larger’ - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Strong Earthquakes Hit San Francisco And Mount St. Helens And Experts Warn They May Be Foreshocks For ‘Something Larger’ Posted: 04 Jan 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG Just when it seemed like things may be settling down, two very unusual earthquakes have hit the west coast within the past couple of days.  A 4.4 magnitude quake struck Berkeley, California just prior to 3 AM on Thursday morning, and a 3.9 magnitude earthquake hit Mount St. Helens in Washington state on Wednesday.  Overall, there have been 68 earthquakes in the vicinity of Mount St. Helens since New Year’s Day, and there have been a total of 629 earthquakes in the state of California within the last 30 days.   Could it be possible that all of this activity is leading up to a historic seismic disaster on the west coast? The 4.4 magnitude earthquake along the Hayward fault very early on Thursday jolted people out of bed all over the San Francisco area… A strong 4.4 magnitude earthquake has rattled the Bay Area shortly before 3 a.m. USGS is reporting the quake was centered in Berkeley. On KRON4’s real time earthquake map it shows the epicenter. The quake struck at 2:39 a.m. and was centered near the Claremont hotel. The earthquake had a preliminary depth of 8 miles, according to USGS. This wasn’t a soft and gentle earthquake that everyone kind of laughs about after it is over. Rather, this was the kind of extremely intense earthquake that puts the fear of God into people.  In fact, one Bay area resident said that it “felt like a truck hit my house”… “I was actually awake putting my shoes on for work. It felt like a truck hit my house from the back which pushed my against the staircase railing, the walls were cracking and threw my cell phone and keys down the stairs. Pretty scary” If this was the worst quake in this particular swarm, it won’t ultimately be that big of a deal. However, USGS Geologist David Schwartz is warning that this 4.4 magnitude earthquake could potentially be “a foreshock of something larger”… “It is centered on about a five-mile-long section of the Hayward Fault that in the past 10 years has produced 30 earthquakes of magnitude between 3-4,” he told KPIX 5. “So it is a hot spot along the fault and this morning’s earthquake was the largest of that group.” Schwartz said the real question in the hours after the quake was “is this a foreshock of something larger? That’s the concern.” I have been writing about the shaking that has been happening on the west coast quite a bit lately, but I don’t think that people understand the seriousness of what we are facing. Scientists assure us that the “Big One” is coming, and when it does arrive the devastation will be absolutely off the charts.  Just consider the words of seismologist Peggy Hellweg… Speaking to Daily Star Online, seismologist Peggy Hellweg, from the University of California, said the region is not prepared to deal with the fallout from such an earthquake. She said that a magnitude 7 or greater earthquake could kill “tens of thousands of people”. In financial terms, such a quake would likely cause “tens to hundreds of billions of dollars in damage”, she said. And remember, she is talking about a magnitude 7 earthquake in her scenario. A magnitude 9 earthquake would be many, many times more powerful, and it would easily be the worst natural disaster in the recorded history of the United States. Meanwhile, Mount St. Helens was hit with a very unusual 3.9 magnitude earthquake on Thursday, and some believe that this could be a sign that the volcano is “recharging”… A series of 68 tremors, peaking with a magnitude 3.9 quake, have been detected in Washington state by scientists since New Years day. The 3.9 quake is the second largest since 1981, the year after the natural disaster which killed 57 people and came minutes after a magnitude-5.1 earthquake. Last month, seismologists at the University of Washington logged more than 80 quakes, four times as many as the average. Earthquake swarms at Mount St. Helens are not unusual, but what we have seen over the first four days of 2018 has definitely gotten the attention of seismologists. They are hoping that things will calm down at the volcano, but one seismologist did warn that “a larger quake could follow within 48 hours”. We haven’t had a major volcanic eruption in the United States in a very long time, and so there is a lot of complacency out there right now. But we should remember that the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 was “the deadliest and most economically damaging volcanic event in the history of the United States.”  The following comes from Forbes… Mount St. Helens is most commonly known for its major eruption in 1980, the deadliest and most economically damaging volcanic event in the history of the United States. The stratovolcano is situated just 96 miles from Seattle and 50 miles from Portland, making an eruption especially dangerous. And Mount St. Helens is certainly not the only threat.  Personally, I am so concerned about a potential eruption of Mount Rainier that I even included one in my novel. With each passing year it appears that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.  Many believe that we have entered a time when seismic activity will be much higher than it has been previously, and that is going to have dramatic implications for our society. Our tech industry is very heavily concentrated along the west coast.  When the “Big One” does finally strike, it could literally crash our economy overnight. What the day arrives, are you ready for what will happen next? Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Is Ripple The Next Hot Cryptocurrency? Some Are Calling It ‘The Bitcoin That Banks Like’ - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Is Ripple The Next Hot Cryptocurrency? Some Are Calling It ‘The Bitcoin That Banks Like’ Posted: 03 Jan 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG After Bitcoin, can you name the second largest cryptocurrency?  