There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true. —Soren Kierkegaard. "…truth is true even if nobody believes it, and falsehood is false even if everybody believes it. That is why truth does not yield to opinion, fashion, numbers, office, or sincerity–it is simply true and that is the end of it" – Os Guinness, Time for Truth, pg.39. “He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God’s providence to lead him aright.” – Blaise Pascal. "There is but one straight course, and that is to seek truth and pursue it steadily" – George Washington letter to Edmund Randolph — 1795. We live in a “post-truth” world. According to the dictionary, “post-truth” means, “relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.” Simply put, we now live in a culture that seems to value experience and emotion more than truth. Truth will never go away no matter how hard one might wish. Going beyond the MSM idealogical opinion/bias and their low information tabloid reality show news with a distractional superficial focus on entertainment, sensationalism, emotionalism and activist reporting – this blogs goal is to, in some small way, put a plug in the broken dam of truth and save as many as possible from the consequences—temporal and eternal. "The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." – George Orwell “There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” ― Soren Kierkegaard
Don’t you love it when CNN is forced to report on reality and admit that things are going well under Trump?
This week, they reported that inflation is down. In fact, they report that ‘core inflation’ is at its lowest level since 2021. Hmm… what was happening in 2021? Oh right, Joe Biden.
The media wants so badly to report gloom and doom under Trump, but they can’t with news like this.
CNN Reporter Says ‘Inflation Took A Big Step In The Right Direction’ To Start Second Year Of Trump 2.0
CNN business reporter Matt Egan on Friday highlighted an “encouraging” new inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Inflation unexpectedly eased to 2.4% for the 12 months ending in January following a 2.7% rise for the 12 months ending in December, according to the BLS. Egan noted on “CNN News Central” that core inflation’s decline to 2.5% was the lowest annual rate since March 2021.
“[T]his is some encouraging news on the cost of living. Inflation took a big step in the right direction to start the year off. So, consumer prices, up by 2.4% year over year,” Egan said. “That is an improvement from 2.7% in December. That beat expectations, which were for 2.5%. In fact, this is a new eight-month low for annual inflation. Month over month, prices up by 0.2%, also a step in the right direction, also beating expectations.”
“Now, economists look really closely at core inflation, which excludes food and energy. Core inflation came in at 2.5%. That’s notable because that’s the lowest annual inflation rate for core since March of 2021, before the inflation crisis,” he continued. “Now, while we can’t exclude food and energy from our family budgets, that’s important because economists say that’s a better indicator for where inflation is going. And when you look at the trend for inflation over the last few years, you can see there’s been some improvement.”
Here’s the video:
🚨 CNN: "That's the LOWEST annual inflation rate for core since March of 2021 before the inflation crisis."pic.twitter.com/ueVVb0BRse
I feel quite exasperated right now. Everyone knows that the economic numbers that federal bureaucrats in Washington are feeding us each month are fraudulent. It has been that way for a very long time. The employment numbers are a perfect example of this. Every month they give us a headline number that looks pretty good, and then months later they revise it much lower when nobody is paying attention. That is the game they want to play, and many of us understand that. But this latest stunt that they have pulled is absolutely astounding. More than a million U.S. jobs suddenly disappeared from the numbers, and they would like us to believe that this is perfectly normal.
How are we supposed to have any faith in the numbers that the BLS releases each month if they are off by this much?
As Zero Hedge has reported, nonfarm employment in the United States as of December 31st, 2025 was revised down from 159.546 million to 158.497 million…
Starting at the top, total US payrolls were revised dramatically lower starting with the Jan 2021 data and every month since, and net of the cumulative changes December 31, 2025 total nonfarm employment was revised lower by 1.029 million from 159.546 million to 158.497 million.
As expected, the bulk of the negative revisions took place in 2025, with negative revisions to 2024 amounting to -413K, 2023 was just -73K while 2021 and 2021 were revised modestly higher.
Focusing on 2025, the negative revisions to both the year and previous years, meant that the change in total jobs for 2025 was revised from an already low +584,000 to a shockingly low +181,000.
How can over a million jobs suddenly disappear?
Well, the truth is that they never actually existed in the first place.
It was all smoke and mirrors.
Let’s take a look at the January numbers. We are being told that the U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January…
The Labor Department on Wednesday reported that employers added 130,000 jobs in January. That figure was above the expectations of economists polled by LSEG, who estimated the economy would add 70,000 jobs.
The unemployment rate was 4.3%, slightly lower than economists’ expectations of 4.4%.
There is another reason why today’s report will be revised away: while the seasonally adjusted change was a stronger than expected 130K, the unadjusted was a negative 2.649 million. That means that the entire delta in today’s “surprise beat” was due to seasonal adjustments.
Isn’t that fun?
Everyone is running around talking about the “130,000 jobs” the U.S. added last month, knowing that the “adjusted” number will almost certainly be revised down multiple times later on.
But the “unadjusted” number shows that the U.S. economy lost 2.6 million jobs in January.
Yes, mass layoffs really are happening all over the nation.
In January, the number of job cut announcements was the highest that we have seen for that month since 2009.
And even though 2.6 million jobs were actually lost last month, the government is telling us that 130,000 were gained.
What a joke.
Meanwhile, more bad news about the housing market continues to roll in.
In January 2026, the number of foreclosure filings in the United States was 32 percent higher than it was in January 2025…
With the number of Americans losing their homes to banks rising for an eleventh straight month, it’s clear the housing crisis is getting worse rather than better. US foreclosure activity jumped again in January 2026, with a total of 40,534 properties facing foreclosure filings – a 32 percent increase from the same time last year. Foreclosure filings cover every stage of the process, from the moment a lender issues a legal warning to the point a home is formally seized after missed mortgage payments.
It is starting to feel like 2008 all over again.
We are off to such a bad start in 2026, and this comes on the heels of a year in which foreclosure filings were 14 percent higher than the previous year…
The bleak start to 2026 follows an already brutal 2025, when 367,460 US properties faced foreclosure filings – up 14 percent from the year before, according to a previus report from ATTOM.
Foreclosures are clearly trending in the wrong direction.
And the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all, because mortgage delinquencies among low-income households have been steadily increasing…
90-day delinquency rates have skyrocketed among borrowers in the lowest-income ZIP codes, rising to 3% in the fourth quarter from 0.5% in 2021.
We are now at the highest level that we have seen in about a decade.
At the same time, electricity bills are rising to unprecedented heights.
Some are complaining that their monthly electricity bills now exceed $800, and others are complaining that their electricity bills now exceed $1,000…
On Reddit, one user in the r/homeowners group shared that their electric bill in Pittsburgh topped $800. Others weighed in with their experiences, and suggested making modifications to save money.
“Everyone needs to take quicker showers, don’t leave hot water run, and turn the heat down to 68 and wear clothes and warm pajamas and use blankets at night,” one comment advised.
On TikTok, user MamaSelena shared that her January electric bill in Ohio was $1,013, cutting into her grocery budget. She contacted local representatives in hopes they would advocate for lower costs, and encouraged others to do the same.
It is easy to tell people that they should just move to a state where the cost of living is lower.
Well, Alabama has a very low cost of living, but even some residents of that state are now facing electricity bills that are close to $1,000…
Alabama Power customer Miessha Reed is one of many customers who has seen a jump in their electric bills.
Reed said her monthly bill during last year’s summer months ranged between $300 to $400, but she can’t say the same about her latest power bill.
“It did a rapid increase. June was like $674, July was like $777, and I got an August bill for $963,” said Reed.
Soaring heating and cooling costs are one of the primary reasons why power bills are rising so much.
In fact, it is being projected that the average U.S. household will spend $995 just on heating their homes this winter…
A new report this week estimates that U.S. households could spend an average of $995 on home heating alone from mid-November to March, which is $84 more than they spent last winter.
The report is from the National Energy Assistance Directors’ Association (NEADA), a policy organization that represents state governments seeking federal funds for low-income home energy programs. It predicts that heating costs will rise by an average of 9.2% over the next three months.
Of course it isn’t just power bills that are going up.
Just about everything is steadily becoming more expensive, but the bureaucrats in Washington would like us to believe that the inflation rate is in the low single digits.
Give me a break.
If a major conflict with Iran erupts in the Middle East, our power bills will experience another huge spike.
The President on Tuesday night said he is considering ordering a second aircraft carrier strike group to position itself outside Iran.
US diplomats and Iranian officials met last Friday in Oman to discuss ending the ayatollah’s nuclear program. This is the first time the two countries have engaged diplomatic talks since the 12-day war with Israel in June.
‘Either we will make a deal or we will have to do something very tough like last time,’ Trump told Axios.
We live at a time when the pace of change is so rapid that it can be overwhelming at times. More change occurs in a single month than happened during most entire years when I was growing up. When I pull up the news each day, there is always a fresh serving of chaos awaiting me. Unfortunately, chaos is not good for the economy. The U.S. dollar is in the process of dying, debt levels are exploding all around us, more mass layoffs have been announced within the past 24 hours, and the cost of living crisis is absolutely crushing most Americans. Those that can look at the information that I am about to share with you and say “everything is fine” are simply not being rational. The following are 12 signposts that indicate that a monumental economic meltdown is now upon us…
#1 Consumer confidence just fell to the lowest level that we have seen in 12 years…
America’s economic mood deteriorated in January to its lowest level in more than a decade as consumers fretted about geopolitical tensions, affordability and President Donald Trump’s unrelenting trade war.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index for January, released Tuesday, declined 9.7 points to a reading of 84.5, the lowest since 2014, surpassing the lows of last year when Trump unveiled stiff tariffs and the depths of the pandemic recession in 2020.
January’s reading came in much lower than the 91.1 reading economists projected in a poll by data firm FactSet.
#2 One recent survey discovered that 56 percent of U.S. workers are experiencing serious financial strain…
Social media is rife with tearful videos of how hard it has become to make ends meet. Some 14% of workers can’t or struggle to pay their bills each month, PwC found. Another 42% pay their bills with little or nothing left over for savings. PwC says that’s more than half of the workforce experiencing financial strain in 2025.
“I have to work 40 hours a week just so I can have a place to live,” one woman said in one Instagram post. “Forty hours a week makes me $2000 a month and my rent is $1,660. So I work 40 hours a week so I can have a two-bedroom apartment and an extra $300 a month. Like, that doesn’t even cover my phone, internet, food.”
#3 According to the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity, the percentage of the U.S. workforce that is “functionally unemployed” has risen to a whopping 25.2 percent…
Employment researchers are warning that the share of Americans who are only loosely attached to the labor force is on the rise, and that the true rate of unemployment may be far higher than official figures suggest.
According to a new report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP), 25.2 percent of the U.S. workforce could now be classified as “functionally unemployed”—meaning jobless, seeking but unable to secure full-time employment or earning “poverty-level wages.”
#4 It is being reported that 1,500 HR employees that work for Amazon are facing the axe…
Amazon is expected to cut more jobs within its human resources team by a significant margin.
