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
In January, the share of subprime auto borrowers at least 60 days past due on their loans rose to 6.56%, the most since the data collection began in 1994, according to Fitch Ratings.
A slowing economy and the ongoing impacts of inflation have made it harder for many consumers to stay current on their bills. Auto loans have been a particular pain point, with higher car prices and elevated borrowing costs driving a surge in repossessions.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently reported that the share of auto loans among all borrowers that transitioned into serious delinquency — defined as 90 days or more past due — rose to 3% in the fourth quarter, the highest level since 2010.
The latest spike in delinquencies among subprime borrowers comes at a pivotal time for the US economy, as President Donald Trump’s trade wars ignite volatility in the stock market and concerns grow about sluggish economic growth.
“The lower income level has been really affected, and we expect that to continue to be the case this year,” said Mike Girard, senior director for asset-backed securities in North America for Fitch. “There’s still the continued impact from higher inflation and interest rates.”
Delinquencies typically increase in January and February after the holiday spending period, Girard said. This is usually followed by improvements in March and April as some borrowers use tax refunds to catchup on bills.
Fitch defines subprime auto borrowers as those with credit scores of 640 and below. Those with higher scores are faring better — 0.39% of prime borrowers were at least 60 days past due in January, up from 0.35% a year prior.
Other economic measures are also showing declining financial health for Americans. Consumer debt recently surged by the most on record, while consumer confidence dropped the most since 2021.
The damage caused by 4 years of “Bidenomics” has been so immense that it is difficult to put it into words. Everywhere we look, the U.S. economy is rapidly deteriorating all around us, and it would literally take a major miracle to turn things around at this point. Needless to say, the condition of the economy was one of the biggest reasons why Donald Trump won the election, and he insists that he can get fix it. Now he will get his chance. But the economic challenges that he is facing in 2025 are far greater than anything that confronted him when his first term began many years ago. If Trump is able to get the U.S. economy moving in a positive direction after everything that has happened during the past 4 years, it will truly be a historic achievement.
Nobody can deny the facts that I am about to present to you, because they are indisputable. Collectively, these facts clearly prove that our economy is a complete mess right now. The following are 25 signs that the U.S. economy is dying after 4 years of “Bidenomics”…
#1 In 2024, sales of previously-owned homes in the United States fell to the lowest level since 1995…
U.S. existing-home sales fell in 2024 to the lowest level since 1995, the second straight year of anemic sales due to stubbornly high mortgage rates.
High costs related to homeownership sapped sales again. The average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage has hovered between 6% and 8% since late 2022, making it prohibitively expensive for many Americans to buy homes at current prices, which hit record highs last year. Rising home insurance and property tax costs are also adding to homeowners’ expenses. Unlike mortgage rates, which fluctuate, these costs are poised to continue rising.
#2 Pending home sales dropped another 4.5 percent last month. That was the fastest rate of decline that we have seen in more than two years…
Pending home sales fell 4.5% month over month in December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the largest decline since October 2022. They dropped 2.3% year over year.
Homebuyer demand dipped at the end of the year because mortgage rates jumped. After inching downward at the beginning of the month, mortgage rates reversed course halfway through December and have been rising since—in part because the Federal Reserve projected fewer 2025 interest-rate cuts than anticipated. The weekly average 30-year-fixed mortgage rate now sits at 7.04%, the highest level since May, after hitting an early-December low of 6.6%.
#3 The proportion of credit card accounts that are just having minimum payments being made on them just hit the highest level in 12 years…
Americans are not okay financially, according to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve.
The share of active credit card accounts making just the minimum payment hit a 12-year high of 10.75% from July through September 2024, based on data from the largest banks in the country, the Philadelphia Fed said on Wednesday. As credit card balances swell, the share of delinquent balances is also worsening, it said.
The 60-plus-day delinquency rate of subprime auto loans rose to 6.15% in December, a new record for December in the data from Fitch, which tracks subprime auto-loan asset-backed securities (ABS), going back to their origins in the early 1990s. Subprime delinquency rates rose to record highs in 2023 and rose further in 2024. They peak seasonally in January in February. If January and February 2025 follow seasonal patterns, subprime delinquency rates will set new all-time highs (gold in the chart below).
The landscape of American credit has taken a stark turn for the worse, with rejection rates for various forms of credit reaching levels not seen since the financial turmoil of a decade ago. According to the latest data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, rejection rates for loans, including credit cards, mortgages, and auto loans, have spiked to 23%. This figure marks the highest recorded since the depths of the financial crisis, signaling a significant contraction in credit availability.
Moreover, the rejection rate for credit card limit increases has reached nearly 50%, indicating that even those with existing credit lines are facing unprecedented hurdles in expanding their credit.
Chain restaurant bankruptcies are reportedly at their highest level since the pandemic.
Among the most recent examples is the casual dining franchise TGI Friday’s, one of more than a dozen high-profile eateries to seek bankruptcy protection between January and October of this year, Bloomberg News reported Thursday (Dec. 5), citing BankruptcyData.
According to the report, that’s the most through that date since 2020, and next year could bring more turmoil, with restaurant prices jumping due to increased labor costs, supply chain issues and steeper interest expenses, lessening consumer demand for meals away from home.
#7 After rising 12.7 percent in 2023, the cost of home insurance went up another 10.4 percent in 2024…
In 2024, insurers raised rates by 10.4 percent as of Dec. 27, which followed a 12.7 percent hike in the previous year, according to the Jan. 21 report from the company.
In total, 33 states saw premiums climb by double digits last year, with the largest spike seen in Nebraska at 22.7 percent. Premiums in Iowa, Minnesota, Montana, Utah, and Washington jumped by more than 20 percent.
#8 The average price of a dozen eggs went up 36 percent in just 12 months, and it is expected to go even higher during the months ahead…
The average price of a dozen large, grade-A eggs was $4.15 in December, up from $3.65 in November, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Egg prices were also up more than 36% year-over-year in December, according to the Consumer Price Index.
“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we’re in this for a while,” said Emily Metz, president and CEO of the American Egg Board. “Until we have time without a detection, unfortunately this very, very tight egg supply is going to continue.”
#9 The household income required to purchase an average home in the U.S. has more than tripled since January 2012…
In January 2012, the household income required to afford the typical home in the U.S. was $39,223, according to Redfin. As of November 2024, home buyers need to earn $126,764, a 223% increase.
A healthcare giant that operates 16 hospitals across four states has filed for bankruptcy – with plans to offload several of them.
Prospect Medical Holdings – which also owns 166 clinics across California, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, and employs 12,600 people – filed for Chapter 11 protection in Texas on Saturday.
The company, which was once an active buyer of struggling hospitals, has debts of more than $400 million.
The Washington Post has started laying off roughly 4 percent of its work force, the company said on Tuesday, as the newspaper struggles to stem millions of dollars in annual losses.
The cuts will affect fewer than 100 people across The Post’s business divisions, which include its advertising sales, marketing and information technology teams.
CNN boss Mark Thompson reportedly plans to announce mass layoffs Thursday — just days after he warned top on-air talent including Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper that they ought to avoid “pre-judging” President Trump.
The ratings-challenged cable news pioneer will lay off hundreds of employees as it refocuses the business around a global digital audience, CNBC reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter.
Perdue Farms is closing their Monterey plant, the Putnam County mayor announced Thursday night.
The closure will leave 433 employees out of a job. Randy Porter, the mayor of Putnam County, says the plant has been a part of Monterey and the county’s economy for numerous years.
Intel eliminated 1 in every 8 jobs across its Oregon workforce last year, reducing its local headcount by 3,000 positions as it sought to cut costs after a steep and sustained drop in revenue.