Until recently it was Ethereum, but now it is Ripple.  At the start of last year, Ripple was trading for less than a penny, and even just a few months ago you could still get Ripple for about 20 cents.  But now the price of Ripple has absolutely exploded, and as I write this article it is sitting at $3.15.  At this point Ripple has a market cap of more than 120 billion dollars, and those that got in when Ripple was under a penny have seen their investments go up by more than 40,000 percent. If you can believe it, the price of Ripple is up more than 1,000 percent in the last 30 days alone.  So why is Ripple doing so well right now? Well, many analysts are pointing to the very strong relationships that Ripple has been building with financial institutions… XRP’s price has benefited significantly from Ripple’s new partnerships with banks, noted Chris Keshian, co-founder of the Apex Token Fund, a tokenized crypto fund-of-funds. He added that as XRP “surpassed ETH as the second largest cryptocurrency, market hype continued to drive the price.” There are some that believe that Ripple will eventually surpass Bitcoin simply because it is a better way to send and receive money. And without a doubt, functionality is the key for the long-term survival of any cryptocurrency.  Speculative investment can take a cryptocurrency a long way, but at the end of the day it needs to function well in the real world, and that is one key advantage that Ripple appears to have.  According to the Express, Ripple is being called “the Bitcoin that banks like”… Bitcoin is feeling the pressure from another cryptocurrency hot on it’s heels. Ripple has attracted tens of millions of dollars worth of investment leading to it being dubbed the Bitcoin that banks like. The company uses block chain technology, powered by its own cryptocurrency, to send money across the world in real time settlements, according to the company’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse. It does not hold the level of anonymity that bitcoin does, which makes the currency more favourable to banks. One thing that has been holding back the price of Ripple is the fact that it is not listed on some of the key exchanges.  But there are persistent rumors that Ripple will be listed on Coinbase very soon, and that could potentially drive the price of Ripple much higher. Before you get too excited, let me share a word of caution.  Investing in cryptocurrencies is extremely risky, because they are purely digital creations that do not actually possess any intrinsic value at all.  Right now there are more than 1,000 cryptocurrencies in existence, and most of them are eventually going to zero. But for the moment, those that were able to capitalize on the cryptocurrency trend in a major way have become incredibly wealthy.  Ripple’s co-founder Chris Larsen is now worth an astounding 37 billion dollars, and that makes him the 15th richest person in America. Of course he doesn’t actually have 37 billion dollars.  If he does not sell his coins and Ripple eventually goes back to zero, all of that “paper wealth” will be gone. The big danger is that global governments will start cracking down on cryptocurrencies in a major way, and in late December we did see South Korea impose restrictions on the trading of cryptocurrencies in order to “limit speculation”.  If more governments start piling on, that could absolutely crush the cryptocurrency bubble. For now, Bitcoin has been rebounding from that announcement, and Ripple just continues to roar higher.  But let us not forget that a single big announcement could change all of that in a single moment… The South Korean Government’s threats of shutting down exchanges seemed to have little influence on Ripple at the end of the year, but with news hitting the wires of just how much of an impact South Korean exchanges had on Ripple’s December rally and it’s not surprising that Ripple has been defending its gains at the start of the year. Bitcoin may have been the fallout guy when it came to the regulatory chatter at the end of the year, but if the exchanges are closed, it’s not just Bitcoin that will suffer and, if the reports are correct of the South Koreans driving up Ripple trading volumes, things could get messy very quickly. Whatever happens in the short-term, it appears that Ripple has a real chance to be a long-term solution for global payments.  In a recent statement, the Ripple team noted that using Ripple is faster, cheaper and more efficient than using Bitcoin… In a year punctuated by the dramatic rise of digital assets, XRP has out performed the entire sector and looks likely to end the year up more than 45,000%. XRP’s performance is driven by a keen focus on solving a real global payments problem for real customers – and at fractions of a penny and about 3 seconds per transaction – it is cheaper, faster and more efficient than BTC or ETH. As others have pointed out, Bitcoin isn’t going to solve a payments problem when a transaction costs $40 and takes hours to complete. The market seems to increasingly understand that there’s real utility for XRP in solving a massive cross-border payments and liquidity problem that is measured in the trillions of dollars. It is that sort of utility that could make Ripple a long-term success. But of course new competitors are coming online with each passing day.  The “Facebook of cryptocurrencies” may not have even been invented yet, and this industry is evolving at an absolutely breathtaking pace. So Ripple may be the hottest cryptocurrency for the moment, but that could change completely by next week. Nobody knows exactly what is going to happen next, and that is what makes the cryptocurrency market so exciting.  Fortunes will be won and lost in the blink of an eye, and there will be some very big winners and some very big losers. Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