According to Fortune, the e-commerce giant is preparing to lay off approximately 15% of its HR department — equivalent to around 1,500 of the 10,000 HR employees. It is currently unknown when the layoffs will take place, and how many jobs in the Puget Sound region are at risk.
#5 At one time, Pinterest was flying high. But now harder times are here and it intends to fire close to 15 percent of its entire workforce…
Pinterest said Tuesday it plans to lay off less than 15% of its workforce and cut back on office space as the company embraces artificial intelligence.
In a securities filing, Pinterest said it expects the cuts will be complete by the end of its third quarter in late September. Shares of Pinterest slid more than 9%.
#6 Nike just announced that it will be eliminating 775 jobs…
Nike is planning to cut nearly 800 jobs amid an automation push at the footwear and apparel giant’s distribution centers.
The company is cutting 775 jobs that will primarily impact jobs at the retailer’s distribution centers in Tennessee and Mississippi as the company looks to automate more of its supply chain. The news was first reported by CNBC, citing people familiar with the matter.
#7 Not to be outdone by any of the companies mentioned above, UPS plans to throw up to 30,000 employees into the streets this year…
United Parcel Service plans to cut up to 30,000 workers this year as it moves to cut costs, the delivery giant’s chief financial officer said Tuesday.
“In terms of semi-variable costs, we expect to reduce operational positions by up to 30,000,” UPS CFO Brian Dykes said during a company earnings call. “This will be accomplished through attrition, and we expect to offer a second voluntary separation program for full-time drivers.”
#8 The Washington Post is preparing for “big layoffs”, and that could include the entire sports department…
The Washington Post has been around for nearly 150 years and had a sports section for almost as long. But after years and years of declining revenue, it appears that big layoffs are coming – and the sports section could be gutted hardest of all.
According to Dylan Byers of Puck, “massive layoffs” are set to hit The Washington Post in the days to come with the foreign desk being hit hard. However, Byers noted that the sports desk is rumored to be getting “shuttered entirely.”
San Francisco’s beleaguered Westfield San Francisco Centre shopping mall closed its doors earlier than expected.
The city’s largest mall, which saw a string of retailers leave in recent months, closed on Saturday, two days ahead of schedule, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
A sign reading “closed until further notice” was posted at the front entrance of the once-bustling shopping center, the outlet reported.
Pending home sales, which track the number of contracts signed in December, plunged by 9.3% seasonally adjusted from November, to the lowest level for any December on record in the data by the National Association of Realtors, which goes back to 2010. Compared to December 2010, during the Housing Bust, pending sales were down by 21.5%.
The market is now well into its fourth year of the collapse in transactions, and there has simply been no improvement.
#11 The U.S. dollar just declined for a fourth consecutive day, and it is now at the lowest level that we have seen in four months…
The U.S. dollar fell for a fourth straight day on Tuesday, slipping to a four-month low, as traders kept watch for possible coordinated currency intervention by U.S. and Japanese authorities and a Federal Reserve interest rate decision.
#12 If someone tries to convince you that the U.S. dollar is not dying, just show them this chart…
When the value of the U.S. dollar declines, the purchasing power of our money goes down.
Meanwhile, the price of silver is currently sitting at 110 dollars an ounce.
Many of us have been warning that all of this was coming, and now it is happening right in front of our eyes.
Our leaders have been making very bad decisions for decades, and now we are paying the price.
But if you think that things are bad now, just hold on tight, because things are going to get even more chaotic in the months ahead.
What is the Fed not telling us? The numbers clearly indicate that big trouble is brewing in the banking system. I wish that I could specifically tell you which banks are in the most trouble, but at this stage we simply aren’t being told anything. They probably figure that the best approach is to try to keep everyone as calm as possible. But they won’t be able to keep a lid on what is going on indefinitely, and when word finally gets out people could start to panic.
In recent weeks, bank reserves have fallen to alarmingly low levels.
US bank reserves have crashed to a four-year low, plunging to about $2.8 trillion, according to the latest Federal Reserve data, sending fresh warning signals across Wall Street and Washington. The steep decline marks the second straight week reserves have stayed below $3 trillion, a critical threshold analysts say could test the banking system’s liquidity strength.
By itself, this doesn’t necessarily signal that we are facing a major crisis.
But everyone agrees that what we are witnessing is certainly unusual.
What is causing far more alarm is what occurred on Friday.
Federal Reserve reportedly pumped about $29.4 billion into the markets via overnight repos.
That’s a big number and it signals something I’m watching closely. According to the data for “Overnight Repurchase Agreements — Treasury Securities Purchased by the Fed” the figure for Oct 31, 2025 is $29.400 billion.
In other words: The Fed is quietly stepping in and stepping up.
To me, this is clear evidence that something just broke.
By the end of the day on Friday, it was quite obvious that something extremely strange had just happened…
Federal Reserve liquidity facilities caught fire on Friday as month-end pressures pushed a key lending tool to a record level of usage.
The Fed’s Standing Repo Facility lent a total of $50.35 billion on Friday to eligible financial firms in two separate availabilities, the highest-ever usage since the tool was put in place in 2021 to provide fast loans collateralized with Treasury or mortgage bonds. At the same time, financial firms also parked a considerable amount of cash on Fed books, with the reverse repo facility seeing inflows of $51.8 billion.
So what is the bottom line?
The bottom line is that it very much smells like a major crisis is brewing.
But let’s wait and see what happens on Monday.
If we see figures on Monday that are fairly normal, perhaps we have more time before things start breaking loose in the markets.
However, if we see even larger numbers on Monday, hold on tight.
In either case, the financial markets will not be able to stay disconnected from the real economy forever.
The Trump administration offered buyouts to the entire federal workforce this year, aiming to reduce it by as much as 10%. Roughly 75,000 workers accepted. More recently, Amazon, UPS and Target all announced private-sector layoffs.
Buyouts can sound tempting. A five-figure severance package might be the most money a worker has ever seen in one paycheck. But it’s also the last paycheck your employer will give you.
We haven’t seen anything like this in many years.
Bankruptcies are soaring, delinquency rates are spiking, thousands of stores and restaurants are permanently shutting their doors, and just about everything just keeps getting more expensive.
Unfortunately, this is just the beginning and most of the population understands this.
In fact, one recent survey discovered that 57 percent of Americans expect economic conditions to get even worse over the next year.
Many of you are going to be facing some very hard decisions in the coming months.
If you currently have a job that you highly value, I would recommend holding on to it as tightly as you can.
But if you feel that it is absolutely necessary to go somewhere else, you will just have to do what you have to do.
Just understand that if you leave your current position it will not be easy to find a new one at all.
In 2008 and 2009, millions of Americans lost their jobs.
Many of them didn’t have anything to fall back on, and so large numbers of them also lost their homes.
This is one of the reasons why it is so critical to have a sizable emergency fund. At this point, even the mainstream media is stressing the importance of this…
Most people live paycheck to paycheck, and when the economy crashes, that leaves no room to breathe. Having three to six months of essential expenses tucked away can make all the difference when cash flow dries up or jobs disappear overnight.
Keep your emergency savings in an easily accessible account, not tied up in volatile investments. It’s not about hoarding—it’s about buying time and peace of mind. When others panic, you’ll have the stability to make smart, calm decisions.
I expect things to start moving very quickly now.
If the problems in our banking system bubble to the surface and start becoming highly visible, it will create a lot of fear.
And it is just a matter of time before our absurdly overvalued stock market takes a dramatic tumble.
Of course all of this is happening at a time when so many other elements of “the Perfect Storm” are coming together.
We are right on the brink of multiple major wars, global food supplies are rapidly getting tighter, we are being told that the next worldwide pandemic could break out at any moment, and on average the U.S. has been getting hit by a “billion dollar disaster” about every two weeks.
I expect so much chaos to be unleashed during the weeks ahead, and that means that we should expect the turmoil that we are currently witnessing on Wall Street to escalate quite a bit more.
Millions of Americans are discovering that at some point the money runs out and the party is over. Vehicles are being repossessed at the fastest pace since the global financial crisis, foreclosure filings are up 18 percent compared to last year, and student loan delinquencies have soared into unprecedented territory. Nobody can deny that economic conditions are deteriorating rapidly, and this has pushed vast numbers of U.S. consumers past their breaking points. So what is going to happen if economic conditions continue to deteriorate rapidly in the months ahead?
The American people are not stupid.
They clearly understand what is taking place, and they are not happy about it.
According to a brand new AP-NORC survey that was just released, a staggering 68 percent of U.S. adults consider the condition of the economy to be “poor”…
Some 68% of U.S. adults describe the U.S. economy these days as “poor,” while 32% say it’s “good.” That’s largely consistent with assessments of the economy over the past year.
For many years economic conditions in this country have been collapsing.
Now we have finally reached a point where it cannot be denied any longer.
Many Americans attempted to keep living a middle class lifestyle by going very deep into debt, but for millions of them a day of reckoning has finally arrived.
If you doubt this, just consider the facts.
It is being projected that the number of vehicle repossessions in the U.S. this year will be the highest that we have seen since the global financial crisis…
Car repossessions are surging across the US, as an increasing number of Americans fall behind on their auto loans.
According to data from the Recovery Database Network (RDN), analyzed by CURepossession, it is projected that over 3 million cars could be repossessed in 2025.
This would be the highest number since the financial crisis.
Consumers will often keep making their vehicle payments even when they have gotten behind on everything else.
So the fact that we are witnessing so many repossessions in 2025 is a very troubling sign.
And a lot more repossessions are on the way, because subprime borrowers are falling behind on their payments at a rate that we have never seen before…
The percentage of subprime borrowers – those with poor or no credit – who are at least 60 days late on their loans was at 6.43 percent in August, according to Fitch Ratings.
This figure has doubled since 2021, and is worse than during the dot-com recession, the Covid-19 pandemic and the financial crisis.
Economists are warning that this consumer weakness could be a warning sign about serious cracks in the US economy which could lead to financial meltdown.
Meanwhile, millions of Americans are also getting behind on their mortgages, and foreclosure filings are 18 percent higher than they were last year…
As of August, foreclosure filings had risen six straights months year-over-year and were up 18% from the same period in 2024, according to property data firm ATTOM.
If all of this is starting to sound a lot like 2008 to many of you, that is because it really is a lot like 2008.
Americans are rapidly getting behind on their student loans too.
For months, experts have warned that student loan borrowers who are behind on their payments may trigger a “default cliff.” Recent reports show that cliff is now looming.
The resumption of federal student loan delinquency reporting on consumers’ credit earlier this year caused a spike in the rate of severe delinquencies, which now near a record high, according to September’s Credit Insights report from credit score developer FICO.
Roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default and another 4.3 million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or between 181 and 270 days late on their payments, according to a separate analysis last month by the Congressional Research Service based on data from the Education Department. Payments 270 days past due are considered in default.
What a colossal mess.
Sadly, a lot more Americans will be reaching their breaking points in the months ahead because mass layoffs are occurring all over the nation.
Earlier today, we learned that Meta will be laying off hundreds of very well paid employees that were working in its artificial intelligence unit…
Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.