Meta is planning on cutting about 5% of its workforce, with a specific focus on the company’s lowest-performing employees.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed the news in an emailed statement to USA TODAY Wednesday after first being reported by Bloomberg, citing an internal memo.
More than 200 Advance Auto Parts stores, either the properties themselves or their leases, are being marketed for sale by Hilco Real Estate.
Raleigh, North Carolina-based Advance Auto, an auto aftermarket parts retailer, has tapped Hilco to manage the disposition of real estate properties and leases that span 46 states. The portfolio includes retail locations and “potential redevelopment parcels situated in densely populated urban areas and along strong commercial corridors,” Hilco, which is headquartered in Northbrook, Illinois, said Wednesday.
The company buying Columbus-based Big Lots has identified about 500 Big Lots stores, including several in central Ohio, that it plans to close.
Gordon Brothers, a Boston-based investment group, is offering to sell the stores’ leases, indicating that the stores will not remain Big Lots under new ownership.
#20 Walgreens has announced that it will be permanently closing 1,200 stores…
The thinning of Walgreens locations has been in the works. Walgreens said in October 2024 it planned to close about 1,200 underperforming stores across the U.S. as a strategy to offset declining profits resulting from low drug reimbursement rates and sluggish retail sales.
#21 In 2024, a total of 7,325 stores were closed in the United States. That was the highest number that we have seen since the early days of the pandemic…
Store closures in the U.S. last year hit the highest level since the pandemic — and even more locations are expected to shutter this year, as shoppers’ dollars increasingly go to a few industry winners, according to an analysis by Coresight Research.
Major retailers, including Party City and Macy’s, closed 7,325 stores in 2024, according to the retail advisory group’s data. That’s the sharpest jump since retailers in the U.S. shuttered almost 10,000 stores in 2020, the year when the Covid pandemic began.
#22 Coresight Research is projecting that a whopping 15,000 stores will be closed in the U.S. in 2025…
Retail closings in the U.S. are on the rise.
That’s according to Coresight Research, a research and advisory firm specializing in retail and technology, which predicts approximately 15,000 store closings and 5,800 store openings this year in the U.S
Cargo theft hit a record high in the U.S. and Canada for the second consecutive year, and the trend is expected to continue as criminal enterprises have become more sophisticated in their methods.
Verisk CargoNet’s annual analysis released this week found that cargo theft surged 27% from 2023 to 2024, hitting a record 3,625 reported incidents last year with an average value of $202,364 per theft. All told, the losses are estimated at more than $454 million.
#2459 percent of Americans don’t even have enough money to pay for a $1,000 emergency expense…
Most Americans cannot afford a $1,000 emergency expense, with inflation and high interest rates affecting their ability to save adequately, according to a recent survey by consumer services company Bankrate.
A full 59 percent of Americans aren’t in a position to use their savings “to pay for a major unexpected expense, such as $1,000 for an emergency room visit or car repair,” said a Jan. 23 report from the company.
#25 61 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 35 say that they feel “financially stressed”…
About 61% of surveyed Americans of ages 18 to 35 are financially stressed, according to a new Intuit survey. About 21% of respondents say their stress has gotten worse over the past year.
Some of the biggest stressors included high cost of living, job instability and growing housing costs. Of those who identified as financially stressed, 32% said handling unexpected emergencies like medical bills, car repairs and home maintenance trigger their anxiety with cash, the report found.
The recent spike in 10-year yields has been explained away by many as the result of a strong economy, but they fail to mention that high inflation makes the 10-year yield harder to contain. High 10-year yields support higher rates for things like car loans and mortgages, and with the world still under the inflationary spell of COVID-era QE and free money “stimulus,” the only answer may be—you guessed it—more free money QE to “stimulate” an economy that’s already stuck in an infinite loop of inflation. As Peter Schiff said recently:
“I think that they’ve already lost control of the long end of the bond market…the Fed is going to be pressured to try to lower long-term rates, and the only way it would be able to do that is by buying the long term bonds, and the only way to get the money to do that is to print it.”
But not even the Fed has a clue for how it would deal with a stagnation scenario.
“It was almost humorous and even it got a laugh out of Powell. A reporter asked him at the last press conference, ‘What’s your plan for stagflation?’ And he laughed and says, ‘Our plan for stagflation is that we’re not going to have it.’”
But we already do. For now. markets are also still trying to figure out how to react to Trump’s win, and uncertainty breeds volatility. So, high inflation coupled with uncertainty and “strong” economic data are the three factors being attributed to the spike in yields. The inflation part is partially right; the only problem is that it doesn’t go far enough, because inflation is actually much worse than what’s being reported. The other problem is that the “strong jobs data” being partially blamed for the rise in yields is never really as strong as what gets reported, as the jobs reports and other economic data are unreliable and designed to paint as rosy a picture as possible.
The question is, how many Americans will protect themselves? The answer is very few, as the average American has hardly any money saved and is living paycheck-to-paycheck while becoming increasingly over-indebted. After all, when economies are extremely weak or extremely strong, they will always be what decides elections even if the root causes go far deeper than any one president, which they always do.
But when Americans are struggling, seeing drastic price increases, and watching with enraged awe as their government continues donating taxpayer money to proxy wars in Ukraine and Israel as American cities flood, burn, and lose their critical infrastructure, they’re going to vote for the other candidate. So, while Trump signed the inflationary COVID stimulus checks, he was able to convince voters even after losing in 2020 that he should be given another chance after the economic deterioration of the last four years..
Whether or not Trumponomics itself ends up being inflationary, central bank monetary policy will always revert back to the only real tool in its toolbox, which is printing money. Whether or not DOGE, tariffs, and other promises materialize, the result of statist intervention to bring down prices is almost always, ironically enough, higher prices. Even if the intervention causes costs to go down in one place, they generally go up somewhere else.
That’s because there are no free lunches in economics, no matter what central bankers may say.
One year ago, when looking at the 20 most popular stories of 2023, we said that “while 2023 did have a seemingly endless variety of social, economic, political, geopolitical and of course, financial and market, drama, the unprecedented onslaught of 2022 – which saw both the deadliest and most consequential global war since WWII and a historic inflationary onslaught – simply proved too great to beat…. although we are confident that’s only because the newsflow was merely resting ahead of 2024 when, thanks to a record number of elections across the world not to mention what may well be the most consequential presidential election in US history, the coming avalanche of news and propaganda will be sheer insanity, especially since the Fed has made its long awaited dovish pivot without successfully stamping out inflation first. So in retrospect, 2023 being somewhat tame by recent standards may have been a good thing: it allowed everyone to rest ahead of the main event.”
Boy, were we right, and in retrospect we certainly hope everyone did rest ahead of the countless 2024 main events because even though there were no market crashes yet (for reasons we will touch upon), 2024 was indeed the most exciting and eventful rollercoaster of non-stop newsflow we have yet encountered, one which not only saw the legacy political system finally crumble across “Western democracies” as country after country said “no more” to the three-headed globalist hydra of runaway inflation, corrupt establishment politicians, and uncontrolled illegal immigration, but one where the political economy and capital markets proved beyond a reasonable doubt that they are more inextricably welded together than ever before. Oh, and of course, it was also the year when the Fed’s apolitical facade crumbled, exposing the most important central bank in the world as nothing more than a puppet of shadowy establishment forces whose only task is to preserve the status quo…. and failing.
Let’s first take a quick look at what happened in the past year through the lens of the masses, and as a quick 4-minute refresher, here is a highlight reel from Googles “year in search” of all the big, but mostly irrelevant, topics that random people around the world obsessed over in 2024.