President Trump Is Right: Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary And James Comey All Belong In Prison - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

President Trump Is Right: Huma Abedin, Crooked Hillary And James Comey All Belong In Prison

Posted: 02 Jan 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

If you mishandle classified documents, you go to prison.  That is how the law is written, and that is how the law is supposed to work.  But up until now top members of the Democratic Party have been immune from prosecution for mishandling classified documents even though evidence that they are guilty is publicly available for everyone to see. 

On Friday, we learned that there were classified documents among the 2,800 work-related emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop.  Huma Abedin regularly forwarded documents to her husband’s laptop, and every time she sent a classified document to his laptop it was a violation of federal law.

On Tuesday, President Trump got on Twitter and expressed his desire to see Huma Abedin sent to prison…

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others

President Trump is exactly correct.  Nobody is supposed to be above the law, and Huma Abedin is clearly guilty.

If she isn’t prosecuted, then what is the point of even having any law to protect classified documents?

To say that Abedin was grossly negligent would be a severe understatement.  According to the Daily Caller, she was even using her personal Yahoo email account to transmit “passwords to government systems”…

Huma Abedin forwarded sensitive State Department emails, including passwords to government systems, to her personal Yahoo email account before every single Yahoo account was hacked, a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of emails released as part of a lawsuit brought by Judicial Watch shows.
Abedin, the top aide to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, used her insecure personal email provider to conduct sensitive work. This guarantees that an account with high-level correspondence in Clinton’s State Department was impacted by one or more of a series of breaches — at least one of which was perpetrated by a “state-sponsored actor.”

This is what Trump was talking about when he accused Abedin of putting classified passwords “into the hands of foreign agents”.  There is no telling how much damage was done because of Abedin’s carelessness, and she must be held accountable.

Another part of Trump’s tweet that many of you may not get was his reference to “sailors pictures on submarine”.  Trump was referring to a former member of the U.S. Navy named Kristian Saucier that was found guilty of mishandling classified information.  The following comes from Business Insider…

Trump’s reference to “sailors pictures on submarine” is most likely about the case of Kristian Saucier, who was a machinist’s mate aboard the Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine USS Alexandria from September 2007 to March 2012.
In July 2015, Saucier was charged with taking photos of classified spaces, instruments, and equipment inside the USS Alexandria on at least three occasions in 2009.
Court papers also said Saucier attempted to destroy his laptop, camera, and camera memory card after he was interviewed by the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service in July 2012.

Saucier ended up spending a year in prison for what he did.

So why shouldn’t Abedin suffer the same fate?

Well, you can thank James Comey for the fact that Abedin has gotten off the hook so far.  According to Comey, Abedin did not understand that “what she was doing was in violation of the law”…

Comey said the FBI completed the investigation into Abedin and couldn’t prove there was any criminal intent, which is required in order to classify something as a criminal act in this situation.
“We didn’t have any indication she had a sense what she was doing was in violation of the law,” Comey said.

This makes me so mad I want to scream.