The company announced the cuts in a memo from its chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit and other product-related positions will be impacted.
AI was supposed to be the future.
But it appears that bubble is starting to burst too.
These days, it seems like almost everyone is struggling. One recent survey found that 67 percent of U.S. adults that are actually employed are living paycheck to paycheck.
Most Americans are just barely scraping by in 2025, and now the current government shutdown threatens to take food stamp benefits away from 42 million Americans next month.
Needless to say, that has the potential to cause widespread chaos…
A classic saying among preparedness experts in the US is that America is capable of weathering many crises, but when the food stamps shut down all bets are off. In other words, when the free stuff army loses their handouts, that’s when all hell breaks loose.
The US government spends over $100 billion on SNAP programs every year; the largest single food welfare project in the world. It’s difficult to predict what an end to SNAP might look like.
One can assume the worst and be ready for a “Walking Dead” disaster in which angry mobs run rampant. Or, tensions might continue to simmer. Many people might be forced to simply get a job, and the welfare subset could decide to adapt. But they probably won’t.
All of this lines up perfectly with the nightmare scenarios that so many of the experts have been warning us about.
Those at the top of the economic pyramid are still thriving for the moment, but those at the bottom of the economic pyramid are suffering very deeply and are becoming increasingly desperate.
And desperate people do desperate things.
The U.S. economy has been moving in a very clear direction for more than five years now, and at this stage what is in front of us should be quite obvious to everyone.
It feels like someone has pulled a plug, because the U.S. economy is suddenly caught in an extremely alarming downward spiral. As I discussed at the end of last week, investors are flocking to gold and silver because they can see that a storm is coming. We have reached a point where most of the country is experiencing significant economic pain, and as a result people are starting to get really careful with how they spend their money. The cost of living crisis has caused most of us to tighten our belts, defaults are absolutely soaring, and food bank lines are getting even longer. If conditions continue to deteriorate like this, what will 2026 look like?
Our economic momentum has been causing us to slide in the wrong direction for years, but now that slide threatens to become an avalanche. The following are 14 signs that the condition of the U.S. economy is worse than you think…
#1 According to a brand new survey that was just released, Americans plan to spend far less during this holiday season than they did last year…
The survey showed that consumers intended to spend an average of $1,595 this holiday season, which is over 10% less than the $1,778 they had planned to spend last year. The lower expected spending holds across all household income groups and most generations, but was particularly acute among younger shoppers.
Gen Z consumers, who were represented in the survey by individuals between the ages of 18 and 28, revealed that they plan to spend 34% less this holiday season compared to 2024. Millennials, respondents between the ages of 29 and 44 in the poll, said they plan to spend 13% less, on average.
#2 As the holiday season approaches, we are starting to get reports of “empty shelves” in some parts of the nation…
Several people echoed Michele’s feelings about availability, describing the situation as “empty shelves, higher prices”. Natalie, who lives in New Hampshire, said she hasn’t seen certain pantry staples “for months”. She said: “The store shelves have become more and more bare … instead of multiple choices there may only be one or two, and name brands are being replaced by store brands.”
#3 Household debt has reached an all-time record high of 18.4 trillion dollars, and debt collectors are becoming a lot more aggressive…
U.S. households now owe a record $18.4 trillion in debt, and federal data shows complaints about aggressive debt collection have surged over the past year.
The Federal Trade Commission logged over 140,000 consumer complaints about debt collection in the second quarter — a 220% jump from the same period a year earlier. Georgia, Texas and Florida recorded the highest rates.
A month after bankruptcies of subprime auto lender Tricolor and auto-parts supplier First Brands, new cracks emerged in U.S. credit markets. This week, Zions and Western Alliance disclosed they were victims of loan fraud tied to funds investing in distressed commercial real estate. The revelations come amid broader credit trouble, and shifting our focus back to autos, there’s new data this morning about credit products tied to the riskiest consumers that have seen a 50% surge in delinquencies.
Bloomberg cites data from the credit-scoring company, VantageScore, which reveals that delinquencies among the low-tier consumers have surged 50% since 2010. Fueling the delinquencies is a perfect storm of record-high car prices, elevated interest rates, longer loan terms, and monthly payments that average nearly as much as rent for some folks.
Since 2019, new vehicle prices have jumped over 25% to $50,000, while average monthly payments reached $767, with 20% of borrowers paying over $1,000 per month. Loan rates now exceed 9%, worsening the affordability crisis.
#5 Are we on the verge of a new banking crisis? Thanks in part to the turmoil that we have been witnessing in the auto industry, some regional bank stocks plummeted last week…
Shares of regional banks and investment bank Jefferies tumbled on Thursday as fears mounted around some bad loans lurking on Wall Street.
Zions Bancorporation dropped more than 13%, while Western Alliance Bancorp fell more than 10%. The SPDR S&P Regional Banking ETF (KRE) lost more than 6%, with all but one member of the popular fund ending Thursday’s session in the red.
The bankruptcies of two auto industry-related companies this year have raised concerns about loose lending practices, especially in the opaque private credit market. That’s left both the banking industry and investors concerned about whether instances of loans gone wrong indicate a burgeoning crisis.
#6 Millions upon millions of Americans are seriously behind on their student loan payments…
Roughly 5.3 million borrowers are in default and another 4.3 million borrowers are in “late-stage delinquency,” or between 181 and 270 days late on their payments, according to a separate analysis last month by the Congressional Research Service based on data from the Education Department. Payments 270 days past due are considered in default.
With so many borrowers already seriously delinquent, “if these borrowers do not start paying soon, defaults will meaningfully rise,” Moody’s Analytics economist Justin Begley told CNBC.
#7 The lines at our food banks are getting even longer. In fact, in some areas people are actually spending multiple hours in line just for a chance to get some food…
By the time the Pilsen Food Pantry opened on a recent morning, Ulysses Moreno had been there for two hours — with a line of people behind him that snaked around the corner.
“This is a lifeline for me,” said Mr. Moreno, 39. He had lost his construction job a few days earlier, and with three teenagers at home, he wanted to make sure he could stock up. “Our food budget doesn’t stretch as far as it used to.”
#8Approximately 62 percent of U.S. workers say that the cost of living is rising faster than their paychecks…
Nearly two-thirds of workers (62%) say their income hasn’t kept pace with rising expenses over the past year — the highest share in four years, according to a new Bankrate survey. In 2022, 55% said the same.
The cost of electricity is rising more than twice as fast as overall inflation, turning a basic household necessity into a growing financial burden.
In August, electricity prices jumped 6.2% from a year earlier and are now up more than 30% over the past four years, according to the Consumer Price Index.
That rise has hit families hard and presents a political challenge for the administration.
#10 Close to half of all restaurants anticipate that they will soon be forced to raise prices even higher…
Nearly half of all 712 restaurant decision-makers surveyed (48%) said they plan to increase menu prices if inflation continues to be a factor.
The National Restaurant Association estimates that, to maintain a 5% profit margin, the average restaurant needs to raise prices by 31%, according to data compiled by the D.C.-based industry trade group earlier this year.
More Americans are cooking at home and turning to ingredients that stretch their food budgets, a potential warning sign for the U.S. economy.
American soup and snack maker Campbell’s recently saw the highest level of meals cooked at home since early 2020, CEO Mick Beekhuizen said on an earnings call this week.
#12 Thanks to our trade war with China, U.S. farmers are facing the worst downturn that they have experienced in about 50 years…
Across the Midwest, combines sit idle and bins overflow with unsold grain. Corn prices are down nearly 50% since 2022. Soybeans have dropped 40%. Fertilizer and equipment costs are up double digits. And 8 in 10 farmers now say they believe the U.S. is on the brink of another farm crisis reminiscent of the 1980s. They’ve even given it a name: Farmageddon.
#13 According to Gallup, 60 percent of U.S. workers do not have a “quality job” at this stage…
A majority, 60%, of U.S. workers don’t have a “quality job” that provides basic financial well-being, safety and other factors, according to new Gallup research that covers more than 18,000 workers across industries, occupations and types of employment.
#14 According to a stunning survey that was recently released by PNC Bank, a whopping 67 percent of all workers in the United States are now living paycheck to paycheck.
#15 We continue to see mass layoffs all over the nation. For example, Paramount just announced that it will be eliminating approximately 2,000 jobs…
Paramount Skydance will begin mass layoffs the week of October 27, eliminating around 2,000 U.S. jobs as part of a $2 billion cost-cutting plan under new CEO David Ellison, Variety reported on Saturday.
The top 10 percent of U.S. households now account for nearly half of all spending, Moody’s Analytics recently estimated, the highest share since the late 1980s.
#17 The financial markets have started to shake, and that is really bad news because leverage in the stock market is at an all-time high…
Leverage in the stock market has been spiking since April. In September, margin debt – the amount investors borrowed from their brokers – spiked by another 6.3%, or by $67 billion, from August to a record $1.13 trillion.
#1857 percent of Americans expect the economy to get even worse over the next year. That figure is 27 percent higher than it was last year…
An annual survey from Deloitte revealed that most U.S. consumers expect the economy to weaken in the year ahead.
According to a survey of roughly 4,000 people published on Wednesday, 57% of respondents expect the economy to soften over the coming 12 months, the highest level ever recorded since Deloitte began tracking the sentiment in 1997. This represents a 27-percentage point jump from the 30% registered during the same time last year, and is even higher than the 54% seen in 2008, during the Great Recession.
It is very rare for Americans to be this pessimistic about the economy.
Our leaders have been making catastrophically bad decisions for decades, and now the consequences of those catastrophically bad decisions are starting to catch up with us in a major way.
This generation was handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in human history, and we wrecked it.
We have piled up colossal mountains of debt, we have destroyed the value of our currency, and we have absolutely eviscerated the middle class.
Now virtually every pillar of our economic prosperity has started to crumble, and it is just a matter of time before the entire system completely collapses.
I hear from so many people that are deeply hurting right now. If you are one of those people, I want you to know that you aren’t alone. There really are millions of Americans that are completely stressed out over their finances. There really are millions of Americans that can’t seem to find work no matter how hard they try. And there really are millions of Americans that can’t believe how expensive things have become. Of course there is a small segment of our society that is doing perfectly fine. The wealth of the top 1 percent has reached $52 trillion, and CEO salaries have jumped 1,094 percent since 1978. Many of those that are sitting at the top of the economic pyramid wonder what all of the fuss is about. But for the rest of us, we know how badly economic conditions have deteriorated because we are living it every day. The following are 18 numbers which clearly show what direction things are going…
#1 According to ADP, the U.S. lost 32,000 jobs last month. That was the largest drop in two and a half years…
Private payrolls saw their biggest decline in 2½ years during September, a further sign of labor market weakening that compounds the data blackout accompanying the U.S. government shutdown.
Companies shed a seasonally adjusted 32,000 jobs during the month, the biggest slide since March 2023, payrolls processing firm ADP reported Wednesday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for an increase of 45,000.
