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
The housing bubble that burst during the Great Recession was enormous, but it was nothing compared to what we are facing now. Two decades ago, the average price of a home in the United States was about $140,000. Today, the average price of a home in the United States is above $500,000. We have literally never seen anything even close to a housing bubble of this magnitude. Unfortunately, what comes up must eventually come down.
Just like we witnessed during the Great Recession, home sales have started to crash.
In January, sales of previously owned homes were 8.4 percent lower than they were in December…
Sales of previously owned homes in January dropped a much wider-than-expected 8.4% from December to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 3.91 million, according to the NAR. Sales were 4.4% lower than January 2025. That is the slowest pace since December 2023 and the biggest monthly drop since February 2022.
This count is based on closings, so contracts that were likely signed in November and December, when the average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage didn’t move much before dropping slightly in January. That rate is now 6.1%, according to Mortgage News Daily.
Regionally, sales fell across the nation month to month but were down the most in the South and West.
Sales of previously owned homes have been at a depressed level for years, and now things are getting even worse.
It is a really bad time to be a real estate agent in America. So many really good agents are deeply struggling right now.
One of the primary reasons why home sales are so low is because home prices are way too high.
Over a 20 year period, the average price of a home in the United States increased from about $140,000 to more than $503,000…
While there have been periods of rising and falling home values, the end result is this: In the past 20 years, the average home price in the U.S. has grown from about $140,000 to about $503,800 as of 2025.
That is what a bubble looks like.
If you can believe it, the median value of a home in Montana grew by two-thirds in just four years…
Montana’s typical home value has increased by two-thirds in four years, according to new valuations published this month by the Montana Department of Revenue.
The department estimates that the median residential property in Montana was worth $378,000 as of the beginning of last year. Four years previously, before the state housing market blew up during the COVID-19 pandemic, the median value was $228,000 — meaning values have increased 66%.
What we have witnessed this decade has been absolutely insane.
As a result, 64 percent of all single Americans are now struggling to make their monthly rent or mortgage payments…
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of single people struggle to afford their regular rent or mortgage payments, compared with 39% of married people, according to a recent Redfin survey conducted by Ipsos.
These survey results in this report are from a Redfin survey conducted by Ipsos in November 2025, fielded to 4,000 U.S. residents. 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.”
This state of affairs couldn’t persist indefinitely.
It was just a matter of time before something started to give, and now we are being told that home prices are falling in 26 of the 50 largest metro areas in the United States…
The sales slump comes as home prices are now falling in 26 of the country’s 50 biggest metro areas, according to recent report from Realtor.com..
This reminds me so much of what we experienced just before the crash of 2008.
And as I discussed yesterday, last month the number of foreclosure filings was 32 percent higher than it was during the same month one year earlier…
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.
Do you remember what happened the last time that foreclosures spiked dramatically?
It is starting to happen all over again.
Every economic bubble bursts eventually.
Sadly, we live at a time when multiple bubbles appear to be bursting simultaneously.
Former Texas Representative Ron Paul said the U.S. economic order rests on “fraud” rooted in the 1971 break from gold and warned that the current system is nearing its end, in a wide-ranging 90th-birthday interview on The Tucker Carlson Podcast released Thursday.
Paul, a Republican-turned-Libertarian-turned-Republican, tied his warning to the end of dollar convertibility into gold under President Richard Nixon, calling it the nation’s “first declaration of bankruptcy,” and argued that persistent money printing and deficits have created a brittle order primed for a severe correction.
In 1971, the median price of a home in the United States was $25,200.
In those days, just about anyone that was willing to work hard could afford a home.
At the end of 1971, the U.S. national debt was sitting at 398 billion dollars.
Now it is sitting at 38.5 trillion dollars.
Do you understand what that means?
The size of our national debt will soon be 100 times larger than it was in 1971.
We have destroyed the value of our currency and we are absolutely drowning in debt.
Now the economic bubbles that we have inflated are starting to burst all around us, and the days ahead are going to be filled with a tremendous amount of pain.