As I discussed yesterday, intent does not matter in these types of cases at all.  In order to get Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin out of trouble, Comey essentially rewrote the law.  The following comes from the National Review…

In essence, in order to give Mrs. Clinton a pass, the FBI rewrote the statute, inserting an intent element that Congress did not require. The added intent element, moreover, makes no sense: The point of having a statute that criminalizes gross negligence is to underscore that government officials have a special obligation to safeguard national defense secrets; when they fail to carry out that obligation due to gross negligence, they are guilty of serious wrongdoing. The lack of intent to harm our country is irrelevant. People never intend the bad things that happen due to gross negligence.

Ultimately, my hope is that Comey goes to prison along with Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin.

He was caught red-handed lying under oath, and according to Sean Hannity he could also potentially be guilty of obstruction of justice…

Fox legal analyst Greg Jarrett told Hannity that agent Peter Strzok, who had sent and received some of the anti-Trump texts, Comey “and others” may be guilty of obstructing justice if it were proven that they wanted to clear Clinton of wrongdoing for political reasons.
“Meaning, if the fix was in, Greg, Comey should go to jail,” Hannity said.

As for Hillary Clinton, there are a whole host of crimes that she needs to be prosecuted for, and I went over several of these in the article that I posted yesterday entitled “Why Hillary Clinton Needs To Go To Prison In 2018”.

If I win my race here in Idaho, I am going to go to Washington and push as hard as I can to bring Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Huma Abedin, James Comey and John Podesta to justice.  And as we peel back the onion, there could potentially be dozens (or even hundreds) of individuals associated with the Clintons that could end up in prison.

Either this nation is going to be governed by the rule of law or it isn’t.

If we are just going to ignore all of the very serious crimes that Hillary Clinton has committed, then the same rules should apply to everyone else as well.  We’ll just have a society where nobody ever goes to prison, and we will see how well that works out.

It is time to restore the rule of law in the United States, and I greatly applaud President Trump for speaking the truth.  We are in a battle for the heart and soul of America, and it is a battle that we cannot afford to lose.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

44 Numbers From 2017 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

44 Numbers From 2017 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe

Posted: 01 Jan 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

2017 went by way too quickly.  Donald Trump’s first year in the White House shook up the entire planet, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next.  Personally, as 2017 began I was still having a hard time actually believing that Trump was going to be our president.  Once he was finally inaugurated on January 20th I was able to relax a little bit, but at that point I had no idea that I would soon be running for Congress here in Idaho as a pro-Trump candidate. 

As 2018 begins, I think that it would be good to look back and remember some of the most important things that happened over the past 12 months.  The following are 44 numbers from 2017 that are almost too crazy to believe…

#1 During Donald Trump’s first year, ISIS lost 98 percent of the territory that it gained while Barack Obama was in the White House.
#2 The price of Bitcoin rose more than 1,300% during 2017.
#3 According to the Washington Post, one out of every ten young adults in the United States has been homeless at some point over the past year.
#4 The United States has lost more than 70,000 manufacturing facilities since China joined the WTO in 2001.
#5 On Donald Trump’s first full day in office he was 70 years, 7 months and 7 days old, and it happened in year 5777 on the Hebrew calendar.
#6 The all-time record for the number of retail store closings in the U.S. was absolutely shattered in 2017.  According to the latest figures, a total of 6,985 store locations were shut down last year, and we are expected to break the record again in 2018.
#7 Incredibly, the number of retail store closings in 2017 was up 229 percent compared with 2016.
#8 When Ronald Reagan entered the White House, the federal government was about one trillion dollars in debt.  Now we are 20 trillion dollars in debt with no end in sight.
#9 Prominent names in the financial world such as John McAfee and James Altucher are predicting that the price of Bitcoin will eventually reach one million dollars.
#10 According to the most recent numbers that we have, 41 million Americans are currently living in poverty.