Of course, much of the stuff in the clip above is just fluff and distractions meant to keep the attention of the masses focused on trivial things. What we tried to do with our reporting throughout the year was to minimize the noise and to bring you, our readers, the signal, and while there was a nonstop barrage of the former, the underlying newsflow largely boiled down to four main categories:
Political
Financial
Geopolitical
Technological
Of the above, by far the most important cross-current across 2024 was the political, and there were two very clear reasons for that. First, as we said in our 2023 year in review post, 2024 would be a year with a record number of elections across the world…
… and second, and even more important, the US presidential election would take place in November, where the choice was clear: a full-blown acceptance of Marxist, DEI, woke ideology coupled with a fascist economy in the classical sense (namely a fusion between government and corporate interests) or some last-ditch hope for a return to normalcy.
To the first point, amid a global democratic…
… backslide…
… voters in over 70 nations, representing over half the world’s population, went to the polls…
… and cast a historic protest vote which led to the biggest blowback against the existing political system ever observed, with the incumbent establishment in the UK, France, Germany, and many other countries suffering an epic collapse and ushering in new political ideas and paradigms. Even the AP had to admit that “The ‘super year’ of elections has been super bad for incumbents as voters punish them in droves.” Why? Because of the unholy trinity we mentioned above, and unleashed by flailing globalists across the globe with catastrophic consequences: runaway inflation, corrupt/crony establishment politicians, and uncontrolled illegal immigration. Oh, and the fact that unlike the US, Europe does not have a reserve currency and can’t print its way out of recession leaving its markets in the dust and its population increasingly unhappy, certainly does not help.
The punchline, however, came on November 5 when, to the shock of liberals everywhere, the mainstream media and the always wrong pollsters, Trump was elected for a third time, only this time the election was such a blowout success as Trump won both the Electoral college and the popular vote (coupled with a Republican sweep of Congress) that not even Soros’ countless minions could steal this election. To be sure, much of Trump’s hardline campaign promises, speeches and platform views have been since materially diluted…
… but even so, the hope that Trump’s return to the White House will also return the US to some normalcy after years of unbridled insanity by Biden’s woke puppetmasters, was enough to send stocks (and bitcoin) soaring to record highs adding trillions in value as the market gave its clear seal of approval to the new administration (more on the later), not to mention a near record surge in small business optimism which saw its biggest jump since the first time Trump was elected.
What is ironic about the above chart is that if one believed the Biden admin, that surge in optimism would be impossible: after all, month after month the White House would shovel “data” down everyone’s throat that showed the US economy was spectacular and growing at a red hot pace, even though – as we repeatedly warned – the only thing that was coming out of the Biden BLS month after month was completely fake data about jobs (as we warned in March 29, 2024 “Philadelphia Fed Admits US Payrolls Overstated By At Least 800,000“). Just a few months later we got evidence that one should never believe any so-called “data” coming out of Biden’s administration, when in late August, just as we had warned, the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised down the number of jobs in the past year by 818,000 – one of the biggest downward revisions to key economic data in history – and admitted that nearly every other job had been faked, and instead of a 230K average monthly jobs increase, the US had been generating on average just 130K jobs.
Once the myth of Biden’s “strong economy” collapsed, everything else went promptly followed suit, as did Biden’s – and soon after – Kamala’s chances of winning. But one wouldn’t know that listening to the polls which were just as wrong as in 2016 when they said Hillary’s odds of winning were “more than 99%“. In fact, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average, Kamala had the lead up until the very last day.
Not everyone was wrong, though. We, along with a handful of other sites, repeatedly warned that most polls are inaccurately biased in favor of Biden/Kamala thanks to chronic, relentless and aggressive oversampling of Democrats. And just like in 2016, we were right… as was Polymarket: the sensational upstart which emerged out of nowhere, which consistently managed to call the correct outcome of every major event, took the country by storm when its opinion diverged dramatically with established polls…
Republican sweep odds hit a record 46% (post Biden) as Trump’s lead in all swing states is now solidly in the double digits, according to Polymarket pic.twitter.com/dlnXtR7zG0
… and in the end, proved to be spot on after Trump’s blowout victory which was so large, not even Democrats could steal the election again.
There was more: yes, the economy appeared strong (for all the wrong reasons, as we explain below), but that did not matter to ordinary middle-class Americans who may have had a job, but instead of dwelling on GDP, were much more concerned by the ongoing surge in prices which shrank their inflation-adjusted paychecks month after month. And while Democrats pretended as if prices were not at all time highs and rising at a 3%+ pace, we warned long before the elections, that – to ordinary Americans – only inflation matters. We were right.
Only inflation matters: not immigration, not crime, not equity, not abortion, not climate change, not guns pic.twitter.com/eOQOyDE2zW
But while it was the runaway inflation on one hand, and the collapsing myth of Biden’s strong economy (despite persistently record high prices) which both set the stage for Trump’s victory, what cemented it was that fateful evening of July 13 when the former – and future – president survived an assassination attempt on live TV while speaking at a campaign rally near Butler, Pennsylvania. The shooter’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear after a last second turn of the head saving Trump’s life…
… and set the stage for his victory. Ironically, the trigger that prompted Trump to move in the last second – and saved his life – was a peek at the chart showing the record surge of illegal US immigration under the Biden admin.
Ironic that the same flood of illegals that was supposed to win Kamala’s election and cement a dynasty of Democrat presidents for generations, saved Trump’s life and put him back in the White House.
While Trump’s victory and the landslide against incumbent political parties framed the biggest stories in the political realm, the world of finance and economics was once again dominated by the Federal Reserve, as well as the US Treasury, both of which had a clear mandate: do not rock the boat, do not allow the US economy to fall into recession, debt be damned, and above all make sure that Trump is not elected. It did not quite work out as expected.
To be sure, 2024 was literally a pivotal year for the Fed: after an aggressive tightening campaign which pushed the Fed Funds rate from 0% in early 2022 to 5.25% less two years later, the Fed decided that with inflation dropping from double digits – if still a red hot (and once again rising) 3.3% for core CPI – it had vanquished inflation, and that Powell was the second coming of Paul Volcker.
Couple that with the abovementioned shocker from the Biden BLS when the US was “unexpectedly” found to have overestimated jobs by over 800K, and in late September, the Fed – less than three months before the election – decided that the time has come not only to cut rates, but to do so with a bangin the form of a jumbo rate cut, slashing the Fed Funds by a whopping 50bps, as if the economy had suddenly collapsed into a deflationary recession when in reality prices – and the stock market not to mention bitcoin – were record high and rising at a breakneck pace (as we warned in August in “Powell Vows To Cut Rates With Stocks, Home Prices, Rents And Food At All Time Highs“), and just as core CPI had bottomed and was once again on the way up.
It was, of course, a catastrophic policy error, as demonstrated by the market’s own reaction because after cutting rates by 100bps in three months, the 10y Yield responded by surging by 100bps, a mirror image of what should be happening if the Fed had made the correct decision.
Instead the market was screaming loudly that the Fed’s rate cuts are setting the stage for another 1970’s type inflationary conflagration…
… and that instead of the second coming of Volcker, Powell was actually just another Arthur Burns in hawk’s clothing.