During the days of the Great Recession, rapidly falling home prices caused all sorts of havoc for our major financial institutions. Unfortunately, home prices are starting to plummet once again in many areas of the country. And just like during the last housing crash, we are also seeing a surge in foreclosure filings. That doesn’t mean that this current crisis is going to look exactly like what we experienced the last time around. But nobody can deny that there are a lot of alarming similarities between what we are going through now and what we went through during the days of the Great Recession.
According to Zillow, 53 percent of all homes in the United States have lost value within the past year…
More than half of homes in the U.S. lost value over the past year, marking the highest share of properties to depreciate in more than a decade.
Research from Zillow revealed that approximately 53% of all U.S. homes have lost value since last year, up 14% from a year ago. It’s notable given that a share this big has not been seen since the tail end of the Great Recession – around 2012 – when home prices and household wealth started a meaningful recovery.
This is good news, but it is also bad news.
The good news is that prospective homeowners are finally getting some relief. Home prices have soared in recent years, and this has priced many potential buyers out of the market. A correction was greatly needed, and we are finally getting one.
The bad news is that prices are falling so quickly that some homeowners are now underwater on their mortgages. We all saw what happened in 2008 when that started happening on a widespread basis.
So we need home prices to come down, but we don’t want them to come down too rapidly.
Unfortunately, some of the markets that were extremely hot a few years ago are now being hit extremely hard…
Many of the biggest drops are in once-red-hot pandemic boomtowns. In Denver, 91 percent of homes have fallen from their peak value. It’s 89 percent in Austin, and 88 percent in Sacramento.
Florida has been hit hard too: more than 80 percent of homes in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa are now worth less than they were a year ago. Dallas and San Antonio are also seeing declines of more than 85 percent.
If we see additional acceleration, this slide in home prices could become an avalanche.
Most homes have lost value from their peak, falling 9.7% on average. It is much larger than the 3.6% reported in spring 2022, but about level with pre-COVID-19 pandemic rates, according to the report. It is still well below the 27% average drawdown in early 2012.
I feel really badly for those that purchased homes during the past couple of years.
Many of them are already underwater on their mortgages, and new foreclosure filings are rapidly rising all over the nation.
One of the states where foreclosure filings are increasingly particularly quickly is Illinois…
But analysts were stunned to see Illinois emerge as one of the worst-hit states last month.
In October, one in every 2,570 Illinois homes had a foreclosure filing — a total of 2,118 properties. That includes 1,252 foreclosure starts (when the paperwork is first began) and 187 completed repossessions (when the foreclosure process is completed).
Illinois saw fewer than 1,900 filings in September, and just 1,597 last October.
‘We’ve definitely noticed an uptick,’ said Jason Merel, a realtor covering Chicago and the northern suburbs.
This reminds me so much of 2008.
If we don’t get this crisis under control very soon, it could get very ugly.
At the start of the week, Goldman’s top consumer specialist Scott Feiler pointed out this would be a “very important week” for earnings across the consumer sector. Home Depot set the tone on Tuesday by cutting its full-year outlook as big-ticket spending and home-renovation demand continue to fade. Now, the next major earnings report just hit the tape, and it’s delivering another clear signal of softening trends.
Target slashed the top end of its 2025 profit outlook amid softening demand, heavy markdowns, and uneven traffic, which continue to plague its turnaround strategy.
I think that Target is in a lot of trouble.
We are being told that Target’s woes are being caused by a four-headed monster of “shabby stores, sinking staff morale, jittery investors, and a leadership shake-up waiting in the wings”…
Inflation-weary shoppers are steering clear of Target’s messy, understaffed stores.
On Wednesday morning, the Minneapolis chain with 1,980 stores said third-quarter profit took yet another hit, deepening a slide that has now stretched across three straight years.
Target’s slump comes from a four-headed monster: shabby stores, sinking staff morale, jittery investors, and a leadership shake-up waiting in the wings.
Without a doubt, all of those factors are contributing to Target’s demise, but to me the biggest reason why Target is struggling is because most of their merchandise is grossly overpriced at a time when consumers have very little discretionary income.
