A Member Of Congress Explains Why The Corruption In Congress Is Much Worse Than You Think - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

A Member Of Congress Explains Why The Corruption In Congress Is Much Worse Than You Think Posted: 11 Mar 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG What would you say if I told you that committee chairs were for sale in Congress?  And what would you say if I told you that many members of Congress spend far more time on the telephone raising money than on the jobs that the people of their states actually elected them to do?   There is a reason why so many Americans absolutely hate Congress.  At this moment, Congress has an approval rating of just 15 percent, and approval ratings for Congress have been at extremely low levels for a very long time.  We all know that Congress has become completely corrupt, that it is completely unresponsive to the American people and that it has become all about the money.  Many have asked why I would want to become part of such a corrupt institution, and I respond by saying that it is time to take our government back. In the very close race that I am currently involved in, there is an exceedingly clear choice between politics as usual and someone that is committed to going to Washington and turning the system completely upside down. I believe that we need to send people to Washington that will be willing to stand up to the leadership of both parties.  Below, I am going to share some things that a current member of Congress is saying about the corruption in D.C. that will blow your mind.  Many would suggest that the corruption is so pervasive that it is useless to try to do anything about it.   But I say that if “we the people” can get Donald Trump into the White House, then “we the people” can also take Congress back. To get a feel for how passionate I am about this, please watch the short speeches that I made to the Latah County Republicans and the Nez Perce County Republicans over the weekend.  The response to both talks was incredibly positive, and we are winning over more voters with each passing day. We have just launched our final money bomb of the 2018 primary campaign, and we are trying to raise $35,000 so that we can fully implement our entire plan for pulling ahead in this very tight race over the last 60 days.  If you would like to make a contribution, here are several ways that you can do so… Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate Donate By Paypal: https://donorbox.org/michael-snyder-for-congress Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address… Michael Snyder For Congress PO Box 1136 Bonners Ferry, ID 83805 As the donations roll in, you will be able to track the progress of the money bomb on Swampbomb.com. U.S. Representative Ken Buck was elected to Congress in 2014, and he recently authored a book that is shaking Washington to the core.  The following is what USA Today had to say about it… And the second-term Republican is unlikely to make many more with Tuesday’s publication of his tell-all book, Drain the Swamp: How Washington is Worse Than You Think, co-authored with Bill Blankschaen. In it, Buck says lawmakers are mostly “fat and happy alligators who feel pretty darn comfortable in the swamp.” He casts Republican leaders as “playground bullies” who go to great lengths, including yanking subcommittee chairmanships and canceling lawmakers’ overseas trips, to punish dissenters. And he decries a “pay-to-play” system in which plum committee assignments and leadership slots are tied to lawmakers’ fundraising skills instead of their policy expertise. One of the things that Buck has revealed that upset me the most is the fact that committee chairs are essentially for sale in Washington.  Here is a brief excerpt from Buck’s book… Here’s how it works for Republicans. If you want to serve on a committee, you have to raise money for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). The amount varies depending on the committee and role. For example, to serve on a B or C level committee, a GOP House freshman member must raise $220,000 every two years … Veteran members on A committees must raise more than twice that amount – $450,000 … If you become the chair of a B committee – congratulations – you’re now expected to raise $875,000 a year for the NRCC. Chairing an A committee means you must raise $1.2 million. In order to raise such large amounts of money, members of Congress are expected to spend approximately four hours a day on the telephone raising money.  This is something that I wrote an extended article about last week. I have already pledged that I am not going to participate in that system and that I am not going to make those calls. I believe that members of Congress should be spending their time in Washington doing what they were elected to do, and if you want to see this current system dismantled I hope that you will stand with us. Because the Washington money machine is not behind me, we are funding our campaign entirely through grassroots donations.  Hundreds upon hundreds of patriots all over the nation have helped us surge toward the top of this race, and if you would like to join the team here is how you can do that… If we do not stand up to the corruption in Washington, it will just continue to get worse and worse and worse. That is why we need to send fighters to D.C., and I am being very bold about the fact that I am not going there to play nice.  I am going there to turn over the tables and to turn the current corrupt system upside down, and party leadership is not going to like that at all. According to the Hill, those that do not play along with the current corrupt system often pay a very high penalty… And what if you, as a Member of Congress, decide not to play along? For starters, you won’t be able to use the NRCC call suites that are conveniently located two blocks from the House office buildings, and the leadership will put out the word to the K Street lobbying community that they are not to donate or raise funds for you if they wish to stay in the leadership’s good graces. If you’re particularly rebellious, you’ll be stripped of your committee assignments, and maybe even be challenged in a primary by a leadership-backed candidate. If they try to do those things to me, I still will not back down. After all, I am not going there to be a career politician. Instead, I am going there to be part of a national movement to take Congress back for the American people. In his new book, Ken Buck spoke very eloquently about the need to drain the swamp… Our founders’ default position was to keep power as far from Washington as possible. We can no longer afford to ignore their wisdom. A crippling national debt exists because Washington has too much power. Corruption in the federal government is a direct result of so many people getting comfortable in the stagnant political backwaters beside the Potomac. The concentration of power in D.C. attracts the worst and tempts the best, making it extremely difficult for men and women of character to arise and lead our nation to a healthier place. The best way to drain the swamp in Washington is to remove the incentive for abuse. Swamps exist when water congregates in one place and becomes stagnant over time. Draining the swamp means draining Washington of power. Washington can’t abuse power it does not have. If you want to help us drain the swamp, now is the time to act. There are just over 60 days until the Republican primary on May 15th, and there are four campaigns that are bunched very closely together.  We have all the momentum, but a couple of the other campaigns have raised a bit more money so far. We need to close that gap, and we know exactly what we need to do to win this race over the last 60 days.  Right now we do not have all the resources that we need to implement that plan, and that is why we really, really need your help… Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate Donate By Paypal: https://donorbox.org/michael-snyder-for-congress Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address… Michael Snyder For Congress PO Box 1136 Bonners Ferry, ID 83805 As we raise more money, you can track our progress on Swampbomb.com. We are so close to winning this thing, and wherever I travel around Idaho’s first congressional district the response to our message has been overwhelmingly positive. But we are running out of time, and there are thousands upon thousands of undecided voters that we still need to reach. If you believe that it is time to take our government back, send someone to Washington that is committed to doing exactly that.  I am asking for your financial support, and if you live in Idaho’s first congressional district I am respectfully asking for your vote on May 15th. Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