Ironically, we didn’t even need the market to tell us the Fed had made a terrible mistake: less than three months after the jumbo rate cut, Powell himself conceded on live TV that the Fed had been too aggressive in its dovish outlook, and that all those rate cuts penciled in for 2024 (when the assumption was that Kamala would be president in 2025 and onward) were, well, a mistake and by mid-December, just weeks after Trump won an avalanche victory, Powell pivoted into a rabid hawk once again, telling markets that the latest rate cut may well be the last one because, well, you know Trump tariffs or something. Because the Fed, which in its own words, never reacts to political pressure, not only reacted, but preacted and assumed that Trump would impose tariffs which would ignite inflation – when they may just as easily spark another global deflationary recession – over a month before the 47th president was even inaugurated!
So much for the “apolitical” Fed.
And let’s not forget the Treasury, which as we first discussed back in the summer of 2023, had been the mystery force behind the ability of Bidenomics to delay a recession again and again, and all it cost was trillions and trillions in debt. As a reminder, we first explained what was really going on in “Here Is The $1 Trillion “Stealth Stimulus” Behind Bidenomics“, when we showed that the recent surge in the US deficit was the artificial, debt-funded sugar high that was redlining the US economic engine. One year later it got even worse, and after the deficit of fiscal 2024 closed out the year right on top of where it was in 2023, the spending spree only accelerated in the last months of Biden’s administration…
… and the first two months of fiscal 2025 are already on pace for a new record high!
And the trade-off of this unprecedented sugar rush? $1 trillion in new federal debt every 100 days, bringing the total to a gargantuan $36.2 trillion, up $8.5 trillion, or a stunning 30%, since Biden’s inauguration….
… with gross interest expense on US debt now running at a record $1.2 trillion (and rising every day), surpassing defense and health spending as US government outlays, with just Social Security spending ahead of interest on the debt.
Finally, just to make sure that the status quo persists, and that the 47th president is a Democrat, Biden’s Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen threw in a stunning freebie: a T-Bill “reverse-twist” starting in 2022 when in order to drain the $2.5 trillion in inert funds caught in the Fed’s reverse repo facility, the Treasury launched a historic Bill issuance spree which culminated with $2 trillion in excess T-Bill sales, which amplified the stimulating effect from the reckless deficit spending, and overstimulated the economy even more.
Putting it all together, with the help of the Fed and the Treasury, the US economy managed to surprise to the upside in 2024 even though, as we now know, all those trillions in excess debt and those recent rate cuts eventually hit “peak stimulus” and the result was that the US labor market peaked some time in 2023 and was all downhill from there as the near record negative revision to jobs showed. One can only imagine if there was no concerted effort by the Fed and the Treasury to keep Trump out of the White House, how deep a recession the US economy would be in right now.
Alas, now that Trump is in the White House and can look forward to little to no support from the Fed or from a US Treasury that will no longer spend like a drunken sailor under Scott Bessent, we have a feeling that it won’t take long for the long overdue recession to hit the US economy head on, especially – and somewhat counterintuitively – if Elon Musk’s DOGE is even remotely successful. Because for a debt-funded regime like the US, even the smallest hiccup in issuing $1 trillion every 100 days means immediately economic and market calamity. And while Trump and Elon truly hope that the US population is ready and willing to make some sacrifices for the sake of austere belt-tightening if it leads to some nebulous “greater good” down the line, both are in for the surprise of their lifetimes.
Turning to geopolitics, 2024 was unexpectedly an easing from the torrid pace of 2023. Yes, wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continued, but no new military conflicts emerged, and even though Israel ascended rapidly to near hegemonic status in the middle east after blitz campaigns in Gaza and Lebanon which crippled Lebanon and Iran, leaving them bruised and battered and their militaries in shambles, the middle eastern conflict never truly spun out of control. Why? Because Biden’s puppetmasters were at least smart enough to realize that had oil soared to $100 or more and sending gas at the pump to $4 and higher, which a real war between Iran and Israel would inevitably deliver, Biden’s chances of re-election were nil. Which is why they did everything they could to delay the Middle Eastern conflict until after the election. As for the war in Ukraine, that was largely on autopilot, with Russia methodically and systematically entering deeper and deeper into Ukraine territory, and with funding for Zelensky about to be cut off, an imminent ceasefire now appears almost certain.
Finally, looking at markets and the continued impact of technology, it was largely a continuation of events in 2023, when the bank bailout early in the year put an end to the Fed’s reserve drain which in turn triggered the “Fed put” giving markets a carte blanche to meltup without fear of retribution, while the continued obsession with AI and chatbots meant that the Mag7 winners of 2023 would extend their amazing run into 2024.
We won’t bother your with details – after all, we do that every single day on these pages – suffice to say that the combination of an easing Fed, at least for three months ahead of the election when Kamala had a decent chance of winning if not so much after Trump won, coupled with an epic AI bubble serves as an extremely powerful force.
How powerful? Well, up until the Fed’s December hawkish pivot, 2024 was on pace to generate the best S&P return this century. After the recent turbulence, what would otherwise have been a 30% return, is down to “only” 25%, which still means that 3 of BIden’s 4 years saw the US equity market rise more than 20%!
One reason for this unprecedented meltup in the past two years was the fact that while Fed reserves remained unchanged (and even rose for a while after the bank bailouts in March ’23) during 2023 and 2024, the funds held in the Fed’s reverse repo facility were slowly drained day after day (thanks to Bill issuance), giving dry powder with which to push stock higher.
As for the AI bubble which took the market by storm ever since OpenAI released ChatGPT3.5, here is a brief snapshot of the last two years…
… which shows that there have been triumphs and disappointments, although the reality is that we have seen chatbots come and go, and the world always moved on to a new, bigger and shinier fad. This time, however, prices may have pulled just a little bit too much from the future, as this breakdown of the Mag7 vs the S&P shows.
In any event, we don’t have that much new to add here: exactly one year ago we said that “we would be remiss not to mention the single biggest market narrative – and tech story – of 2023, namely the unprecedented AI mania, which manifested itself in an explosion in the “Magnificent 7” mega tech stocks which now make up a record 30% of the S&P’s market cap.”
Maybe the biggest difference from a year ago is that “more of the same” means that never before has so much market influence and impact been concentrated in so few stocks, and at last check, the 10 largest stocks in the S&P now account for 38% of total market cap. Actually, one correction: it’s not “never before” –the last time so few stocks had such a big impact on the market was… just before the Great Depression.
But surely this time it’s different. One thing that is not different, however, is that all those chips and data centers will need power… lots of power, and the US is woefully unprepared to power up the AI revolution.
Which incidentally is why back in April we urged our readers to invest not in AI, but in the utilities and companies that will power and enable AI and provide the infrastructure to build out the hundreds of data centers that will be needed should AI prove to not be a bust (see “The Next AI Trade” from April 3). To those who took our advice, congratulations: your basket of “Power up America” stocks (blue line below) significantly outperformed both the “Broad AI” basket and the “Data Center Equipment” baskets.
And no matter what else happens in the next four years, we expect that investments in US energy infrastructure will continue at an unprecedented pace as Donald “America First” Trump seeks to preserve the US status as the world’s AI leader, not to mention the world’s most exceptional nation, one whose total market cap is now substantially larger than the rest of the world combined!
To be sure, there are legitimate reasons for US exceptionalism besides Fed balance sheet financial engineering and chatbot fads: the ability to catch a 100 ton starship, the heaviest object that has ever left the earth with two chopsticks, as Elon Musk did in October, is certainly one of those memorable “where were you when…” moments that everyone will carry with them for the rest of their lives.
Watch it again.
On the 5th integrated flight test of Starship the Super Heavy tower catch (better know as Mechazilla chopstick catch) SUCCEEDED AT THE FIRST TEST.