We just don’t have a lot of money to throw around these days.
Once upon a time, it was not a big deal to spend a couple of bucks on a Big Mac.
But now the average price of a Big Mac has risen to six dollars…
In 2000, a Big Mac cost about $2.24. By mid-2025 the average price had climbed to $6. Adjusted for general inflation, that $2.24 sandwich from 2000 would work out to about $4.22 in today’s dollars. In other words, a McDonald’s signature burger costs roughly 40 per cent more than it did 25 years ago.
Other menu options have soared too. A FinanceBuzz analysis found that a quarter pounder with cheese meal more than doubled over the decade, from $5.39 in 2014 to $11.99 in 2024. A ten-piece McNuggets meal climbed from $7.19 in 2019 to $9.19 in 2024.
It takes Tazo Stuart-Riascos 28,000 steps per day to make ends meet in one of America’s most unaffordable places.
He begins clocking that prodigious number of paces before sunrise, as he hustles from his apartment in Oakland to his retail job in San Francisco, then back to the East Bay for his night shift at Trader Joe’s, where he’s on his feet until 10 p.m. All that scrambling and Stuart-Riascos still just barely gets by.
He’s part of a growing number of people — many working one or more jobs — who find themselves struggling to stay afloat as the cost of living skyrockets and wages fail to keep pace, making it even harder to survive in the already-expensive Bay Area.
Of course now that the labor market is really tightening up, finding work has become a lot more difficult.
Just like we witnessed during the Great Recession, mass layoffs are happening all over the nation.
Many Americans are extremely concerned about what economic conditions are going to look like during the months ahead.
As always, let us hope for the best, but let us also prepare for the worst.
The American mortgage system is one of the largest and most intricate financial infrastructures in the world.
It relies on a vast network of borrowers, lenders, underwriters, title companies, insurers, appraisers, and global investors who buy mortgage-backed securities. Every link in this chain depends on one thing: accurate, truthful information.
When borrowers falsify occupancy status, particularly by pretending a property is their primary residence, they distort risk, manipulate pricing, and inflict real financial harm on both lenders and honest borrowers.
This is why prosecutors have long treated primary-residence fraud as a serious federal offense, and I believe it’s why Director Bill Pulte and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) regulators are referring violators to the Department of Justice.
A Straightforward Example: Maxine Waters Told the Truth
California Election Code §349 requires its elected officials to maintain a “domicile” and “fixed habitation” in California, and the U.S. Constitution requires they be an “inhabitant” of their home state.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters complies. While she owns a home in Los Angeles, her mortgage documents for her Washington D.C. residence correctly identify 2105 1/2 S Street NW as a second home, both in her 1991 purchase and in her 2007 refinance.
As an honest public official, Waters accepted slightly higher interest rates than if she had lied and claimed her Washington D.C. home was her “principal residence” (or primary home), a designation which receives the lowest rates available because they are considered lowest risk by lenders.
The “Bad Four”: When Politicians Misrepresent for Personal Gain
Enter Adam Schiff, Letitia James, Lisa Cook, and Eric Swalwell. These public officials have done the opposite of Maxine Waters, misrepresenting their home occupancy to manipulate banks to obtain lower, owner-occupied interest rates they are not entitled to.
U.S. Senator Adam Schiff declared two different homes as his primary residence, one in Potomac, Maryland, and another in Burbank, California.
Like Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve Board Governor, declared two different properties as primary residences in different mortgages, one in Michigan and another in Georgia.
California Congressman Eric Swalwell declared his Washington, D.C. home as his principal residence in his mortgage documents, a status he is required to maintain in California.
His lack of any verifiable California home means he’s in violation of state election law. If Swalwell can somehow provide a California home address, he is committing mortgage fraud in Washington, D.C.
Letitia James, New York’s Attorney General, bought two homes in Norfolk, Virginia, in recent years. She declared one as her primary residence despite being a New York state resident.
James declared her other Norfolk residence as a “second home,” but then treated it as a rental property in violation of her mortgage terms.