In addition to the drop in September, the August payrolls number was revised to a loss of 3,000 from an initially reported increase of 54,000.
As of August, the number of long-term unemployed people had risen to 1.9 million, according to government data — the highest level since 2021, when the nation was still reeling from the pandemic.
#3 Reuters is reporting that over 150,000 federal workers will permanently leave their jobs this week…
More than 150,000 federal employees will leave the U.S. government payroll this week after accepting buyouts – the largest single-year exodus of civil servants in nearly 80 years, triggering what unions and governance experts warn is a damaging loss of institutional expertise.
The official resignations begin on Tuesday for workers who opted into a deferred exit program that kept them on the payroll through September. The buyouts are a cornerstone of President Donald Trump’s push to shrink the federal workforce, combining financial incentives with threats of dismissal for those who declined the offer.
#4 The number of movie jobs in Los Angeles County has fallen by 30 percent in just two years…
The far-left Wall Street Journal reports that at the end of 2024, there were only 100,000 motion picture jobs in Los Angeles County, compared to 142,000 two years earlier.
General Motors is placing 900 workers on indefinite layoff at Fairfax Assembly plant in Kansas, the company told the Detroit Free Press on Oct. 1, as it retools the plant for production of the gas-powered Equinox. Those employees were placed on temporary layoff as of Sept. 4.
A spokesperson for Exxon confirmed to Barron’s on Tuesday that the company plans to cut 2,000 jobs, representing 3% to 4% of the energy company’s global workforce.
The news was first reported by Bloomberg, which said Exxon sent a memo to employees noting the company is consolidating smaller offices into regional hubs as part of a long-term restructuring plan.
#8 A 37-year-old tech worker that lost her job last November still hasn’t found work even though she has applied for hundreds of jobs…
When Anna Whitlock was let go from her job in the technology industry in November of 2024, she wasn’t worried about lining up a new position. The Washington state resident had 11 years of experience managing network infrastructure projects, a specialized role that involves equipping buildings with internet access, cameras and wifi security systems.
“The last time I had to job search, I found something pretty easily,” she said.
Almost a year later, the 37-year-old is still without a job. Whitlock said she has applied to hundreds of jobs — even for positions she’s overqualified for — to no avail.
#9 According to Mark Mitchell of Rasmussen Reports, only 48 percent of U.S. adults under the age of 30 currently have a full-time job.
#10 Our standard of living has been steadily declining for a very long time. In 1950, more than 50 percent of 30-year-olds in the United States owned a home and were married. Today, that figure has fallen to just 13 percent…
Since the postwar era, the share of 30-year-olds in America with both a family and a home has plummeted—from about 52% in 1950 to just 13% in 2025. That’s a staggering 75% decline over 75 years.
#1144.4 percent of Americans struggle to make their housing payments each month…
More than two in five (44.4%) U.S. homeowners and renters struggle to afford their regular rent or mortgage payments, according to a recent Redfin survey. We consider survey respondents to struggle with housing payments if they selected “I struggle greatly to afford them,” “I regularly struggle, but sometimes okay,” or “I sometimes struggle, but generally okay.”
#1246 percent of Americans worry about debt every single day.
#13 Prices were slashed on 19.9 percent of home listings last month as the U.S. housing bubble starts to burst…
Nearly one in five American homes listed for sale reportedly saw a price cut in September, as rising inventory shifted more power to buyers.
The number of listings with price cuts reached 19.9%, unchanged from August but up modestly from last year. Homes priced between $350,000 and $500,000 saw the steepest markdowns at 21.6%, while luxury properties over $1 million were less likely to see reductions, at just 13.3%, according to a Thursday report from Realtor.com.
#1449 percent of Americans say that the cost of living is the biggest challenge that they are facing.
#1567 percent of U.S. workers are now living paycheck to paycheck.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ consumer price index report for August showed a surge in beef prices over the past year. Ground beef prices were up 12.8% on a year-over-year basis in August, while beef roasts were up 13.6%, and steak prices were 16.6% higher.
#17 The number of cows in the United States has fallen to the lowest level since 1951…
Cattle rancher Mike Martz of Larson Farms in Maple Park, Illinois, told FOX Business’ Kelly Saberi that cattle inventories have declined in recent years due to drought affecting important ranching areas.
“The real issue here is the drought that happened a number of years ago, and Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, the Southeast lost all their grass, all their forage. And when that happens, you’ve got to liquidate cows, and that’s what we’ve done,” Martz said. “We’ve got the lowest cow inventory since 1951, so that’s the cause of this.”
#18 The cost of living the American Dream for a lifetime has now reached 5 million dollars.
We haven’t seen anything like this since 2008 and 2009.
If you are having a really tough time in 2025, it is so important to realize that you aren’t alone, and I also want you to understand that it isn’t your fault.
If you feel like you are drowning financially, or if you can’t find work no matter how much effort you put into your job search, it is not because you are a failure.
The truth is that the entire system has been failing for a long time, and now the consequences of decades of really bad decisions are overtaking us.
The labor market created far fewer jobs than previously thought, according to a Labor Department report Tuesday that added to concerns both about the health of the economy and the state of data collection.
Annual revisions to nonfarm payrolls data for the year prior to March 2025 showed a drop of 911,000 from the initial estimates, according to a preliminary report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The total revision was on the high end of Wall Street expectations, which ranged from a low around 600,000 to as many as a million.
The revisions were more than 50% higher than last year’s adjustment and the largest on record going back to 2002. On a monthly basis, they suggest average job growth of 76,000 less than initially reported.
Virtually ZERO jobs were created in 2024 under Joe Biden.
JUST IN: -911,000 fewer jobs were created between April ’24 and March ’25, the BLS says. Wow, that’s a big revision. That means the labor market was weak even before the tariffs kicked in. The job market was mostly frozen in 2024, too.
2 million jobs from the last 3 years of the Biden admin have now been revised away. This despite the biggest debt issuance spree on record. pic.twitter.com/iPylnxuC5T
President Trump was absolutely correct to fire the Biden-appointed
Last month, President Trump fired the Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) after she ‘faked’ the jobs numbers before the 2024 election to try to boost Kamala Harris’s chances of a victory.
Dr. Erika McEntarfer was promptly fired after an abysmal July jobs report. The US only added 73,000 jobs in July, and the previous months were all revised down.
“Nonfarm payrolls growth totaled 73,000 for July, above the June total of 14,000 but below even the meager Dow Jones estimate for a gain of 100,000,” CNBC reported.
“June and May totals were revised sharply lower, down by a combined 258,000 from previously announced levels,” the outlet reported.
Trump previously accused McEntarfer of rigging today’s jobs numbers in order to make him look bad.
“In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad — Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were “taken away” on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs — A TOTAL SCAM. Jerome “Too Late” Powell is no better! But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!” Trump said last month.
President Trump later announced he nominated conservative economist Dr. E.J. Antoni as the next Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the Trump Administration is preparing a report on the BLS’s shortcomings and may release it in the next few weeks.
The employment numbers for the month of August were just released, and they are horrible. Sadly, they have now been horrible for several months in a row, and many economists are warning that conditions will get even worse during the months ahead. Other than during the early days of the pandemic in 2020, we haven’t seen anything like this since the Great Recession. If you have a job that you value, hold on to it very tightly, and if you are currently looking for work try to find something as soon as you can before competition for jobs becomes even more intense.
Each month, the U.S. economy must add about 150,000 new jobs just to keep up with population growth.
According to the BLS, the U.S. economy only added 22,000 new jobs during the month of August…
U.S. job growth continued to slow down in August, with just 22,000 new jobs—a sign that the labor market is deteriorating markedly.
Friday’s report adds to a summer of slow hiring and points to a stagnant job market that has lengthened job searches, shut young people out of employment and increased unemployment for Black workers.
This number was much worse than most analysts were projecting.
“The job market is stalling short of the runway,” said Daniel Zhao, chief economist at jobs site Glassdoor. “The labor market is losing lift, and August’s report, along with downward revisions, suggests we’re heading into turbulence without the soft landing achieved.”
Just like we have seen so many times before, the figure for the month of August will probably end up much lower once it is revised.
So by the time it is all said and done, I expect that the final number for the month of August will actually be negative.
Interestingly, the number for the month of June was just revised down into negative territory…
On Friday, the BLS revised the prior two months’ data, showing that employers shed 13,000 jobs in June, revising the month’s hiring downward by 27,000 fewer jobs. That marks the first monthly decline in hiring since December 2020, when the U.S. was in the midst of an economic crisis caused by the pandemic.
Please read that last sentence again.
Thanks to the birth-death model, it is very difficult for the BLS to actually produce a negative number.
The last time it happened there were lockdowns all over the nation due to the pandemic.
But now the number for June is negative.
That is a huge red flag, and Mark Zandi is suggesting that the U.S. economy may have already entered the next recession…
“It’s clear the job market is struggling,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Fortune. “The economy is on the edge of recession: In fact, we may already be in one. As more revisions come in, it will probably show that employment is declining in a consistent way.”
Overall, during the first eight months of this year the U.S. economy has added the fewest jobs that we have seen since 2009.
Do you remember 2009?
The Great Recession was a very difficult time.
Would our country be able to handle another downturn of that magnitude?
The United States lost 12,000 manufacturing jobs for the month, continuing a downward trend since its most recent peak in February 2023, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics.
This wasn’t supposed to happen.
But it is happening.
As I discussed yesterday, the numbers that we are getting are confirming over and over again that the U.S. economy is heading in the wrong direction.
Unfortunately, we are being warned that our problems could soon accelerate even more.
“August’s employment report confirmed that the labor market has headed off a cliff-edge,” Bradley Saunders, North America economist at Capital Economics, said in a Friday research report.
That doesn’t sound good at all.
If you want to look for a silver lining, the good news is that it looks like the Federal Reserve will probably give us a rate cut next month.
“The Federal Reserve needs to cut interest rates in September and probably October and December, too. The ‘no hiring’ economy is turning to a layoff economy and if that worsens, it will lead to a recession. This needs to be stopped,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, said in an email.
Hopefully those rate cuts will actually happen, because we desperately need them.
But cutting rates will not reverse our economic momentum.
And the government numbers are not giving us the full picture.
As I have documented in previous articles, government economic numbers almost always make things look better than they actually are.
I believe that the numbers that we get from private sources are much more accurate. According to a new report that was just released by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in August was 39 percent higher than it was in July…
U.S.-based employers announced 85,979 job cuts in August, up 39% from the 62,075 announced in July. It is up 13% from the 75,891 announced in the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and business and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
August’s total was the highest for the month since 2020 when 115,762 job cuts were recorded. After 2020, it is the highest August total since the thick of the Great Recession in 2008, when 88,736 cuts were announced. August marks the sixth time this year that the job cut total surpassed that of the corresponding month one year prior.
Can anyone out there think of a way to make those numbers look good?
Because I can’t.
Overall, the number of announced job cuts in the United States is up 66 percent compared to last year…
So far this year, companies have announced 892,362 job cuts, the highest YTD since 2020 when 1,963,458 were announced. It is up 66% from the 536,421 job cuts announced through the first eight months of last year and is up 17% from the 2024 full year total of 761,358.