Are The Social Media Giants Trying To Steal The 2018 Elections By Censoring Conservative Websites? - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Are The Social Media Giants Trying To Steal The 2018 Elections By Censoring Conservative Websites? Posted: 08 Mar 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG Nobody is disputing the fact that YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other social media giants are censoring conservative material.  In fact, this is probably the largest purge of conservative voices in the history of the Internet.  Obviously this is going to cause large numbers of people to stop using their platforms, so why would they do this?  Well, to some conservatives the answer is obvious.  These social media giants watched Donald Trump use their platforms extremely effectively in 2016, and many believe that they are absolutely determined to never let that happen again.  In fact, Mike Adams of Natural News is completely convinced that there is a concerted effort by these social media giants to steal the 2018 elections… The realization is suddenly obvious: The Google / YouTube selective “censorship rampage” that has targeted conservative websites and content creators is a brazen, illegal scheme to interfere with U.S. elections and steal the 2018 mid-terms. The systematic silencing of conservative views is necessary, of course, for Democrats to win enough seats to gain control of the U.S. House of Representatives after the mid-term elections. Once control is established, Democrats will immediately move to impeach President Trump. Although the Senate would not likely prosecute that impeachment, the mere achievement of the U.S. House declaring “impeachment” would be enough to convince most brainwashed news consumers that Trump is somehow a guilty criminal (nobody will remember that Bill Clinton was also impeached by the House). From there, the 2020 presidential election is also stolen, and Democrats land their selected tyrant in the White House just in time for Ginsberg’s retirement from SCOTUS. If voices on the left were being censored to the same degree as conservative voices, it would be really hard to make such an argument. But the truth is that the numbers show that conservative voices are being hit extremely hard by the censorship while liberal publishers have been mostly “unaffected”… Facebook’s January 12 announcement that it would begin to de-prioritize news publishers and their posts in users’ News Feeds has had a surprisingly profound and partisan impact. According to The Outline’s analysis of Facebook engagement data obtained from research tool BuzzSumo, conservative and right-wing publishers (such as Breitbart, Fox News, and Gateway Pundit) were hit the hardest in the weeks following the announcement, with Facebook engagement totals for February dropping as much as 55 percent for some, while the engagement numbers of most predominantly liberal publishers remained unaffected. And this even applies to politicians as well.  For example, President Trump’s engagement on Facebook has fallen 45 percent since the algorithm change… The algorithm change caused President Donald Trump’s engagement on Facebook posts to plummet a whopping 45%. In contrast, Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) do not appear to have suffered a comparable decline in Facebook engagement. Top conservative Facebook pages with daily traffic in the millions have seen 75% to 95% drop in traffic. Young Cons, Western Journalism, SarahPalin.com, Independent Journal Review, Right Wing News, and several others have seen dramatic loss in traffic. Needless to say, my website (http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/) has been affected as well. So what can we do? We can fight back.  One of the primary ways that we can do that is by electing pro-Trump candidates all over the nation in 2018.  Right now I am engaged in an extremely close race with three guys that did not want Donald Trump to win the Republican nomination in 2016, and I need your help to win on May 15th. It is fundamentally wrong for the social media giants to pick winners and losers in the marketplace of ideas.  I will fight online censorship as hard as I can in Washington, and if you believe in what we are trying to do I hope that you will stand with us. Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate Donate By Paypal: https://donorbox.org/michael-snyder-for-congress Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address… Michael Snyder For Congress PO Box 1136 Bonners Ferry, ID 83805 Whenever radical leftists have taken power anywhere in the world, they have always tried to shut down free speech. They want to follow the same formula in the United States, but we are not going to allow them to do that. There are millions upon millions of red-blooded Americans that still greatly love this nation, and this silent majority is rising up to take our country back. Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