And speaking of Elon, he also deserves congratulations for converting X (f/k/a Twitter), from what was once the most corrupt and censored social media network in the world controlled by an army of woke, bluepilled Karens, into a bastion of free speech, one which many will agree was instrumental in Trump’s victory on November 5. Many smirked one year ago this day when we said that “in less than a decade, Elon Musk’s $44 billion purchase of Twitter will seem like one of the century’s biggest bargains.” Fast forward to today when Elon Musk is not only the world’s richest man once more, but he is that by a huge margin, worth some $200 billion more than Jeff Bezos’ $240 billion, and he largely has X to thank for this, even as virtue-signaling corporations (who all work in conjunction with the deep state in hopes of getting some fast-track access to those very generous taxpayer-funded government contracts) are doing everything in their power to demonetize and starve the company by continuing to pull their ads.
We say this as one of the first media outlets that was dubbed “conspiracy theorists” by the authorities, long before everyone else joined the club. Oh yes, we’ve been there: we were suspended for half a year on Twitter for telling the truth about Covid, and then we lost most of our advertisers after the Atlantic Council‘s weaponized “fact-checkers” such as Newsguard put us on every ad agency’s black list while anonymous CIA sources at the AP slandered us for being “Kremlin puppets” – which reminds us: for those with the means, desire and willingness to support us, please do so by becoming a premium member: we are now almost entirely reader-funded so your financial assistance will be instrumental to ensure our continued survival into 2025 and beyond.
The bottom line, at least for us, is that the past five years have been a stark lesson in how quickly an ad-funded business can disintegrate in this world which makes the dystopian nightmare of 1984 seem more real each day, and we have since taken measures. Four years ago, we launched a paid version of our website, which is entirely ad and moderation free, and offers readers a variety of premium content. It wasn’t our intention to make this transformation but unfortunately we know which way the wind is blowing and it is only a matter of time before the gatekeepers of online ad spending block us and those like us for good as traditional media continues to melt away, losing more credibility and readers each and every day. As such, if we are to have any hope in continuing it will come directly from you, our readers. We will keep the free website running for as long as possible, but we are certain that it is only a matter of time before the hammer falls as the deep state retaliates to the shocking loss of 2024 and lashes out at all new media, as the deep state will stop at nothing to silence all independent voices in order to preserve mind control over the population.
How long do we have? Matt Taibbi may have said it best a few days ago when he wrote the following:
If you subscribe to this site it’s likely because, like me, you felt the world slipping off its axis and were looking for someone to reassure you you weren’t crazy. We lived through a difficult time together, but the fever finally broke this fall, and the world is now allowed to remark on the Emperor’s lack of clothes. It feels like good news, but what now? Can we go back a normal life? Will it last?
I think so, for a time…. A core reflex in these decades of postmodern insanity was constant rejection of things we thought we knew in favor of New, Improved Beliefs packaged from above. But some things don’t change. Until we do away with holidays, little kids will always have the same look on their faces I’ll see tomorrow morning, when mine unwrap their presents. Farts will always be funny, teenagers will always menace cars and have too much sex, NBA players will always travel, and parents bound by love for their children will always find peace growing old together. Fundamental things do apply, as time goes by.
Mad scientists who think they can redesign human experience are always undone by eternal truths that arrogance won’t allow them to grasp, one being that life isn’t so bad, another that there are some things people will never understand. But that’s the good news. Learning to embrace the unknown is what allows us to be happy, in our handful of turns on the planet. Heavy thoughts for Christmas, but I mean it in a good way. I don’t know what’s coming. I do know that first the first time in ages, the exhaustion of managing parallel truths has subsided. Now we just have one crazy world to worry about. Normal feels normal. Christmas feels like Christmas. We’ve won a panic reprieve.
As always, we thank all of our readers for making this website – which has never seen one dollar of outside funding (and despite amusing recurring allegations, has certainly never seen a ruble from either Putin or the KGB either, sorry CIA) and has never spent one dollar on marketing – a small (or not so small) part of your daily routine.
Which also brings us to another critical topic: that of fake news, and something we – and others who do not comply with the established narrative – have been accused of. While we find the narrative of fake news laughable, after all every single article in this website is backed by facts and links to outside sources, it is clearly a dangerous development, and a very slippery slope that the entire developed world is pushing for what is, when stripped of fancy jargon, internet censorship under the guise of protecting the average person from “dangerous information.” It’s also why we are preparing for the next onslaught against independent thought and why we had no choice but to roll out a premium version of this website.
In addition to the other themes noted above, we expect the crackdown on free speech by various deep state tentacles to accelerate in the coming year (although it will be mostly in the shadows, at least for the time being, until Trump gets bored or tired of fighting the infinitely more powerful octopus that is truly in control of the United States) especially as the following list of Top 20 articles for 2024 reveals, many of the most popular articles in the past year were precisely those which the conventional media would not touch with a ten foot pole, both out of fear of repercussions and because the MSM has now become a PR agency for either a political party or some unelected, deep state bureaucrat, which in turn allowed the alternative media to continue to flourish in an information vacuum and take significant market share from the established outlets by covering topics which established media outlets refuse to do, in the process earning itself the derogatory “fake news” condemnation.
We are also grateful that our readers have, for the 16th year in a row, realized that it is incumbent upon them to decide what is, and isn’t “fake news.”
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And so, before we get into the details of what has now become an annual tradition for the last day of the year, those who wish to jog down memory lane, can refresh our most popular articles for every year during our no longer that brief, 16-year existence, starting with 2009 and continuing with 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 , 2021, 2022 and 2023.
So without further ado, here are the articles that you, our readers, found to be the most engaging, interesting and popular based on the number of hits, during the past year.
In 20th spot with just under 470,000 views, was a reminder that the “Get woke, go broke” mantra is all too real for the once-iconic US airplane builder, Boeing, which in recent years has been reduced to the butt of all jokes, as not only its airplanes which were “designed by clowns…supervised by monkeys” were falling out of the sky forcing a crushing restructuring of all operations, but whose catastrophic DEI practices sent its stock in a faster tailspin than its 737 MAX jets. But as always, the coverup is worse than the crime, and for Boeing the pain is just starting as nearly half a million were shocked to learn that not just one but a “Second Boeing-Linked Whistleblower Dies“. And with most of the upper management at Boeing, including its CEO, gone in 2024 one can only imagine just how deep the rot at the company – which was so desperate to cover up its crimes and incompetence with years of fake virtue signaling and incapable minority hires – truly runs. Expect many more ugly revelations on this story in 2025.
In 19th spot, just over 475,000 readers were reminded that the biggest crime of the decade, if not in US history, was the highly secretive and premeditated creation (and subsequent leak) of the covid virus, which lead to a historical global shutdown, the forced layoffs of tens of millions of Americans and shuttering of countless small businesses (allowing their large competitors to grow unmeasurably large), the deaths of millions, and the injection of tens of trillions of fiscal and monetary stimuli into the global economy sparking the runaway inflation that followed shortly thereafter. They did that thanks to a “Bombshell Fauci Documentary Which Nails The Whole COVID Charade“, a charade which has Anthony Fauci as its main antagonist, and which led us to be barred, censored and suspended pretty much everywhere, including Twitter (now X), for daring to tell the truth about covid’s Chinese origins which also included secretive funding by Fauci and his ecosystem of criminal “health professionals” whose actions directly and indirectly led to the deaths of millions. So you will excuse us for looking forward to the inevitable perp walks and arrests that we hope will follow when RFK Jr. does what he has promised to do.