That last number totally blew me away.
We still have four months left to go in 2025, and we have already beat last year’s grand total by 17 percent.
The total size of the money supply still remains more than $5 trillion above its pre-covid total—an increase of 35 percent— but trends in delinquencies, employment, and home sales have put downward pressure on the money supply throughout much of 2025.
As of July, year-over-year growth in the money supply was at 2.45 percent. That’s down slightly from June’s year-over-year increase of 2.49 percent. Money supply growth is also up compared to July of last year when year-over-year growth was -0.43 percent. The money supply has now increased, year over year, for twelve months in a row, following a very volatile period of immense growth in the money supply—i.e., during 2020 and 2021—followed by eighteen months of sizable declines in the money supply during 2023 and 2024. Since then, however, money supply trends have largely flattened.
This trend has been especially true in the first half of 2025. Month over month, the money supply in July was up by 0.13 percent, rising only slightly from June’s month-to-month growth rate -0.17 percent. During July of last year, the month-to-month growth rate was 0.17 percent.
The total money supply has hovered around $19.3 trillion for the past three months, and is little changed from January of this year, rising 0.2 percent, or $39 billion since then.
This flattening of monetary growth likely reflects several trends we now see in the economy. For example, recent employment reports have shown that job growth has largely stalled, and July’s revisions to employment totals suggest that employment trends are worse than was previously thought. Moreover, recent reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York shows that delinquencies on student loans, auto loans, and credit cares are all at or above the levels they were during the Great Recession. Meanwhile, bankruptcies are up by more than 11 percent in 2025 compared to last year, and pending home sales continue to fall.
All of these trends are likely to have an effect on money supply growth. As Frank Shostak has explained, the money supply will often grow along with loan activity at commercial banks, and increases in loan activity requires an abundance of credit-worthy borrowers. As delinquencies and bankruptcies rise—a trend made worse by stagnating employment—the number of available borrowers falls. Fewer loans will then be made and the money supply will grow less swiftly. On the other end, a growing number of defaulting borrowers means previously lent dollars will “disappear” as these loans are never paid back, putting downward pressure on the overall money supply. As home-sale totals fall, this also tends to mean fewer newly lent dollars entering the economy.
Do you feel knots in your stomach due to financial stress? If so, you certainly have lots of company. All of a sudden, everyone is talking about the cost of living and prices are rising by double-digit percentages all around us. There are so many people out there right now that feel like they are “drowning” because no matter how hard they try there simply isn’t enough money for everything. Unfortunately, we are being warned to brace ourselves for even more inflation in the months ahead.
When I heard that the cost of vegetables in the United States had gone up by 40 percent in one month, I thought that there was no way that it could be true.
So I looked it up, and I discovered that the cost of vegetables in the United States didn’t go up by 40 percent in one month.
A 38.9% increase in prices for fresh and dry vegetables from June to July was the major driver of a higher index for “final demand goods” (things that are done and ready to be sold to a consumer, as opposed to things that go into a later production process).
That is nuts!
How can the cost of vegetables go up by 38.9 percent in a single month?
Per Bureau of Labor Statistics data, it’s also the largest monthly increase ever recorded in a summer month (June-August), in figures that go back to 1947.
The other day, I wrote about how beef has become so expensive that it is now considered to be a “luxury”.
Well, now vegetables are a “luxury” too.
And let’s not forget coffee.
The price of coffee went up by 25 percent in just three months, and that was before coffee exports from Brazil were hit with a 50 percent tariff…
Coffee prices were already up before a 50 percent tariff on Brazil, the top coffee importer to the U.S., went into effect last week. Coffee prices sharply rose 25 percent over the past three months, according to inflation data released Tuesday. Reuters reported Tuesday that Brazilian coffee exports have started seeing postponements to their U.S. shipments.
About two-thirds of all U.S. adults drink coffee.
This is one of the most basic things that Americans buy.
But now a lot of people are either going to have to cut back or stop drinking it entirely because it has become so ridiculously expensive.
Air conditioning is rapidly becoming a “luxury” as well.
Across the country, electricity prices have jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year. That’s especially painful during the dog days of summer, when air conditioners are working overtime.
In Pembroke Pines, Fla., Al Salvi’s power bill can reach $500 a month.
“There’s a lot of seniors down here that are living check to check. They can barely afford prescriptions such as myself,” says Salvi, who’s 63 and uses a wheelchair. “Now we got to decide whether we’re going to pay the electric bill or are we going to buy medication. And it’s not fair to us. You’re squeezing us between a rock and a hard place.”
As our leaders were borrowing trillions upon trillions of dollars that we did not have, I warned that this was going to cause rampant inflation, but a lot of people out there didn’t want to listen.
And as the Federal Reserve was pumping trillions upon trillions of dollars that they created out of thin air into the financial system, I warned that this was going to cause rampant inflation, but a lot of people out there didn’t want to listen.
At first it seemed like our leaders were totally getting away with it.
But now look at what has happened.
There are countless videos on TikTok right now of people breaking down emotionally over the rising cost of living.
The video made by “diannaallen5” for TikTok was shared on X by @WallStreetApes to their 1 million X followers, writing, “Americans are breaking down, a grown woman crying because she can’t afford to live anymore.”
The woman in the video, who said she is from Illinois, was distraught and in tears as she spoke, saying that “gas prices and the electric bills and the prices of food is just so overwhelming.”
“I’m wondering if anybody else is feeling like they’re drowning and they can’t get out,” she said. “I work overtime, and I cannot get above water. I mean, I literally have no gas for next week.”
“I’m just wondering if anybody else feels like they’re drowning,” she said is despair.
A LifeStance Health survey released today reveals “stressflation” is affecting most Americans, with 83% reporting financial stress driven by inflation, mass layoffs, the rising cost of living and recession fears. Millennials and Gen Z report the most significant mental health impacts.
The number of respondents who have been deterred from seeking mental health care due to financial constraints remains consistently high (60%), increasing two percentage points from 2024. Those experiencing high financial stress levels are more than twice as likely to forgo mental health treatment due to cost, highlighting a mental health gap where financial strain exacerbates mental health challenges while limiting access to care.
We should have seen this coming way in advance, because we were specifically warned that this was coming.
Well, that was quite a shock. We just got confirmation that inflation is starting to accelerate once again. That is really bad news, because the cost of living has already been stressing people out all over the country. In fact, one recent survey found that 86 percent of Americans are stressed out about grocery prices. But it isn’t just the cost of food that has been going up. We have been getting slammed by double-digit price increases in every direction, and that is having enormous consequences. Our standard of living is eroding with each passing month, and as a result the middle class is steadily shrinking.
On Thursday, we learned that the producer price index increased by 0.9 percent last month.
That was the largest increase that we have seen since June 2022…
The producer price index, which measures final demand goods and services prices, jumped 0.9% on the month, compared with the Dow Jones estimate for a 0.2% gain. It was the biggest monthly increase since June 2022.
Excluding food and energy prices, core PPI rose 0.9% against the forecast for 0.3%. Excluding food, energy and trade services, the index was up 0.6%, the biggest gain since March 2022.
Such a large change in one month was very unexpected.
Headline number is– WHOPPINGLY big! Oh my goodness!
Up 9 tenths of a percent. Up 9 tenths. And if you strip out food and energy, guess what? It’s still up 9/10ths. Boy, that equals June of 22!
You’re at the March of 22 on the headline to find a bigger number. On the core number, that would come to March of 22 since we’ve had a number of that magnitude when it was 1.2%. These are kind of COVID distorted numbers.
So what would happen if the producer price index rises by 0.9 percent every month for the next 12 months?
That would put us at a 10.8 percent annual rate, and we would officially be in Jimmy Carter territory.
Another point that I would like to make is that the government numbers always understate the true rate of inflation by a significant margin.
And we can clearly see evidence of this all around us.
New Jersey residents are up in arms over huge spikes in their energy costs, leading to speculation it could prove fatal for Democrats.
The New Jersey’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) approved a 17-20 percent hike in June for the majority of households in The Garden State.
One local woman says that her electricity bill is now $200 more than it used to be…
“$200 more, I know my electrical bill,” one woman told Cotton in Rutherford, N.J., on Tuesday. “I was shocked. So to say the least, I’m very disappointed. This is killing us, and every time you turn around it’s something more. You only get little pleasures in life that you enjoy, and my air conditioner is one of them.”
New Jersey’s electric bills currently rank 12th highest in the nation, according to the Wall Street Journal, with prices sitting roughly 15 percent higher than the national average.
Air conditioning is rapidly becoming a luxury.
Not everyone will be able to afford it anymore.
Beef has also become a luxury item, and it is being reported that last month the price of beef soared to yet another new all-time high…
Beef prices surged to an all-time high in July as the market grappled with consistently strong demand and long-term issues in domestic production.
According to the latest consumer price index, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics published on Tuesday, the beef and veal index rose by 2.5 percent in July, compared to 0.2 percent for the broader food category. This capped an 11.3 percent increase over the past 12 months.
Meanwhile, the price of ground beef and uncooked beef steaks has risen by 11.5 and 12.4 percent, respectively, both now at record levels.
I am a meat and potatoes kind of guy, and so this really upsets me.
When I see the prices that supermarkets are trying to charge us now, it makes me feel sick.
The other day, a Twitter user known as “Molly Ploofkins” posted a truly alarming photo that she took at her local Publix…
45 dollars?
Seriously?
It is hard for me to believe the prices that we are seeing now.
A perfect storm of rising health care costs, expensive new drugs, and the scheduled end of enhanced federal subsidies could drive Obamacare’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace premiums to their steepest levels in years—and hit more than 24 million Americans in their wallets.
According to a new analysis of insurers’ 2026 filings by Peterson-KFF’s Health System Tracker, the median proposed premium hike across 312 marketplace insurers is 18%. Most increases range from 12% to 27%, with more than 125 insurers seeking hikes of 20% or more—the sharpest climb since 2018. Final rates will be locked in by late summer 2025.
Health insurance premiums are already wildly out of control.
And now they want to hit us with double-digit increases again?
This is the reality of the economy that we live in now.
Two-thirds of parents who need summer child care say they struggle to afford it, and 62% of parents go into debt to cover summer child care, camps and activities, according to a recent survey of more than 600 parents conducted by LendingTree, an online lending marketplace. Parents in the survey said they spend almost $900 per child on summer care, and nearly half said they cut back on other expenses like dining out and entertainment to offset the cost.
Today, most of the country is living on the edge financially.
And now that economic conditions are slowing down, we are seeing foreclosures start to spike just like we did in 2008 and 2009.
For example, in Clark County, Nevada there was a 32 percent increase in foreclosure notices in just 12 months…
Growing numbers of Las Vegas homeowners are falling into foreclosure as soaring prices and Trump boycotts decimate the city, a new report found.
In Clark County, 200 default notices were filed in June, an increase of 32 percent from the same month last year, a research report from the University of Nevada’s Lied Center for Real Estate found.