#11 A recent CNN poll found that only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the Democratic Party.
#12 Ever since the beginning of April, Congress has had an average approval rating of less than 20 percent.
#13 The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up more than 5,000 points in 2017, and that absolutely shattered the previous record of 3,472 points in 2013.
#14 At one point in 2017, the total market cap for all cryptocurrencies combined (Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Litecoin, etc.) surpassed the half a trillion dollar mark.
#15 Wildfires burned an astounding 9,791,062 acres over the past year.
#16 It is being reported that less than 50 percent of all third, fourth and fifth grade students in the state of California meet minimum standards for literacy.
#17 At one very poorly performing elementary school in California, 96 percent of the students are not proficient in either English or math.
#18 Back in 1960, an average of $146 was spent on healthcare per person for the entire year, but today that number has skyrocketed to $9,990.
#19 Thanks to Obamacare, an appendectomy is ten times more expensive in the United States than it is in Mexico.
#20 Thanks to Obamacare, a family of four in Virginia is now facing the prospect of paying $3,000 a month for health insurance.

#21 It is being projected that the average rate increase for Obamacare plans will be 37 percent in 2018.
#22 In 2017, we found out that 264 cases of sexual harassment involving members of Congress have been settled for a grand total of $17,250,854 since the start of 1997.
#23 Economic growth is starting to pick up under President Trump, but the U.S. economy only grew at an average rate of just 1.33 percent over the 10 years prior to 2017.
#24 It is being reported that homelessness has become so pervasive in ultra-liberal Seattle that “400 unauthorized tent camps” have popped up around the city.
#25 One survey that was conducted in 2017 discovered that 78 percent of all full-time workers in the United States live paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time.
#26 According to the Federal Reserve, the average U.S. household is now $137,063 in debt, and that figure is more than double the median household income.
#27 A staggering 59.8 percent of younger Millennials (18 to 25) are now living with relatives, and overall an all-time record 38.4 percent of all Millennials are currently living with family.
#28 Boston University professor Larry Kotlikoff says that the federal government is facing a fiscal gap of 210 trillion dollars over the next 75 years.
#29 According the National Center For Health Statistics, nearly 40 percent of all U.S. adults are now officially obese. That is an all-time record.
#30 Our obesity epidemic is now costing us 190 billion dollars a year.

#31 Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, and Warren Buffett now have more money than the poorest 50 percent of the U.S. population combined.
#32 At this point, 20 percent of all U.S. households have “either zero or negative wealth”.
#33 U.S. stocks have have increased in value by more than 5 trillion dollars since Donald Trump was elected.
#34 For the season, NFL television ratings were down about 9 percent, and many believe that the anthem protests were the primary cause for the ratings decline.
#35 One very disturbing survey found that less than one out of every four Republican members of Congress support building Trump’s border wall.  This is just one reason why we need to vote out the RINOs and replace them with pro-Trump candidates that will support President Trump’s agenda.
#36 Another survey discovered that 50 percent of all Americans favor a pre-emptive strike on North Korea even though many of them cannot even find North Korea on a map of the world.
#37 Last year criminals were able to hack into Equifax and make off with the credit information of 143 million Americans.
#38 Venezuela, the 11th largest oil producing country in the entire world, decided to stop using the petrodollar in 2017.  This was one of the biggest news stories of the entire year, and yet the mainstream media in the U.S. didn’t want to talk about it.
#39 It has been reported that only 25 percent of all Americans have more than $10,000 in savings right now.
#40 A study conducted by the Federal Reserve found that 44 percent of all U.S. adults do not even have enough money “to cover an unexpected $400 expense”.

#41 In the early 1970s, 70 percent of all men in the United States from the age of 20 to the age of 39 were married, but today that number has fallen to just 35 percent. Instead of getting married and starting families, a lot of our young men are still living at home with their parents. Today, 35 percent of all young men from the age of 21 to the age of 30 “are living at home with their parents or a close relative”.
#42 In 2017, the federal government spent more than 4 trillion dollars for the first time ever.
#43 Our government continues to waste money in some of the most insane ways imaginable. For example, in 2017 we learned that the U.S. military actually spends 42 million dollars a year on Viagra.
#44 One survey discovered that 40 percent of all Americans now “prefer socialism to capitalism”, and so we have much work to do if we intend to have any chance of turning this country around.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