The 18th most popular article of the year, read by over 482,000, was the event that confirmed once and for all that the “Democrat” party is anything but, when in a not-so-quiet internal coup, the man whom the media had for years had lauded and said was perfectly capable and functioning turned out to be a dementia-ridden vegetable, allowing his unelected puppetmasters full control over the country and the world, and after a catastrophic debate with Trump had his long political career summarily executed by Nancy Pelosi. We are talking of course about Joe Biden’s shocking withdrawal by tweet from the presidential race one quiet weekend in July, less than 4 months before the elections, a decision which we now know was forced upon him by Democrat Party oligarchs, and which forced “Dems To Go Full Throttle On Kamala After Biden Drops Out Of 2024 Race.” And like so many other random decisions by Democrats, this one too was a catastrophic failure, culminating with a sweeping victory for Trump and the Republicans in an election that was so one-sided not even the Democrats could rig (more on that below).
With the Ukraine war soon set to enter its third year – unless Trump indeed manages to end it in his first 100 days in office – it is easy to forget that the risk of a nuclear exchange, and war, is just one mistargeted missile launch away. But 485,000 readers got a reminder when they read the 17th most popular article of 2024, the one in which Russia’s Vladimir Putin warned that “Ukraine Is Becoming ‘Global War’ After Western Long-Range Weapons Used Against Russia.” And for what? Just so the Biden crime family could cover up its unprecedented (and rather petty) criminal spree, which not coincidentally originated in Kiev roughly around the time of the first CIA-led coup against the country’s democratically elected president in 2014. Another “not coincidence”: Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter which just so happens extended back to 2014, right around the time said crackhead son-cum-feces painter was hired by Ukraine’s top energy company as an expert on… energy. And while Hunter may be pardoned, it is unlikely that his father will also face justice before that sad White House-occupying vegetable passes on. And with that the secrets of why the world nearly ended in a fiery nuclear fireball will died with him.
Like everything else coming out of the Democratic party in the run up to the Nov 5 election, one of the most anticipated pre-election events thrown by the losing candidate was nothing more than smoke and mirrors. Yes, one week before the election in late October, when Kamala – according to countless corrupt pollsters was leading Trump in virtually every category – had a chance to allegedly “cement her victory” by offering her fans what they wanted, namely a spectacle by a highly compensated actor, the Democratic frontrunner made a catastrophic bait and switch, and the result as 482,000 readers would learn was that “Kamala Got Booed After Beyoncé Bait-N-Switch,” and instead of getting the most popular woman singer in the world, the crowd got… Willie Nelson, and we got our 16th most popular article of the year. Just a few days after, instead of the victory as so many had promised, Kamala’s fans got… a crushing defeat, not that it was Beyone’s fault. We would eventually learn that Kamala’s entire Hollywood and influencer “fan base” was nothing more than paid actors, the support fake, the plaudits bought and paid for, and after Kamala’s catastrophic loss we would also learn that not only $1 billion in Soros money was spent on various high profile actors, but – adding insult to loss – the Kamala campaign would end up broke and in debt. Just like everything else attempted by Democrats.
And speaking of Trump’s avalanche victory, it all started with the brutal June 27 debate, the first and final, in which the former – and future – president crushed a clearly incompetent and dementia-ridden Joe Biden who was unable to string two sentences together let alone respond to Trump’s relentless attacks. The outgoing head of the Biden crime family, who according to so many media lies was “beyond competent” and “sharp as a tack”, appeared no more coherent than a vegetable as Trump steamrolled him on national TV over and over, and as we covered in our 15th most popular post of the year read by just over half a million, “‘Presidential’ Trump Dominates Stuttering Biden In Debate: “My Retribution Is Going To Be Success.” Just over 4 months later, Trump indeed got his retribution, only it wasn’t against Biden but against his even more incompetent surrogate, Kamala, who disappeared from the political stage just as quickly as she appeared on it.
While none of the billionaires and uber-connected politicians that for decades used Jeffrey Epstein pedophilia services have yet gone to prison, 2024 was a stark reminder that the virtue signalers in Hollywood are no better and when left alone to their devices are just as depraved and perverted. The “revelation” came after a crackdown on one-time entertainment mogul and golden boy, Sean “Diddy” Combs, who as over 535,000 readers learned in “Sean Combs Homes In LA and Miami Simultaneously Raided by Homeland Security“, our 14th most popular article of the year, was arrested in a massive racketeering conspiracy crackdown for masterminding a massive sex trafficking ring which abused, threatened, and coerced women to do his bidding and that of his illustrious “virtuous” buddies in yet another example that what the rich and powerful in the US enjoy doing most of all is taking advantage of those who are most helpless to resist them, especially young girls. A good way to measure the true change in the top US power echelons after the November election will be to see if we learn how deep the Diddy rabbit hole goes… and of course if anyone at all linked to Epstein will ever go to prison. Alas, we are not holding out breath.
In 13th spot, with 505,000 views, was a reminder that had Kamala not lost the election, the US would have become (an even greater) dystopian Marxist nightmare, where drive-by killings of successful entrepreneurs has become normalized to the point where the killers are sanctified; this reminder took place in New York one early December morning, when an wealthy Gen-Zer, who grew up in a life of opulence and had everything handed to him on a silver platter, ambushed the CEO of a company that has made life drastically better for millions of sick Americans, and shot him in cold blood in the center of New York city, as captured in “Horrific Video Shows Assassination Of UnitedHealthcare CEO In Midtown Manhattan”, which after the drug and shit-ridden hellhole that is San Francisco, has rapidly become the most emblematically broken Democratic city in the US. A tragedy which we can only hope is not the start of a wave of mass shootings of successful Americans at the hands of envious, brainwashed liberal psychopaths who hope to restore “social and wealth equality” the same way every doomed socialist regime does in its final days: through expropriation and murder.
A year which saw AI lead the market and especially the Nasdaq to outsized gains, also demonstrated just how fragile our tech-reliant world has become, when one fine summer morning, the world awoke paralyzed when a computer glitch at cybersecurity software provider CrowdStrike effectively – and literally – ground the world to a halt, as we described in “Largest IT Outage in History Sparks Disruptions Worldwide“, an article read by just over 600,000. And while CrowdStrike’s stock promptly plunged from record highs in the aftermath of the “glitch”, the fact that it promptly recovered all its losses and is once again back at all time bubble highs, shows once again that nobody every learns any lessons.
If Kamala’s idea of a successful campaign involved paying millions of Soros’ dollars to Hollywood celebs and “influencers” to pretend they are her friends, Trump took the opposite approach, and the man who saw the entire weaponized Biden Department of Justice go after him – and lose – emerged as a man of the people, whether it meant blasting out his mugshot social media networks, serving french fries in McDonalds, or stunning the mainstream media as “Trump Holds Press Conference In Garbage Truck En Route To Green Bay Rally.” Trump’s troll of Biden, who had said the day before that supporters of Donald Trump are garbage, and which was enjoyed by just about 604,000 readers, was this election’s “deplorables” moment, one which as we would learn just a few days later sealed Trump’s victory which apparently came as a shock to democrats who had spent months catering to less than 1% of the population (i.e., the clinically insane trannies), while losing not only the immigrant vote but also alienating virtually all of the flyover states in a second case study of how not to run a presidential campaign (the first one of course belonged to Hillary Clinton).
2024 wasn’t just a year of domestic politics: there was a lot of geopolitical drama too, and one of the most notable episodes came in May when “Iranian President Raisi, Foreign Minister Confirmed Dead In Helicopter Crash“, also the 10th most popular article of the year, coming at a time when Iran and Israel were engaged in a proxy (and not so proxy) war in Lebanon, and presaging a dramatic shift in power politics in the Middle East. Was the deadly crash the work of Mossad, which as we learned later managed to successfully sabotage the entire Hazbollah communications infrastructure with deadly consequences, or was it truly a fluke? We and some 615,000 of our readers, will probably never learn however Iran is exiting 2024 in a much weaker position that it entered it while Israel is ascendant, with virtually no Middle-Eastern foes left strong enough to challenge it.