This Is The Worst Purge Of Conservative Voices In The History Of The Internet - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

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

Posted: 06 Mar 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

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…

As we reported over the weekend, YouTube terminated the entire Health Ranger video channel on Saturday, wiping out over 1,700 videos and approximately 350K+ subscribers. This was done, of course, as part of the YouTube left-wing PURGE now being carried out against non-establishment speakers who are being targeted for political reasons.
YouTube’s censorship rampage also wiped out all my videos on the donkeys I rescued, the range-free chickens I raise and even the beautiful ice crystals I captured on video over the winter. In its censorship sweep, YouTube is obliterating thousands of videos without cause, violating the civil rights of informative internet users and functioning as a criminal techno-cartel.

There is absolutely no reason for YouTube to do this.  Mike Adams has literally helped millions of people through his work, and I am urging all of my readers to contact YouTube and demand that they restore his channel immediately.

Of course YouTube is not the only one that is cracking down on conservative voices.  Here are a few examples of what Facebook has been doing…

Young Cons: This very popular conservative news site had millions of daily readers during the recent election, and the site received nearly all its traffic from Facebook (Lesson: Never put all your marketing eggs in one basket). Facebook has been increasingly censoring Young Cons stories since 2016; now the site struggles mightily and regularly switches domains in order to maintain traffic.
SaraPalin.com: At one point the former GOP VP nominee and Alaska governor’s website was serving up stories to her four million Facebook followers, but she, too, had to begin switching domains in order to maintain traffic.
Right Wing News: This site grew to massive proportions over the past few years, in large part thanks to its meteoric popularity on Facebook. During one week in 2015, the site’s Facebook page reached 133 million people. The site was driving about the same amount of web traffic as some of the biggest newspapers in the U.S. But since 2016 Facebook began blocking traffic to the site; its owner, John Hawkins, announced he would shut it down in January (it’s still online but the content is not regularly updated).
Independent Journal Review: This, too, was a large conservative news and information source, but because it was overly reliant on Facebook traffic, the site had to terminate a number of its employees last week, leaving the fate of the Millennial-focused site in doubt.