Deep State Takedown In Progress: Is Trump About To Start Arresting Top Democrats And Bringing Them To Justice? - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Deep State Takedown In Progress: Is Trump About To Start Arresting Top Democrats And Bringing Them To Justice? Posted: 28 Dec 2017 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG When Donald Trump gets hit, he always hits back even harder.  So when the deep state decided to conduct a legal witch hunt against President Trump and his family, they should have expected that Trump would return the favor.  In recent days, there have been all sorts of rumblings about sealed indictments, pending arrests and a “deep state takedown”.   Many believe that we are on the verge of seeing some of the most prominent Democrats in the entire nation being arrested and thrown in prison.  We shall see how all of this plays out, but in this article I am going to focus on the things that have been confirmed so far. First of all, let’s talk about the documents that are going to be released on Friday.  According to Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton, the State Department is scheduled to release 2,800 government documents which were found on Anthony Weiner’s laptop… .@StateDept will publish releasable portions of 2800 government docs that @FBI found on Anthony Weiner laptop tomorrow (Dec. 29th). Again, thanks to @JudicialWatch lawsuits. Will @RealDonaldTrump DOJ finally take action on Clinton/Abedin misdeeds? Remember, this is just a portion of the documents that were found on his laptop, and the really juicy stuff is almost certainly not going to be found in these government docs. There are persistent rumors that the really juicy stuff on his laptop contains evidence of sexual misconduct by top Democrats that would far surpass anything that has come out about members of Congress so far.  We are potentially talking about the type of stuff that could send people to prison for life, and we need to keep demanding for that material to be released to the public as soon as possible.  I understand that there are ongoing investigations that cannot be compromised, but there is no excuse for things to drag on for this long. But without a doubt, there could potentially be some gamechanging material in the docs that we will get to see tomorrow.  The following is what Judicial Watch previously had to say about these documents… “This is a disturbing development. Our experience with Abedin’s emails suggest these Weiner laptop documents will include classified and other sensitive materials,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “When will the Justice Department do a serious investigation of Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s obvious violations of law?” Judicial Watch previously released 20 productions of documents in this case that show examples of mishandling of classified information and instances of pay to play between the Clinton State Department and the Clinton Foundation. Also, at least 627 emails were not part of the 55,000 pages of emails that Clinton turned over, and further contradict a statement by Clinton that, “as far as she knew,” all of her government emails had been turned over to department. Based on just the evidence that we have so far, Hillary Clinton should clearly be going to prison, and let us hope that this latest development will move things in the right direction over at the Department of Justice. Meanwhile, one of the other pieces of the puzzle that has been confirmed is a very curious executive order that was just issued by President Trump.  The following comes from Zero Hedge… The Trump Administration quietly issued an Executive Order (EO) last Thursday which allows for the freezing of US-housed assets belonging to foreign individuals or entities deemed “serious human rights abusers,” along with government officials and executives of foreign corporations (current or former) found to have engaged in corruption – which includes the misappropriation of state assets, the expropriation of private assets for personal gain, and corruption related to government contracts or the extraction of natural resources.  Furthermore, anyone in the United States who aids or participates in said corruption or human rights abuses by foreign parties is subject to frozen assets – along with any U.S. corporation who employs foreigners deemed to have engaged in corruption on behalf of the company. Many believe that this executive order is directly related to ongoing investigations into corruption within the Democratic Party. More specifically, the wording of this executive order definitely sounds like it could have been written with Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Tony Podesta and Uranium One in mind.  Here is more from Zero Hedge… Now consider that if reports from The Hill are accurate – an FBI mole deep within the Russian uranium industry uncovered evidence that “Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit former President Bill Clinton’s charitable foundation during the time Secretary of State Hillary Clinton served on a government body that provided a favorable decision to Moscow (the Uranium One approval)” – a deal which would eventually grant the Kremlin control over 20 percent of America’s uranium supply right around the time Bill Clinton also collected $500,000 for a Moscow speech, as detailed by author Peter Schweitzer’s book Clinton Cash and the New York Times in 2015. A very dangerous game is being played behind the scenes, and I believe that Trump is going to come out the big winner in the end. Many on the left had been anticipating that 2018 would be the year when Donald Trump is finally taken down, but they will be bitterly disappointed when some of their most cherished heroes end up in shackles instead. If the elite had not gone after Trump so brutally earlier this year, perhaps he would have been willing to let some things slide.  But once Robert Mueller was appointed as special counsel and given an unlimited amount of time, money and resources to dig up dirt on Trump, it was inevitable that Trump would try to find a way to strike back even harder. We have never seen anything quite like this in the history of American politics, and I have a feeling that 2018 is going to be one of the most “interesting” years ever. Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.