Default notices are filed after a property owner falls behind on their mortgage payments and indicates the start of the foreclosure process.
This is why it is so important to have an emergency fund.
If you lose your job, you have got to have something to fall back on.
Sadly, mass layoffs are now happening all over the nation and the competition for any good jobs that are available has become fierce.
Some people that are unemployed have been applying for hundreds and hundreds of jobs without any success. I shared an example of this the other day, and here is another example…
Emanuel Barcenas feels like he’s falling behind. At 25, he’d like to be living in his own place, saving money for the future and making enough money to take a date out to dinner.
Instead, two years after he graduated with a computer science bachelor’s degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology, he’s unemployed and living with his parents in the suburbs of Chicago. Despite having applied to more than 900 jobs — from secretary positions to a role at a prison — he has gotten only a handful of interviews.
“I want to be an adult,” he said. “I need to lock in, I need to move forward, but right now, I’m just stunted. I’m trying my best, but I guess my best isn’t good enough.”
Sometimes I feel like we are all playing a very twisted game of musical chairs.
Every time the music stops, more seats are being removed and more people fall out of the middle class.
The U.S.national debt surpassed $37 trillion for the first time in the nation’s history on Friday as the federal government continues to accumulate debt at a record-setting pace.
New data from the Treasury Department released showed that the gross national debt hit $37,004,817,625,842.56 on Tuesday afternoon.
The $37 trillion debt milestone comes less than eight months after the nation hit the $36 trillion threshold for the first time in late November 2024, and a little over one year after the $35 trillion mark was reached in late July 2024.
The U.S. topping $37 trillion in total debt comes as the total debt held by the public – a metric favored by economists that excludes debt held in intragovernmental accounts like the Social Security trust funds – is projected to reach 99% of the size of the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) this year.
Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) reacted, telling Fox Business, “Reaching this milestone is a moment no one in Washington can be proud of – our fiscal situation is woefully unbalanced, yet Congress keeps on making the situation worse. Even when measuring debt as a share of the economy, we’re headed toward record levels and on course to spend $1 trillion just on interest costs. We will need to act quickly to face the reality of our unsustainable debt, before a fiscal emergency forces our hand.”
Michael A. Peterson, CEO of the Peter G. Robinson Foundation, told Fox Business, “The national debt soaring past $37 trillion sends yet another clear message about America’s unsustainable fiscal path. Our national debt is now greater than the economies of the entire Eurozone and China, combined.”
Peterson continued, “Despite today’s unfortunate milestone, it’s not too late to act. We should reform our budget before the damage is made even worse. Policymakers have many well-known options to stabilize our debt and put us on a stronger path for the next generation.”
Update (1600ET): President Trump was not done yet and posted again calling today’s jobs data “rigged”
In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad
— Just like when they had three great days around the 2024 Presidential Election, and then, those numbers were “taken away” on November 15, 2024, right after the Election, when the Jobs Numbers were massively revised DOWNWARD, making a correction of over 818,000 Jobs
— A TOTAL SCAM.
Jerome “Too Late” Powell is no better!
But, the good news is, our Country is doing GREAT!
Remember, there’s no such thing as a coincidence in DC.
* * *
A dismal jobs print (and dramatically weaker revisions)…
…have prompted the president to fire the woman who ‘runs the numbers’… (via Truth Social)
I was just informed that our Country’s “Jobs Numbers” are being produced by a Biden Appointee, Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Commissioner of Labor Statistics, who faked the Jobs Numbers before the Election to try and boost Kamala’s chances of Victory.
This is the same Bureau of Labor Statistics that overstated the Jobs Growth in March 2024 by approximately 818,000 and, then again, right before the 2024 Presidential Election, in August and September, by 112,000.
These were Records — No one can be that wrong? We need accurate Jobs Numbers.
This is the biggest negative revision to payrolls since the global financial crisis.
I have directed my Team to fire this Biden Political Appointee, IMMEDIATELY.
She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified.
Trump went on:
Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes.
McEntarfer said there were only 73,000 Jobs added (a shock!) but, more importantly, that a major mistake was made by them, 258,000 Jobs downward, in the prior two months. Similar things happened in the first part of the year, always to the negative.
The Economy is BOOMING under “TRUMP” despite a Fed that also plays games, this time with Interest Rates, where they lowered them twice, and substantially, just before the Presidential Election, I assume in the hopes of getting “Kamala” elected – How did that work out?
Jerome “Too Late” Powell should also be put “out to pasture.”
Thank you for your attention to this matter!
CNBC’s Steve Liesman stated unequivocally that there is “no evidence jobs numbers are politicized.”
Well, there was the whole 1 million downward job revision in August 2024, three weeks before the Fed cut rates 50bps two months before the 2024 election to get Kamala elected.
Amazing what an 818K downward jobs revision that “nobody could have seen coming because the Biden economy was so strong” will do… pic.twitter.com/xvTwmE4eUJ
Then Liesman went further, calling it all a conspiracy theory (now where have we heard that before?)
Liesman “You have an election happening in Nov 2024. If you are trying to help the Democrats tell me what the sense is to release in August 2024 that payrolls are 818K below what had been reported. The idiocy.”
Oops, they did it again. Even though the housing market has been in a depressed state for an extended period of time and even though economic conditions are slowing down all over the country, the Federal Reserve has once again refused to lower interest rates. What in the world are they thinking? I certainly share President Trump’s frustration with the Fed. Central banks all over the world have been cutting rates, but our central bank just won’t budge. Have Fed officials gone completely insane, or are they purposely trying to destroy the U.S. economy?
Those that have been following my work for an extended period of time already know that I am not a fan of the Federal Reserve at all. And now we have another very clear example of the Fed’s lack of competence…
The Federal Reserve said Wednesday it’s keeping its benchmark interest rate unchanged, citing elevated uncertainty over the nation’s economic outlook.
The decision to hold rates steady marks a continuation of the Fed’s “wait-and-see” strategy this year, as it monitors the impact of the Trump administration’s tariffs on consumer prices.
There were two Fed governors that did not agree with this decision. This was the first time since 1993 that more than one Fed governor has dissented…
For the first time since 1993 more than one Fed governor voted against the Fed chair Jerome Powell and the committee’s majority decision.
The dissenters – governors Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman – were both appointed by Trump and like the President support cutting rates.
For months Trump has pressured Powell to cut rates – currently between 4.25 and 4.5 percent – threatened to fire him, appoint a shadow chair and even harangued him over the cost of improvements to the Fed’s offices.
There are some experts that argue that we need to continue to keep interest rates at elevated levels in order to get inflation under control.
Last year, sales of existing homes in the U.S. fell to the lowest level that we have seen since 1995…
Sales of existing homes in the US fell last year to the lowest level in almost three decades, as sky-high home prices and elevated mortgage rates squeezed home buyers.
Sales of previously owned homes, which make up the vast majority of the market, totaled 4.06 million in 2024, the National Association of Realtors said Friday. That’s the lowest level since 1995 and slightly below 2023’s similarly anemic levels.
And this year, sales of existing homes are expected to be even lower than they were last year…
Sales volume for existing homes, previously projected to grow slightly this year compared with 2024, is now expected to fall 1.5% annually, to just 4 million transactions.
That would mark the slowest year for existing-home sales since 1995, when they registered 3.8 million. Home sales were also at their lowest since 1995 in both 2023 and 2024, according to the National Association of Realtors®.
Things were not even this bad during the Great Recession in 2008 and 2009.
The primary reason why homes are not selling is because interest rates are way too high.
Is the Fed just going to sit there and watch the life get squeezed out of one of the most important pillars of our economy?
Of course there are many pundits that are pointing to today’s GDP number as evidence that the overall economy is doing well…
Gross domestic product, a sum of goods and services activity across the sprawling U.S. economy, jumped 3% for the April through June period, according to figures adjusted for seasonality and inflation.
That topped the Dow Jones estimate for 2.3% and helped reverse a decline of 0.5% for the first quarter that came largely due to a huge drop in imports, which subtract from the total, as well as weak consumer spending amid tariff concerns.
That number looks pretty good until you realize that it was artificially boosted by a massive decline in imports.
In fact, we are being told that a huge drop in imports somehow added 5.2 percentage points to our GDP during the second quarter…
With Trump’s double-digit tariffs looming, American retailers and manufacturers raced to order foreign goods early in the year before the levies took effect. That led to an unprecedented flood of imports, which must be subtracted from GDP – the goods that consumers, companies and the public sector bought – because they’re made overseas.
Since those purchases were pulled forward, companies didn’t need to order as many goods from other countries last quarter and imports plunged 30.3%, reversing the 37.9% rise that dampened output earlier and bolstering U.S. growth. As a result, those foreign shipments added 5.2 percentage points to growth after subtracting a whopping 4.7 points in the January-March period.
If you took away the 5.2 percentage points that were added to our GDP due to falling imports, economic growth would have been deeply negative last quarter.
We see a similar thing going on with the official employment numbers that the government has been giving us.
Thanks to the “birth-death model”, the U.S. has supposedly added 614,000 jobs so far this year.
But if you take away the “birth-death model”, the U.S. has actually lost 62,000 jobs so far this year…
So far this year, the net birth-death model has converted what would have been a 62,000-job decline in not seasonally adjusted nonfarm employment into a 614,000-job gain. In the note cited above, Bloomberg Economics estimated that the model and other factors have been artificially boosting seasonally adjusted gains of 130,000 a month so far this year by about 80,000 a month. If even roughly correct (Bloomberg Economics’ payroll overcount estimates as of June 2024 were about twice as big as what the BLS eventually reported), this would mean another sharp downward revision next February, the fifth in the last seven years.
I don’t have any confidence in the numbers that the government gives us at this stage.
When President Trump called them “fake” prior to the election, he was right on target.
One recent survey found that 70 percent of Americans are feeling “anxiety and depression” due to the finances.
That wouldn’t be happening if our economy really was in good shape.
Unfortunately, as long as the Federal Reserve keeps interest rates at elevated levels it is going to be a real struggle to turn things around.
If you ask 1,000 different Americans about the state of the U.S. economy, you will get 1,000 different opinions. But what is the truth? In this article, I am going to share information with you that is indisputable. I like to examine things from an analytical point of view, and so I always want to know what the cold, hard numbers are telling me. And what the cold, hard numbers are telling me is very troubling. The following are 10 economic facts that nobody can deny…
#1 The Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators fell more than expected last month, and during the entire first half of 2025 it declined at an even faster rate than it did during the second half of 2024…
The Conference Board Leading Economic Index® (LEI) for the US declined by 0.3% in June 2025 to 98.8 (2016=100), after no change in May (revised upward from –0.1% originally reported). As a result, the LEI fell by 2.8% over the first half of 2025, a substantially faster rate of decline than the –1.3% contraction over the second half of 2024.