And speaking of Mossad’s technical genius, the 9th most viewed article of 2024 with over 640,000 views came a few months later, when in September a covert operation of the Israeli intelligence agency unleashed chaos and resulting in “Hundreds Wounded, Many Dead in Beirut After Israel Remotely Detonates Hezbollah Pagers“, a stunning example of brutal, demoralizing military sabotage, and one which set the stage for Israel to wipe out virtually the entire Hezbollah leadership, tipping the balance of power strong in Israel’s favor in the middle east, where the Jewish state now controls not only Gaza and Lebanon, but has effective control over Syria after the recent coup there. As we enter 2025, and much attention still remains on whether and when China will invade Taiwan, a just as important question is what will the rising Israel seek – and achieve – in 2025. If were were nuclear enrichment and/or power plants in Iran, we would be very, very nervous…
Geopolitics was certainly a key anchor of 2024 newsflow as peace crumbled around the world where every US adversary sought to take advantage of the puppet vegetable in the White House and the ongoing erosion of Pax Americana, but the biggest events of the year took place domestically, and the one which arguably may have been the biggest “fork in the word” was the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in which if an MKUltra‘ed shooter had aimed just one inch to the right, the US would be under a Kamala dictatorship right now. We will have more to say about that later, but the big question is whether the US secret service was also in on the ploy to terminate the former and future president, a question addressed in “Malice Or Massive Incompetence”: Erik Prince Gives Detailed Assessment Of Secret Service Failure, and which was asked at least 645,000 times by our readers, making it the 8th most popular article of the year. Alas, while there are plenty of conspiracy theories about what happened on that warm July day, unfortunately we will never get the full answer.
There were two more geopolitical shocks in the year’s Top 10 and both once again involved Iran and Israel, two countries who appeared set to begin war at each other for much of the year, and they finally did – for the second time – in October, just days after Israel killed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, however just like during the first exchange in April, the outcome was scripted and orchestrated to result in as little damage as possible. That’s what 670,000 readers found out when they read that the “White House Warns Iran To Imminently Launch Ballistic Missiles On Israel“, and while Iran did eventually launch missiles, and Israel retaliated, there was no actual damage. How could it be that two ancient middle-eastern enemies could pursue such as fake posture of aggression? It later turned out that the Biden puppet handlers were orchestrating it all, and giving advice for both sides how to save face but how not to spark a regional conflict that would send the price of oil surging ahead of the US election. That’s right, in the end it all ended up being about the price of gas at the pump, although we wonder if Biden’s puppetmasters would have bothered if they had known that the senile president would end up losing. One thing is certain: under president Trump, the next time Iran and Israel start firing at each other, the outcome will be far more deadly.
The November presidential election was the biggest political event of the year, and the staggering illegal immigration triggered by Biden (in hopes of picking up Democratic votes) was perhaps the most decisive factor heading into the election (along with record prices and the runaway inflation sparked by the Fed years earlier). We got a brutal reminder of this in September when with less than two months until the election, just over 700,000 readers found that “Residents Of Springfield Ohio Beg For Help After 20,000 Haitians Overwhelm City,” making it the 6th most popular article fo 2024. And while the anecdotes of Haitians eating the local wildlife may have turned out to be largely fake, the soundbite of Trump lamenting that the illegals are “eating the dogs, eating the cats” during his one and only debate with Kamala, may have been sufficient to seal his victory .
Earlier we noted that the sudden raid on Diddy was the 14th most popular article of the year, but even as the public’s attention turned to the latest inevitable episode of sexual predation by the ultra-wealthy, the original sexual predator and trafficker, Jeffrey Epstein, still remains twice as popular perhaps due to the continued mystery surrounding his ultra powerful client list, where not a single pervert has gone to prison (because once you start naming names, the list goes to the very top). And there sure were plenty of perverts as we described in the 5th most popular article of 2024, which revealed to 735,000 readers that “Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking At An Orgy, And Michael Jackson: Here’s Who’s In Unsealed Epstein Docs So Far.” With a list of rich and powerful clients that reads like the “who is who” of the world’s richest, most powerful and most connected, we don’t expect any tangible revelations or actions here despite repeat promises by Elon Musk to finally get to the bottom of just how far the abuse of innocent, underage children went.
In recent years, the US had spent over a $100 billion to prop up Zelenskyy’s regime in Ukraine (and feed countless deep state mouths, not to mention keep the Biden crime family secrets hidden), meanwhile infrastructure back iun the US continued to age and deteriorate, with key chokepoints at risk of paralyzing the US economy if taken out by accident or enemy action. One example of this took place in March when the “Huge Bridge In Baltimore Collapsed After Container Ship Strike.” The collapse, which immediately paralyzed much of the commerce in the greater DC area, was read by just under 1 million readers, making it the 4th most popular article of 2024. While the US was lucky that the collapse appeared to have been accidental in nature – even though Gen Flynn suggested it may have been an enemy act – it won’t take much for terrorists to go after other similar key chokepoints in the coming years.
For the third most popular article of 2024 we leave the continental US for the last time, and turn our attention to the Middle East where as noted above, Iran and Israel staged a grand, if gloriously fake, rehearsal to a (future) war, which saw both sides frothing at the mouth for blood, yet where keeping the price of gas low turned out to be far more important and elicited more than one emergency phone call from whoever it was that was controlling the Biden puppet in the White House. Still, at the time it all seemed so very real, and understandably almost 1.2 million readers tuned it to see what would happen as the “US Pressured China, Turkey And Saudi Arabia To Intervene An Halt An Iranian Attack on Israel.” The article, which was the the 3rd most popular of the year, focused on all the events that unfolded in mid-April when Iran and Israel appeared ready to start a regional war. In the end they didn’t… just as they didn’t 6 months later in October when the same choreographed drama took place. But with Israel feeling confident and viewing Iran as increasingly vulnerable, the odds are that the third time will be the charm for all those expecting an all out war between the two most powerful players in the middle east, a war which is likely to take place some time in 2025, just as all hell breaks loose everywhere.
We doubt it will surprise anyone that Trump’s victory on November 5th, a blowout landslide which saw Republicans sweep Congress, and Trump win both the Electoral College and the popular vote in a testament to just how unpopular Kamala Harris had been all along, was one of the top two articles of the year with 1.46 million reads (an outcome we had once again correctly predicted, and which the polling class once again completely missed). Indeed, “Trump Wins, Sends ‘Trumpquake’ Through Washington” was the fitting end to a crazy year where nothing turned out as consensus had expected, even if in retrospect the outcome made all the sense in the world, and gave the US hope that there is still hope… alas since the deep state is on the other end, we aren’t holding our breath for said hope to turn into actual change.
It may come as a surprise to some that Trump’s election was not the most popular article of 2024. There’s a reason for that: the event that made Trump’s election possible, the failed assassination attempt on Trump which took place one lazy summer weekend, and which was read by 1.7 million readers, was by and far the biggest event of the year. Whether it was another “insurance policy” by the deep state, or an insane, radicalized psychopath acting alone, we will never know but we do know that had the gunman aimed just one inch to the right, the fate of the world would have been radically different, the days of America as a superpower would be forever over and this website would likely not even exist right now.