And Twitter has been censoring conservatives as well. In particular, Twitter seems to really dislike pro-life activists…

Pro-life group Live Action cried foul in 2017 after Twitter demanded it delete pro-life images, such as fetal ultrasounds, from its Twitter feed and website before allowing the group to run advertisements. Live Action refused the request.
Another pro-life group, the Susan B. Anthony List, was barred in October from running a video advertisement, because it used the phrase “killing babies” to refer to abortion. “No advertiser is permitted to use the phrase ‘killing babies,’” Twitter told the group.
That same month, Twitter blocked an advertisement by Republican Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s campaign for Senate in Tennessee. Twitter objected to one line Blackburn said: “I’m 100% pro-life. I fought Planned Parenthood, and we stopped the sale of baby body parts –thank God.”

If you don’t stand up when you see others being censored, then please don’t complain when the social media giants censor you as well.  I think that Dr. Michael Brown made this point exceedingly well in his most recent article…

First they came for Infowars, and I did not speak out—because I found them offensive.
Then they came for Geller and Spencer, and I did not speak out—because I found them obnoxious.
Then they came for Prager U, and I did not speak out—because I found them opinionated.
Then they came for a host of others, and I did not speak out—because I have my own life to live.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

This is why we need good liberty-minded people to run for office all over the nation.

If we do not fight back, this sort of oppression is only going to get worse.  Right at this moment I am engaged in an extremely tight race for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and if you want me to go to Washington and defend our free speech rights, please consider making a contribution because we desperately need it right now…

Donate By Credit Card Online: https://secure.anedot.com/michaelsnyderforcongress/donate
Donate By Paypal: https://donorbox.org/michael-snyder-for-congress

Donate By Check: Make your check out to “Michael Snyder For Congress” and send it to the following address…

Michael Snyder For Congress
PO Box 1136
Bonners Ferry, ID 83805

In the entire history of the Internet, we have never seen this sort of a coordinated purge before. The left believes that they are going to win, but we are definitely not going to allow that to happen.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

12 Years In A Row And Counting: The U.S. Has Not Had A Year Of 3 Percent Economic Growth In More Than A Decade - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

12 Years In A Row And Counting: The U.S. Has Not Had A Year Of 3 Percent Economic Growth In More Than A Decade

Posted: 28 Feb 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

If the U.S. economy is in good shape, then why has economic growth been so anemic for more than a decade?  It has been 12 long years since the economy grew by at least 3 percent, and for most of that time my website has been one of the leading voices chronicling America’s long-term economic problems. 

In 2017, U.S. GDP increased by just 2.3 percent, but at least that was better than the pathetic 1.5 percent figure that was posted for 2016.  With Donald Trump in the White House, we have taken some steps in the right direction, but we must never forget that our long-term economic and financial problems continue to steadily get worse.

As I travel around Idaho’s first congressional district, I often tell voters that we have not had a year of 3 percent economic growth since the middle of the Bush administration, and a lot of people have a really hard time believing that this is accurate.  But of course it is 100 percent true, and earlier today CNS News published an article highlighting this fact…

The United States has gone a record 12 straight years without 3-percent growth in real Gross Domestic Product, according to data released today by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

This drought is highly, highly unusual.  In fact, before this 12 year stretch the previous record was just four years…

Before the current period, when the nation has seen twelve straight years without 3 percent growth in real GDP, the longest stretch of years in which real GDP did not grow by at least 3 percent was during the Great Depression—when there were four straight years (1930-1933) when real GDP did not grow that much.

Have we entered a new era of low economic growth?