“The US LEI fell further in June,” said Justyna Zabinska-La Monica, Senior Manager, Business Cycle Indicators, at The Conference Board. “For a second month in a row, the stock price rally was the main support of the LEI. But this was not enough to offset still very low consumer expectations, weak new orders in manufacturing, and a third consecutive month of rising initial claims for unemployment insurance.
#2 We just learned that sales of previously-owned homes have fallen to their lowest level in nine months…
Sales of previously-owned homes in the United States hit their lowest rate in nine months, according to industry data released Wednesday, as high home prices and mortgage rates weighed on the market.
Existing home sales dropped by 2.7 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.9 million, said the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
#3 It is being reported that millions of Americans that are on existing health insurance plans will be hit with “double-digit rate hikes” next year…
Consumers who buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace will likely face double-digit rate hikes next year.
Insurers plan a median premium increase of 15% for 2026 plans, which would be the largest ACA insurance price hike since 2018, according to a Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker analysis published on July 18.
And many working-age consumers who get their health insurance through the workplace won’t be spared, either. Benefits consultant Mercer said more than half of big employers expect to shift a larger share of insurance costs to employees and their families next year by raising deductibles, copays, or out-of-pocket requirements.
#4 The price of beef in the United States has risen 9 percent since January…
First it was eggs, now it’s beef.
The last time Americans likely noticed spiking prices at the grocery store was when eggs reached record-highs. Since then, egg prices have fallen after the deadly avian flu outbreak was contained and producers built back supply.
Now, beef prices are hitting records, rising almost 9% since January, according to the Department of Agriculture, and retailing for $9.26 a pound. June’s consumer price index showed steak and ground beef prices are up 12.4% and 10.3%, respectively, over the last year.
#5 More Americans than ever are using “buy now, pay later” loans to pay for groceries…
25% of BNPL users say they’ve used the loans to buy groceries. That’s up from 14% just a year ago, amid rising prices at the supermarket. One-third of Gen Z BNPL users say they’ve done so, making it the fourth-most common BNPL purchase for that age group, trailing clothing, technology and home decor.
#6 The official rate of inflation just increased at the fastest pace that we have seen in 5 months…
Consumer prices in June posted the biggest increase since the beginning of the year and are likely to keep the Federal Reserve from cutting interest rates later this month, but there were only scattered signs of tariff-related inflation.
The consumer-price index rose 0.3% last month, the government said Tuesday, and matched Wall Street’s forecast. It was the biggest rise since January.
#7 A recent survey found that 23 percent of Americans have decided to delay retirement. That figure is up from 14 percent last year…
Older Americans are kicking the can down the road on retirement over concerns about the economy and their own financial readiness to step back from work.
That’s according to a new survey from F&G Annuities & Life, which polled 2,000 U.S. adults over 50 years old. The life insurance and annuities company found that 23% of those polled have already decided to delay their retirement as they grapple with questions about their financial readiness, up from 14% in 2024.
The findings come at a time when the median savings of 55-year-olds is just $50,000, far from enough to fund a secure old age, according to another recent study by Prudential Financial.
#8 According to another recent survey, nearly 70 percent of Americans are feeling “anxiety and depression” because of the state of their finances…
Americans are feeling increasingly uneasy about their financial future.
Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) say financial uncertainty has led them to feelings of anxiety and depression, according to a recent survey from Northwest Mutual — an 8-percentage-point increase from 2023.
#9 The percentage of the U.S. population that is dealing with food insecurity has almost doubled over the past four years…
In May, 15.6% of adults were food insecure, almost double the rate in 2021. At that time Congress had beefed up SNAP benefits and expanded the Child Tax Credit driving down poverty rates, and giving people more money for food.
Another wave of closures and layoffs has hit workers and companies tied to commercial transportation, manufacturing, lumber production, distribution and logistics across the U.S.
Over the past several weeks, there have been 4,137 job cuts announced, according to media reports and Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act notices.
The companies facing layoffs include: Republic National Distributing Co. (1,756), Canfor Corp. (290), Bluestem Brands (160), DeRoyal Industries (153), Weaber Lumber (145), Howard Miller Co. (133), Ohio Eagle Distributing (124), Pocino Foods Co. (124), Western Forest Products (112), Americold Logistics (110), Lightspeed Logistics Miami LLC (110), Cartparts.com (104), MacMillan-Piper (92), GSC Enterprises Inc. (80), SalonCentric (79), Auto Warehousing Co. (75), BRP Marine US Inc. (72), Marshall Excelsior Co. (71), Backyard PlayNation (66), Spectrum Plastic Group (34) and CHS Inc. (25).
This would not be happening if the U.S. economy was in good shape.
When the economy is strong, lots of stuff is being shipped all over the place.
Sadly, a lot more layoffs are on the horizon.
In addition to facing another major economic downturn, we have also entered the “AI revolution”.
Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki has a sobering take on one of today’s hottest trends: artificial intelligence (AI).
“BIGGEST CHANGE in MODERN HISTORY,” he declared in an X post on July 1. “AI will cause many ‘smart students’ to lose their jobs. AI will cause massive unemployment. Many still have student loan debt.”
Kiyosaki isn’t alone in sounding the alarm. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic — the AI company behind the large language model Claude — recently warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push the unemployment rate as high as 20%.
Thanks to AI and other technological advancements, our society is now in a period of exponential transformation.
Many would argue that many of the changes that we are witnessing are not for the better.
It is going to be very challenging to make good decisions in this environment, because many of the old rules no longer apply.
The “Big Beautiful Bill” (BBB) is shaping up to be one of the most consequential pieces of legislation for the American people in a generation. It delivers targeted, tangible benefits to workers, seniors, and small businesses—yet Democrats and their media echo chamber are doing everything they can to convince Americans it’s a disaster. What’s really going on here is a masterclass in gaslighting, where facts are buried under fear, and benefits are branded as betrayal.
The Democrats’ strategy heading into the 2026 midterms is clear: demonize the BBB, punish President Trump, and discredit the will of the people who put him and a Republican majority in power. This gaslighting will be a constant drumbeat for over a year.
At its core, the BBB provides a clear lift for ordinary Americans:
Working-class families will see more take-home pay through the elimination of taxes on tips and overtime.
Senior citizens get a substantial Social Security tax exemption—individuals keeping an additional $6,000, couples up to $12,000—allowing 88% of seniors to avoid taxes on their benefits entirely.
Middle-income families gain an expanded child tax credit and higher standard deductions, with some households seeing effective tax cuts of 16%.
Small businesses, the backbone of the American economy, benefit from a permanent extension of the 20% pass-through deduction, first introduced in the Trump tax cuts.
In addition, many of the popular Trump policies on immigration reform, government accountability, national and border security, and tax reductions become law.
They are real-world changes that immediately impact everyday Americans—especially those long ignored by Washington’s elite class. But instead of acknowledging these historic reforms, Democrats are in full-blown panic mode.
Progressive firebrand Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez exploded over the bill, warning it would make current economic conditions “look like child’s play.” The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) has already branded the legislation the “Big Ugly Bill,” rolling out a multi-million-dollar messaging blitz that aims to vilify the very relief Americans just received.
There’s no constructive policy coming from the left—only resistance. No counter-legislation, no competing tax plan, no alternative for seniors or small businesses. Just rage. Their complicit media shills will amplify the negative while ignoring the benefits.
Outlets have already led with claims that 10 to 12 million may lose Medicaid coverage, deficit projections, and warnings about benefits to the wealthy, while carefully leaving out what the bill actually does for lower- and middle-income Americans.
Make no mistake: this is the same psychological operation we saw during COVID. Back then, fear ruled the day. Today, it’s political fear designed to overwhelm your senses, distort your judgment, and trick you into rejecting what’s in your best interest.
Proverbs 22:3 says, “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple pass on and suffer for it.”
Now is the time to double down on discernment. This is not just a political battle. It’s a test of whether common sense can still cut through the noise.
Stay sharp. Stay free. Anything less is, say it with me… Stupidocrisy.
Do you feel financial stress on a regular basis? If so, you are certainly not alone. As you will see below, a new survey has discovered that more than two-thirds of the entire country is feeling “anxiety and depression” due to financial stress. The cost of living is totally out of control, and it is absolutely crushing the middle class. Earlier today, we learned that the official rate of inflation has gone up again. Apparently it was the largest increase in five months, but I don’t put much stock in the official government numbers because I know how much they have been manipulated. In fact, the formula for calculating the official rate of inflation has been altered dozens of times since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, and every time they change the formula the goal is to make inflation look lower than it actually is. To me, what really matters are the prices that we are hit with on a day to day basis, and those prices have been skyrocketing.
I am old enough to remember when summer vacations were actually affordable. Gasoline was under a dollar a gallon, and you could stay at cheap motels for less than 20 dollars a night as you drove across the nation.
After stepping off the plane in Nashville, having paid far more than expected for your flight, the rental car desk awaits.
Four days with a Toyota Camry costs $670. A Starbucks coffee on the way to the hotel is another $7.
Your budget hotel somehow costs $500 for the weekend, breakfast not included. Eating out for dinner means the day’s spending is comfortably into four figures.
Who can afford that?
Summer vacations have become a thing of the past for much of the population, and that is extremely unfortunate.
Of course the cost of just about everything else has been rapidly rising as well.
Let me give you some examples.
For the past five years, U.S. home prices have been rising at a pace of almost 10 percent a year…
Over the past five years, U.S. home values have increased by roughly 8–9% per year on average, while over the past ten years, they’ve risen about 6–7% per year on average. In other words, national home prices saw an exceptionally rapid climb in recent years, far above historical norms.
I can understand why so many young people are so frustrated right now.
The average price of a home in the United States has now risen above half a million dollars.
Average monthly premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage in California’s private sector nearly doubled over the last 15 years, from just over $1,000 in 2008 to almost $2,000 in 2023, a KFF Health News analysis of federal data shows. That’s more than twice the rate of inflation. Also, employees have had to absorb a growing share of the cost.
The spike is not confined to California. Average premiums for families with employer-provided health coverage grew as fast nationwide as they did in California from 2008 through 2023, federal data shows. Premiums continued to grow rapidly in 2024, according to KFF.
Who can afford a monthly health insurance premium of $2,000?
In the old days, they would call that “highway robbery”.
And don’t even get me started on the price of food.
There was a time when some Americans would actually purchase dog food to eat in an attempt to cut costs, but now even the price of dog food has soared into the stratosphere…
The average unit price of dog food was $5.78 in 2021, but last month the figure was $8.42.
Rising food prices are the number one reason why the number of Americans facing food insecurity has nearly doubled over the past four years.
Anyone that actually believes that things are “fine” is simply not living in reality.
Things are so bad that approximately one-fourth of the U.S. population is now using “buy now, pay later” loans to pay for everyday living expenses…
A growing number of consumers are taking out “buy now, pay later,” or BNPL, loans to cover everyday living expenses, data shows, a sign of the precarious financial state facing many U.S. households.
A quarter of Americans now use BNPL loans to pay for groceries, up 14% from last year, according to a recent survey from LendingTree. The personal finance firm also found that more people are using such financing to pay for clothing, technology and housewares.