And with all that behind us, and as we wave goodbye to another bizarre, exciting, surreal year, what lies in store for 2025, and the next half-decade?
We don’t know: as our frequent readers are aware, we do not pretend to be able to predict the future and we don’t try, despite repeat baseless allegations that we constantly forecast the collapse of civilization: we leave the predicting to the “smartest people in the room” who year after year have been consistently wrong about everything, and never more so than in 2024 when not long after the entire world realized just how clueless the Fed had been when it called the most crushing inflation in two generations “transitory”, the professional predictors reputation hit new lows as described in “How the Experts Got 2024 So Wrong“, and “What the Mainstream Media Got Wrong about the 2024 Election“, in the process adding strategists and analysts to the clueless ranks of economists, mainstream media and the professional polling class, not to mention all those “scientists” who made a mockery of both the scientific method and the “expert class” with their catastrophically bungled response to the covid pandemic, and then the response to the response, and so on… We merely observe, find what is unexpected, entertaining, amusing, surprising or grotesque in an increasingly bizarre, sad, and increasingly crazy world, and then just write about it.
We do know, however, that with central banks having flip-flopped yet again, and re-pivoting hawkishly less than three months after their surprise dovish pivot as stubborn inflation still rose more than 3%, with wages – especially for unionized and government workers – once again surging, home prices and rents refusing to drop despite 7% mortgage rates, and overall prices stuck at all time highs, the most likely outcome is another surge in inflation, and Jerome Powell becoming not the second coming of saint Paul Volcker but of satan Arthur Burns.
But even ignoring the impact on prices, one can’t just undo almost 20 years of central bank mistakes by willing them away (despite what Elon Musk and DOGE hope to achieve in the next few years); after all it is the trillions and trillions in monetary stimulus, the helicopter money, the MMT idiocy, and the endless deficit funding by central banks that made the current runaway inflation possible, the current attempt to stuff 15 years of toothpaste back into the tube, will be a catastrophic failure.
We are confident, however, that in the end it will be the very final backstoppers of the status quo regime, the central banking emperors of the New Normal, who will again be revealed as completely naked. When that happens and what happens after is anyone’s guess. But, as we have promised – and delivered – every year for the past 16, we will be there to document every aspect of it.
Finally, and as always, we wish all our readers the best of luck in 2025, with much success in trading and every other avenue of life. We bid farewell to 2024 with our traditional and unwavering year-end promise: Zero Hedge will be there each and every day – usually with a cynical smile (and with the CIA clearly on our ass now) – helping readers expose, unravel and comprehend the fallacy, fiction, fraud and farce that defines every aspect of our increasingly broken economic, political and financial system.
One of the main reasons why Americans are in such a foul mood right now is because the economy is in really bad shape and it just keeps getting worse. This is very good news for the Trump campaign, because most Americans don’t want things to remain the same. A desire for change is in the air, but our economy is unraveling so rapidly that it won’t be easy for anyone to turn things around. We have built up a tremendous amount of momentum in the wrong direction, and it appears that the months ahead are not going to be pleasant.
Just look at what is happening to home sales.
Last month, sales of previously existing homes fell to the lowest level that we have seen since October 2010.
Of course in October 2010 we were dealing with the aftermath of a global financial crisis.
Sales of existing homes in the U.S. are on track for the worst year since 1995—for the second year in a row.
Persistently high home prices and elevated mortgage rates are keeping potential home buyers on the sidelines. Sales of previously owned homes in the first nine months of the year were lower than the same period last year, the National Association of Realtors said Wednesday.
Existing-home sales in September fell 1% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.84 million, NAR said, the lowest monthly rate since October 2010.
Let those numbers sink in for a moment.
We haven’t seen anything like this for a long time, and nobody can deny that the market for residential real estate is in a depressed state right now.
And it appears that this month could be even worse than last month, because the number of mortgage applications being submitted is absolutely plummeting…
Mortgage applications decreased 17% from one week earlier as mortgage rates surged, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly application survey for the week ending October 11, 2024.
The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 17% on both a seasonally adjusted and an unadjusted basis from one week earlier.
Meanwhile, our nationwide commercial real estate crisis just continues to intensify.
The sale of a nearly 1 million-square-foot Manhattan office building listed on the online auction site Ten-X was completed Tuesday for only $8.5 million.
That’s 97 percent less than the $332.5 million that the seller, Swiss bank UBS, paid for the Midtown property in 2006. The loss on the building at 135 West 50th Street was minimally offset by a $6 million gain UBS realized by buying and selling the ground beneath it in the interim.
UBS and its brokers at JLL listed the 920,000-square-foot building for sale on the online platform. The two-day auction kicked off July 30 with a starting bid of $7.5 million. The sale ended the next day after Ten-X lowered the reserve price. The winning bidder, whose identity has yet to hit property records, closed about 70 days later.
That is insane!
Commercial real estate prices have been crashing all over America, and this crisis is not getting the attention that it deserves from the media.
The banking industry is headed for big trouble as well. In fact, the government shut down another bank on Friday…
Friday, The First National Bank of Lindsay was closed by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) appointed as receiver. The OCC acted after identifying false and deceptive bank records and other information suggesting fraud that revealed depletion of the bank’s capital. The OCC also found that the bank was in an unsafe or unsound condition to transact business and that the bank’s assets were less than its obligations to its creditors and others.
The OCC is referring the matter to the United States Department of Justice, which has a wide variety of tools to hold individuals accountable for criminal acts and focuses on victims in all of its matters.
Some experts are projecting that hundreds of more banks will soon fail.
If that actually happens, it will be a complete and utter nightmare.
The “restaurant apocalypse” that I have written about so much also continues to roll on.
Sadly, we just learned that Denny’s has decided to shut down 150 locations…
Denny’s is closing 150 restaurants over the next year, and the 71-year-old diner chain is mulling a major change to its 24/7 operating hours.
Fifty locations are set to close by the end of 2024, while the remaining 100 will shutter in 2025, Denny’s announced in an earnings call Tuesday. That amounts to a tenth of its restaurants, leaving 1,375 locations once completed. A specific list of closing restaurants weren’t immediately announced.
Needless to say, lots of other chains are slimming down as well.
Right now, thousands upon thousands of restaurants are being permanently closed from coast to coast.
If the economy was heading in the right direction, this would not be happening.
Speaking of closures, another major retailer has announced that it will be closing all stores…
Buybuy Baby is shuttering all of its stores roughly a year after new owners tried to revive the brand.
The company announced on its website that it is transitioning to an online-only model after recognizing the need for a “a strategic reset.”
“With this shift, we’ve come to the difficult decision of closing our physical stores by the end of this year,” the company wrote. “We understand this may be disappointing news, and we want all our customers to know this wasn’t a choice we took lightly.”
Most retailers that are experiencing difficulties will try to hang on until at least the end of December.
But once we get into 2025, expect a huge wave of new store closures.
As I discussed the other day, U.S. consumers are really hurting at the moment.
You can’t get blood out of a stone, and a staggering percentage of U.S. cardholders have already maxed out at least one credit card…
Nearly 2 in 5 cardholders (37%) have maxed out a credit card or come close since the Fed started raising interest rates, Bankrate’s Credit Utilization Survey found. That includes 20% who have maxed out a credit card and 17% who have come close to maxing one out.
This is what an imploding economy looks like.
Bubbles are bursting all around us, and the outlook for 2025 and beyond is absolutely horrible.
Our leaders kept the game going for a long time by injecting trillions of dollars into the system and by going into unprecedented amounts of debt.
But despite all of their efforts, the economy is coming apart at the seams anyway, and so I hope that you are prepared for a very hard landing.
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