Is 3 percent the best that we can hope for from now on?

I have pointed out many times that Barack Obama was the only president in all of U.S. history never to have a single year of 3 percent economic growth, and he had two terms to try to achieve that.

Of course the U.S. economy began struggling far before Obama entered the White House.  As the U.S. has increasingly embraced socialism, our once vibrant economy has really had a tough time.  In fact, since the end of the Reagan administration our economic growth numbers have not been good at all…

The last time it grew by more than 7 percent was 1984, when Ronald Reagan was president. That year, it grew by 7.3 percent.
In the years after 1984, the highest level of economic growth achieved by the United States was in 1999, when real GDP grew by 4.7 percent.

Hopefully things can turn around under President Trump, and that it is why it is so imperative that we send pro-Trump candidates for Congress to Washington.

The U.S. economy is way overdue for a recession, and many believe that the next major economic downturn is right around the corner.  We just witnessed the worst February for stocks in 9 years, and the Dow ended the month on a huge down note.  Hopefully things will rebound in March, but there is absolutely no guarantee that will happen.

The following are some more facts about what transpired in February from Zero Hedge…

• Trannies worst month since Jan 2016
• Small Caps worst month since Oct 2016
• VIX biggest monthly jump since Aug 2015
• 30Y TSY Yield biggest monthly jump since Nov 2016
• 2Y TSY Yield up 6 straight months
• HY Credit (HYG) worst month since Jan 2016
• HY Spreads worst month since Sept 2015
• USD Index up most since Feb 2017
• WTI worst month since Aug 2017
• Gold worst month since Sept 2017
• Silver worst month since Nov 2016

I know that I didn’t write very much this month, and that is because I have been relentlessly working to win my race for Congress.

We are less than 80 days away from May 15th, and it is an exceedingly close race between me and three other major candidates.

If you live in Idaho’s first congressional district, please mark May 15th on your calendar.  Our numbers are surging and we feel very good about the race, but without a doubt we are going to need every single vote that we can get.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District.  If you would like to help him win on May 15th, you can donate online, by Paypal or by sending a check made out to “Michael Snyder for Congress” to P.O. Box 1136 – Bonners Ferry, ID 83805.  To learn more, please visit MichaelSnyderForCongress.com.

Debt Cancer: More Than 80 Percent Of American Adults Owe Somebody Else Money - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

Debt Cancer: More Than 80 Percent Of American Adults Owe Somebody Else Money

Posted: 18 Feb 2018 Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

How long can our debt levels keep growing much, much faster than the overall economy?  We haven’t had a year of 3 percent growth for the U.S. economy since the middle of the Bush administration, but we keep borrowing money as if there is no tomorrow.  Much of the focus has been on the exploding debt of the federal government, and that is definitely something I plan to address once I get to Washington.  But on an individual level, U.S. consumers have been extremely irresponsible as well.  In fact, one new survey has found that more than 80 percent of all American adults are currently in debt…

It’s no secret that America is a nation that runs on debt, but it may surprise you to learn that the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults owe money in some way, shape, or form. According to new data from Comet, here’s how many Americans have debt at present:

• 80.9% of Baby Boomers
• 79.9% of Gen Xers
• 81.5% of Millennials

For most of us, it starts very early.  We were told that going into debt to get a college education would not be a problem because we would be able to pay those loans off with the good jobs we would get after graduation.

Unfortunately, those good jobs never really materialized for many of us, and now millions of former college students are absolutely drowning in debt…

A study released Friday by the Brookings Institution finds that most borrowers who left school owing at least $50,000 in student loans in 2010 had failed to pay down any of their debt four years later. Instead, their balances had on average risen by 5% as interest accrued on their debt.
As of 2014 there were about 5 million borrowers with such large loan balances, out of 40 million Americans total with student debt. Large-balance borrowers represented 17% of student borrowers leaving college or grad school in 2014, up from 2% of all borrowers in 1990 after adjusting for inflation. Large-balance borrowers now owe 58% of the nation’s $1.4 trillion in outstanding student debt.