Of course once those companies get you hooked, they will hammer you with high interest rates.
But many Americans are just desperate to find a way to survive from month to month.
According to one recent survey, almost 70 percent of the population is feeling “anxiety and depression” because of their finances…
Americans are feeling increasingly uneasy about their financial future.
Nearly 7 in 10 (69%) say financial uncertainty has led them to feelings of anxiety and depression, according to a recent survey from Northwest Mutual — an 8-percentage-point increase from 2023.
Other surveys have come up with similar results.
For example, here is one that found that “65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses”…
Middle‑income Americans are still adjusting to a higher cost of living and ongoing financial pressures, according to the latest Primerica® U.S. Middle‑Income Financial Security Monitor (FSM). The survey finds that 65% of middle-income Americans believe their income has not kept pace with rising expenses — a sentiment that has remained remarkably consistent for more than four years, highlighting the challenges families feel as prices outpace paychecks.
“Middle‑income families are making tough decisions every day to cover the essentials and save for the future, and it continues to shape how they perceive the overall economy, with many feeling less confident and more cautious about what lies ahead,” said Glenn J. Williams, CEO of Primerica. “That makes it even more important for families to seek sound financial advice. A financial professional can help families find the money in their budgets, reprioritize expenses and build a realistic path to save for the future. Even starting with a small amount can make a significant difference over time.”
And that same survey discovered that 80 percent of middle-income Americans rate the economy poorly…
Middle‑income Americans continue to rate the economy poorly. More than three-quarters (80%) rate it negatively — a figure that has remained consistent over the past year. Amid ongoing economic uncertainty, a strong majority (83%) say they want to take steps to protect themselves financially for the long term — yet only 36% are actually doing so.
A lot of people get upset with me when I write like this, but it is the truth.
If you are feeling constant stress because of the state of your own personal finances, I want you to understand that there are tens of millions of other Americans that are in the exact same boat.
Decades of very foolish decisions have brought us to this point, and the American people should be very upset at those that are responsible for bringing this crisis upon us.
Why has hunger in America absolutely exploded during the past 4 years? And why are store closings in the United States on pace to set a brand new record high this year? A lot of people out there don’t want to admit that the U.S. economy has been crumbling for a long time. One recent survey discovered that 70 percent of Americans are the most financially stressed that they have ever been in their entire lives. That figure alone tells us that we have a major economic crisis on our hands. The cost of living has been rising much faster than paychecks have been, and most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month. Anyone that attempts to deny this is simply not living in reality.
According to Axios, 15.6 percent of Americans are now dealing with food insecurity. Sadly, that figure has nearly doubled since 2021…
In May, 15.6% of adults were food insecure, almost double the rate in 2021. At that time Congress had beefed up SNAP benefits and expanded the Child Tax Credit driving down poverty rates, and giving people more money for food.
This is where we are at guys.
Millions upon millions of Americans are going hungry on a regular basis, and demand at food banks all over the nation has skyrocketed.
For example, demand at a food bank network in Philadelphia is up 120 percent over the past three years…
In Philadelphia, the Share Food Program, a major food bank network, has reported a 120% increase in demand over the past three years. “As soon as the government support pulled back in 2022, we started to see the numbers go up,” the outlet quoted Executive Director George Matysik as saying.
And the Atlanta Community Food Bank is reporting that demand is up 60 percent over the past three years…
New data shows food insecurity is worsening across Georgia, with the Atlanta Community Food Bank reporting a 60% increase in demand for meals over the past three years.
According to a study by Feeding America, one in five children and one in ten seniors in Georgia are facing hunger. The issue is particularly severe in the South, where nearly 90% of counties with high food insecurity rates are located.
Unfortunately, a large percentage of Georgians – over 57% — don’t meet the criteria for federal assistance like SNAP.
Those that are trying to convince us that everything is okay just need to stop.
Everything is most definitely not okay.
If things were okay, U.S. store closings would not be on pace to set a brand new all-time record high this year…
Store closures across the U.S. continue to rise, and remain on track to far significantly surpass both new openings and the figures seen in 2024.
According to a new report from research and advisory firm Coresight Research, cited by CoStar News, 5,822 store closures were recorded as of June 27, compared to 3,496 closures announced during the same period of 2024.
There is no way that you can spin those numbers.
Stores are either closing or they are not.
Meanwhile, large employers throughout the nation continue to conduct mass layoffs.
Today, we learned that Intel is giving the axe to hundreds of workers in Oregon…
Intel plans to lay off 529 Oregon employees by July 15, according to a notice newly filed with state workforce officials. These are the first of sweeping job cuts that will ultimately eliminate several thousand positions across the company.
The chipmaker will cut jobs at all its major Oregon campuses and across various business units. Engineers comprise nearly 300 of the Oregon workers losing their jobs in this round of layoffs, according to Intel’s filing.
And Levi Strauss has decided to eliminate hundreds of jobs in Kentucky…
Levi Strauss & Co. is axing hundreds of jobs by closing a distribution center in Hebron, Kentucky.
The company, known worldwide for its iconic denim, is axing 346 jobs as a result of the closure.
The layoffs are expected to begin on August 18 or during a 14-day period beginning on that date.
This reminds me so much of 2008 and 2009.
And just like 2008 and 2009, home sales have fallen to extremely depressing levels.
Sales are sliding just as fast. Markets like Dallas, Palm Bay, Port St. Lucie, and Orlando saw condo sales drop over 30 percent year-over-year, with Florida again dominating the list of hardest-hit areas. Condo prices are falling for a number of reasons. One major factor is that the market is flooded. There are 80 percent more condo sellers than buyers.
The condo bubble has officially burst, and prices are now absolutely plunging in markets that were once considered to be very hot…
The biggest condo price drops are hitting Florida and Texas. In May, Deltona, Florida saw prices fall over 32 percent year-over-year — the steepest decline nationwide. Crestview, Florida (down 32 percent), Houston, Texas (down 23 percent), Tampa, Florida (down 19 percent), and Oakland, California (down 20 percent) also faced sharp drops. Seven of the top ten metros with the largest price declines were in Florida, two in Texas. Sellers in parts of Florida have had to drop prices below $10,000.
Can anyone out there dispute the facts that I have just presented?
Of course not.
Economic conditions really have gotten worse than they once were.
The primary reason why the Democrats lost the last election is because the economy deteriorated substantially while Joe Biden was in the White House.
Today, most Americans can remember a time when they were doing much better than they are at this moment.
So let us hope that our leaders make much better decisions from this point forward.
And let us do what we can to support those that are working with the poor and hungry, because there are so many of our fellow Americans that are deeply suffering right now.
Americans still love hamburgers and French fries, but they sure are a lot more expensive than they once were. In fact, as you will see below, the price of ground beef in the U.S. has risen 16.2 percent during the last 12 months. No matter how you look at that number, it is terrible. Of course just about everything else at the grocery store has been getting more expensive too. These days, a shopping cart full of food is a major expense for most American families. Meanwhile, the global food crisis just continues to intensify. According to a recent report from the UN’s World Food Program, global hunger is “skyrocketing”…
Today, global hunger is skyrocketing as 343 million people face severe food insecurity, driven by an unrelenting wave of global crises including conflict, economic instability, and climate-related emergencies. In 2025, WFP’s operations are focused on supporting just over one-third of those in need – roughly 123 million of the world’s hungriest people – nearly half of whom (58 million) are at imminent risk of losing access to food assistance.
Last year, WFP teams helped feed more than 120 million people in 80 countries, delivering urgent food aid to hunger hot spots and frontline crises around the world.
In 2023, CNN told us that we were in the midst of “the worst food crisis in modern history”.
If global hunger has been “skyrocketing” since that time, what are we facing now?
For those of us that live in the United States, the good news is that there is still plenty of food in the stores.
But it sure does cost a lot more than it once did.
According to the New York Times, the price of ground beef in the U.S. has risen 16.2 percent over the past 12 months…
Ground beef was at its highest average price on record in May at $5.98 a pound, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That cost was 16.2 percent higher than 12 months earlier. Other cuts of beef, including sirloin steaks and chuck roast, also reached record highs in the first half of 2025.
The primary reason why the price of ground beef has been soaring is because the number of cattle has been steadily declining.
Prices are up because the number of cattle available for beef is at its lowest level since the 1950s.
The number of beef cattle in the United States is down to 27.9 million, a 13 percent decline since 2019, and the overall cattle inventory is the lowest it has been since 1952, according to the Agriculture Department. Consumer demand has remained steady in recent years.
This is very serious.
In 1952, 157 million people were living in the United States.
Today, 340 million people are living in the United States.
So we have a major crisis on our hands.
Sadly, just about everything is going up in price at the grocery store at this stage.
When I go through my local grocery store, I see many things that have doubled in price and some things that have actually tripled in price.
The “experts” that continue to insist that inflation is “low” are totally gaslighting us.
Of course those that are ultra-wealthy don’t really care about rising food prices because they can easily afford them. Earlier today, I came across an article that discussed the sky high food prices in the Hamptons this time of the year…
It wasn’t even 8:30 on a recent morning when a shopper emptied his basket of dinner ingredients onto the counter of the Farm & Forage Market in Southampton: two king crab legs, two bags of frozen dumplings, two packages of ramen noodles and a bag of dried sea kelp.
The cash register rang up an already eye-popping tally before the customer realized he had forgotten the caviar. He tossed a jar of it onto the counter. The grand total was $1,860.
“I’ll put that on your tab, right?” asked Jonathan Bernard, owner of the tiny, tidy store. The shopper, a private chef who works in a home nearby, nodded and noted he would be back later for truffles.
Are you kidding me?
It must be nice to be able to shell out that kind of cash.
But for the vast majority of Americans, life is a real struggle in this economic environment.
The latest PYMNTS Intelligence reveals that 65% of consumers are living paycheck to paycheck, with 24% struggling to pay their bills. That’s nearly a quarter of Americans playing an exhausting game of financial whack-a-mole, deciding which bills to pay in full, which to pay partially and which to outright ignore until the next paycheck arrives.
This financial strain has led many to prioritize immediate survival over long-term financial planning, with a significant portion of American consumers adopting short-term, reactive strategies to manage their financial obligations.
It’s not just groceries and gas — essential bills are creeping up, too. The study shows that 78% of consumers have seen at least one essential bill increase in the past year. Electricity (56%), insurance (52%) and gas (51%) have all gotten pricier, leaving consumers with even less breathing room. Renters are especially feeling the squeeze, with nearly half (49%) reporting rent hikes.
The middle class is being absolutely eviscerated, and now mass layoffs are being conducted all over the nation.
Earlier today, we got yet another example. We are being told that UPS has decided to eliminate approximately 20,000 jobs…
UPS is offering voluntary buyouts to its full-time US drivers following its decision to slash 20,000 jobs and close 73 facilities.
The Atlanta-based company will be providing its laid off employees with various benefits, including pensions and healthcare.
The layoffs are part of UPS’s network configuration plan, which also confirms the upcoming closures of over 90 more facilities in the future.
(FSM
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