(The Economic Collapse Blog)—The rich have been getting richer and the poor have been getting poorer, and this is causing all sorts of societal problems. Thanks to social media, the poor can see the incredible affluence that the wealthy are enjoying, and they are deeply envious. Of course it certainly doesn’t help that flaunting wealth has become one of the favorite pastimes of the wealthy. Many of them love to post photos and videos of their luxury lifestyles on their social media accounts, and that is not a good thing. Because times have not been good for most of the country. In fact, a brand new study from the Federal Reserve has discovered that the bottom 80 percent have “lower bank deposits and other liquid assets compared to their status in March 2020”…
As of June, the bottom 80% of households by income, when adjusted for inflation, had lower bank deposits and other liquid assets compared to their status in March 2020. The decline marks a significant shift from the initial phases of the pandemic, where various factors, including government financial support and restricted spending opportunities during lockdowns, led to an accumulation of excess savings.
In other words, the vast majority of all Americans have been getting poorer.
Meanwhile, the rich have just kept on getting even richer…
The Federal Reserve, along with Bloomberg calculations, identified a rapid drawdown of these excess savings, particularly stark among the lower-income groups. While all income groups have experienced a decrease in real-term cash balances from the peak in 2021, the disparity is noteworthy. The wealthiest one-fifth of households still have cash savings approximately 8% above their pre-COVID levels. In stark contrast, the poorest two-fifths have witnessed an 8% decrease, and the next 40% — broadly representing the middle class — have seen their cash savings fall below pre-pandemic levels.
Right now, the gap between the wealthy and the rest of us is the greatest that it has ever been in the entire history of our nation.
According to a different report that was just put out by the Labor Department, average hourly earnings are lower today than they were when Joe Biden first entered the White House…
Millions of Americans have received a pay cut over the past two years thanks to high inflation, a blow to President Biden as he attempts to center his re-election campaign around “Bidenomics.”
The Labor Department reported Tuesday that average hourly earnings for all employees was $11.05 in October — a 3.32% decline from the $11.43 figure in January 2021, when Biden took office.
And as the pace of layoffs picks up, soon millions of Americans won’t have a job to go to at all.
This week, we learned that Citigroup has begun large scale layoffs…
One of the U.S.’ top banks will begin massive layoffs on Wednesday in a corporate overhaul as the company seeks to trim its operating expenses to levels more in line with its competitors, according to CNBC.
Citigroup will begin cutting employees on Wednesday, with new terminations continuing to be announced through next week, affecting some chiefs of staff, managing directors and lower-level employees, according to CNBC. Following the initial round of layoffs, more employees in less senior positions are expected to be dismissed in February, with the layoffs being expected to be fully completed by March 2024.
And Stellantis has just announced that it has offered buyouts to approximately half of their salaried employees…
Stellantis, one of the Big Three U.S. automakers, on Monday offered buyouts to about half of its salaried employees as it looks to cut costs as it transitions to electric vehicles (EVs) and takes on increased costs from a new union contract.
The parent company of major car brands like Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram offered voluntary buyouts to about 6,400 of its roughly 12,700 salaried employees who aren’t represented by a union and have at least five years of experience. Employees who accept the incentive will depart the company before the end of December.
As economic conditions have deteriorated, crime has soared.
In recent days I have written about the shocking thefts that we are witnessing all over the nation, but this one tops them all…
This is the shocking moment a mob of 40 people looted a FedEx truck while it was stopped at a red light in Memphis, Tennessee.
Around 8:30pm Saturday, a 53-foot trailer was ransacked while it sat in traffic at the intersection of Riverport Road and West Mallory Avenue.
After the driver reported the theft, the Memphis police arrived and saw vehicles speeding away recklessly along with a number of boxes thrown across the road.
The FedEx truck had nowhere to go, because once it reached the intersection there were cars that suddenly moved into position to block it…
The truck driver told the police that cars blocked the intersection just before a group of men broke open the sealed back door and looted the trailer.
Three men have since been detained after the raging group caused nearly $10,000 in damages – and stole numerous items such as Kicker Speakers, a box of air liners and three DirectTV cable boxes.
In my brand new book entitled “Chaos”, I specifically warn people to avoid Memphis if at all possible.
It has become one of the most dangerous cities in the entire country.
But of course we are starting to see these sorts of crimes everywhere.
Large groups of people have decided that it is okay to take from the rich and the corporations that they control and give to the poor (themselves) because the rich probably exploited the poor to get their wealth in the first place.
This sort of “Robin Hood mentality” is extremely dangerous, and it is rapidly spreading.
And now we have an election season and a war in the Middle East to add fuel to the fire. On Thursday, a crazed group of protesters shut down the entire Bay Bridge…
A well-coordinated group of hundreds of Pro-Palestine protesters shut down the Bay Bridge on Thursday morning, tying up traffic during rush hour and calling out to world leaders to end the war in Gaza during the APEC summit.
The four-hour chaotic event, which started around 7:45 a.m., ended with at least 70 arrests and 29 towed cars. All lanes finally reopened just before noon, but not after at least 200 protesters had chained themselves together and purposefully tossed their car keys into the bay, stalling efforts to reopen the span to frustrated drivers.
Needless to say, this is just the beginning.
The war in the Middle East is going to continue to escalate, and 2024 will be the most chaotic election year that any of us have ever seen by far.
So buckle up and hold on tight, because we are going to see staggering levels of civil unrest and crime in 2024 and beyond.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Wow, thanks to Snyder for telling us water is wet?!?!
“As economic conditions have deteriorated, crime has soared.”
Crime has soared because governors of many states (Washington, California, Oregon, Illinois, New York, Georgia, Massachusetts, maybe others) have reduced their state prison populations by one–third or more while city and county DAs and prosecutors refuse to lock up the most dangerous psychos while actively working to decriminalize serious crimes (by making them NON–PROSECUTABLE)!
Add to that the ILLEGALS invading across the border, many foreign criminals dumped out of foreign prisons and deported to the Americas! (The African country of Gambia routinely avoids prison costs by simply deporting all convicted criminals!)
In Washington state, former governors Gary Locke and Christine Gregoire both signed the Interstate Compact on Parolees, importing 3 out of every 4 ex–convicts from the other 26–state signatories! Greatly increased the murder, rape, assault and dope dealing rates in the Puget Sound region and provided a ready personnel source for antifa/BLM, etc.
Regarding the FedEx robbery —- should ask Joshua Cooper Ramo about it since that Kissinger Associates director sits on the board of FedEx and his mother, Roberta Cooper Ramo, is affiliated with The 65 Project, which is responsible for mass lawfare against all Trump–affiliated attorneys and any questioning the 2020 election fraud!!!