In addition to owing more than a trillion dollars on student loans, Americans are also now carrying more than a trillion dollars of auto loan debt and more than a trillion dollars of credit card debt.

Corporations have been incredibly irresponsible as well.  Corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, and corporate bankruptcies have been rising steadily in recent years.  All it would take for the dominoes to really start falling is some sort of a major economic downturn.

Local, state and federal government debt levels are all at record highs as well.  It is now being projected that our national debt will hit 30 trillion dollars by 2028, and those projections are probably too optimistic.

My guess is that we will almost certainly hit the 30 trillion dollar mark far sooner than that.
We can’t keep doing this to ourselves.  Our incessant greed is literally destroying the future, but anyone that tries to warn about the collective insanity that has descended upon our society is mocked and ridiculed.

Let me ask you a question.

Would you willingly choose to give yourself cancer?

Of course not, but that is essentially what we are doing to ourselves as a society.

Debt is economic cancer, and as Lance Roberts has pointed out, if we continue to allow debt levels to grow like this eventually it will kill our entire economy…

Debt is, by its very nature, a cancer on economic growth. As debt levels rise it consumes more capital by diverting it from productive investments into debt service. As debt levels spread through the system it consumes greater amounts of capital until it eventually kills the host.

Debt is addictive, because it does boost our standard of living in the short-term.  It is so easy to keep going back for one more “hit”, but every time we do it just makes our long-term crisis even worse.

Most people out there seem to think that our economic problems have been “solved”, but that is not true at all.

The truth is that our long-term problems just continue to grow with each passing day, and that is one of the reasons why I am so determined to go to Washington.  We are at such a critical juncture right now, and if something is not done the prognosis is extremely negative.
If we stay on this current path, the very best that we can hope for is a “soft landing” and a greatly reduced standard of living for future generations of Americans.  Here is more from Lance Roberts…

The processes that fueled the economic growth over the last 30 years are now beginning to run in reverse, and when combined with the demographic shifts in the U.S., the impact could be far more immediate and prolonged than the media, economists, and analysts are currently expecting. Sacrifices will have to be made, the economy will drag on at subpar rates of growth, individuals will be working far longer into their retirement years and the next generation of Americans will lead a far different life than what the currently retiring generation enjoyed.
It is simply a function of the math.

I am sorry for not writing more lately.  I have been working night and day to get ready for May 15th.  With Donald Trump in the White House, this is our opportunity to take our government back.  If we miss this window, we may never have this sort of opportunity ever again.

America is drowning in debt, but of course our problems go far beyond that.  Our economic, political, cultural and spiritual problems go very deep, and we desperately need to change course as a nation.

Unfortunately, most of the population is in a deep state of sleep, and my hope is that we can wake them up while there is still time to turn things 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.

The Dow Falls 1,032 Points! Has The Financial Crisis Of 2018 Officially Arrived? - Michael Snyder THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

The Dow Falls 1,032 Points! Has The Financial Crisis Of 2018 Officially Arrived?

Posted: 08 Feb 2018  Michael Snyder  THE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE BLOG

We haven’t seen this kind of a bloodbath on Wall Street since the great financial crisis of 2008.  Prior to this week, the largest single day decline for the Dow Jones industrial average that we had ever seen was 777 points.  That record was absolutely shattered on Monday when the Dow fell 1,175 points, and on Thursday the Dow dropped another 1,032 points.  This was the third decline greater than 500 points within the last five trading days, and the Dow is poised to post its worst week since the dark days of October 2008.  So is this just a “correction”, or has the financial crisis of 2018 officially arrived?

At this point, many of the experts are pointing to the bond market as the primary reason why stock prices are crashing.  The following comes from CNBC…

There’s a not-so-quiet rebellion going on in the bond market, and it threatens to take 10-year yields above 3 percent much faster than expected just a few weeks ago.
As a result, the bumpy ride for stocks could continue for a while.

And without a doubt, analysts such as Jeff Gundlach clearly warned that there would be big trouble for stocks as bond yields rose…

Gundlach had correctly predicted that if the 10-year U.S. Treasury note yield went above 2.63 percent, U.S. stock investors would be spooked.
“Clearly, the market gets shaky when the 10-year hits 2.85 percent,” Gundlach said. “Just look at this week, and today. Makes one consider what could be coming if 10s push over 3 and 30s (30-year Treasury bond) over 3.22 percent.”
The 10-year yield is currently trading around 2.83 percent. Gundlach said it is “hard to love bonds at even a 3 percent” yield. “Rising interest rates are a problem and the U.S. is in debt and there is massive bond supply,” Gundlach said.

Moving forward, it will be important to keep a close eye on bond yields.  Every time they start going back up, we are likely to see stock prices go down…

“We’re in a vicious cycle here. If the yields go up, you have to sell stocks. If you sell stocks, and they crash, yields come back down,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley FBR.
The bond market’s struggle to price in higher interest rates has been kneecapped each time the stock market reacts and sells off. Strategists expect the two markets to ultimately find an equilibrium but not without more sharp swings.

This is one of the reasons why the budget deal going through Congress right now is such a bad idea.  Hundreds of billions of dollars of additional spending on top of what we are already doing is going to push up bond yields, and that is just going to make the pressure on Wall Street even worse.

Of course the folks over at the Federal Reserve could intervene, but they don’t seem inclined to do that at this point.  Late last year the Fed finally removed artificial life support from the financial system, and at first everything seemed to be going well.  But now a new crisis is brewing, and we shall see if the Fed still remains determined to keep raising rates.  The following comes from Peter Schiff…

“The Fed were dragging their feet in raising rates while Obama was president.  They talked about raising rates but at the end of the day, they barely moved them up. The pace of hikes has increased since Trump was elected, but part of the reason for that…I mean, the media is not talking down the economy; if anything they’re overhyping the economy.  Everybody’s talking about how strong the economy is, how everything is great. Everybody is taking credit for this great economy. The Fed wants to take credit for it, Trump wants to take credit for it, so if everybody wants to talk about how great the economy is, the Fed doesn’t have any excuse if it doesn’t raise rates…in order to keep up the pretense that the economy is as strong as everybody thinks, the Fed is in this box where it has to raise rates.
But they [the Fed] can’t tell the truth that it’s really a bubble, and if we raise rates, we’re gonna prick it, so they’re kinda in this bind.  And they are still telegraphing that they’re gonna raise rates three or four times this year.  And that is the problem.“

It has been my contention for a very long time that the greatest financial bubble in human history would not be able to continue without artificial support from the Fed and other global central banks.

Once the Fed finally ended their artificial support for the markets late last year, I anticipated that there would be trouble, but stock prices continued to rise through the holiday season.
But now reality is setting in, and investors are rushing like mad for the exits.  I really like how Brandon Smith described the current state of affairs in his recent article…

After I predicted the election of Donald Trump, I also predicted that central banks would begin pulling the plug on life support for equities markets. This did in fact take place with the Fed’s continued program of interest rate increases and the reduction of their balance sheet, which effectively strangles the flow of cheap credit to banking and corporate institutions that fueled stock buybacks for years. Without this constant and ever expansionary easy fiat, there is nothing left to act as a crutch for stocks except perhaps blind faith. And blind faith in the economy always ends up being smacked down by the ugly realities of mathematics.

Without artificial support, gravity will try to pull stock valuations back to their long-term averages.  That would mean a decline for the Dow of at least 10,000 more points, but major financial institutions are so highly leveraged and Wall Street has become such a giant casino that our system literally cannot handle that sort of a decline.

The only way that the game can continue is for the Fed and other global central banks to intervene and prop up the absurd financial bubble that they originally created.

Absent that, this crisis is likely to go from bad to worse, and we may soon find ourselves facing a financial panic unlike anything that we have ever seen before.

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.