In addition, Letitia James, for more than 24 years, misrepresented her five-unit building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn, variously claiming it had one to four units to illegally obtain refinancing, a federal government HAMP loan, and mortgage lines of credit at lower interest rates and closing costs.
This is the same crime as “primary residence” fraud, misrepresenting key mortgage data for financial gain.
Why the Truth Matters to the System
The distinctions between a primary residence, a second home, or a rental property is central to the economics of mortgage lending. Historical data shows that borrowers are 3-4 times more likely to default on non-owner-occupied properties.
Allowing lies about occupancy hides this elevated risk.
How about down payments? Primary residences may require as little as 3-5% down, while second properties are often 20-25% higher.
When someone misrepresents a second home or investment property as their primary residence, they distort the lender’s assessment of risk.
The bank thinks they are issuing a safer loan than they actually are. In reality, they are being exposed to the elevated risks associated with investment properties including higher vacancy rates, greater likelihood of strategic default, and more volatile cash flows.
If this deception is tolerated, the pricing model for mortgages collapses. The lender cannot correctly measure risk, and without accurate risk assessments, the cost of lending rises for everyone.
Make no mistake, primary-residence fraud is theft. Lying about primary residence constitutes mortgage fraud, a federal crime under 18 U.S.C. § 1014. Penalties may include federal felony charges, up to 30 years in prison, fines up to $1 million, and civil liability, including treble damages.
The 2008 crisis proved what happens when lenders package inaccurate or misleading loan data: market collapse and taxpayer-backed bailouts.
This is because mortgage fraud strikes at the heart of the lending system. If lying about a primary residence were tolerated, the mortgage system would degrade rapidly. Risk-based pricing would stop functioning.
Investors would lose confidence in loan pools. Neighborhoods would suffer from hidden absentee ownership.
Mortgage rates would rise as lending standards tighten, and millions of legitimate buyers would be locked out of the market.
In the end, the actions of Letitia James, Adam Schiff, Lisa Cook, and Eric Swalwell aren’t harmless technicalities, they are deliberate manipulations of a system they are sworn to uphold.
These four officials sit at the pinnacle of public trust – a state attorney general who lectures others about integrity, a senator who postures as a defender of democracy, a Federal Reserve governor responsible for national economic stability, and a congressman obligated to follow the very laws he writes.
Yet each exploited the mortgage system for personal financial gain, securing benefits ordinary Americans would be criminally charged for attempting. Their conduct isn’t simply hypocritical, it is corrosive.
When the people entrusted with enforcing the rules instead violate them, they weaken the entire financial system, erode public confidence, and show contempt for the citizens they serve.
The alarms are getting even louder each week. It has become exceedingly clear that the U.S. economy has entered a crisis that is similar to what we experienced in 2008 and 2009, and a lot of people are really starting to freak out. For those that cannot see the stunning parallels between the Great Recession and what we are going through now, I don’t know what to say to them. There are a lot of people out there that simply choose to believe whatever they want to believe no matter what the evidence indicates. In this case, all of the evidence is pointing in a single direction.
When foreclosure filings started to spike prior to the global financial crisis in 2008, that was a major red flag.
Now it is happening again.
In fact, during the month of October 2025 foreclosure filings were 19 percent higher than they were in October 2024…
In October alone, there were 36,766 foreclosure filings — the first step in the process, when a lender warns a borrower they’re in default. That’s up three percent from September and 19 percent from a year ago.
‘Foreclosure activity continued its steady upward trend in October — the eighth straight month of year-over-year increases,’ said ATTOM CEO Rob Barber.
The rise is stirring uncomfortable memories of 2008, when a wave of foreclosures triggered the worst housing crash in modern US history.
Read the second paragraph in that quote again.
Foreclosure activity has increased for eight consecutive months.
States with the worst foreclosure rates were Florida (one in every 1,829 housing units with a foreclosure filing), South Carolina (one in every 1,982), Illinois (one in every 2,570), Delaware (on in every 2,710), and Nevada (one in ever 2,747).
Among metro areas with populations of a million or more, Tampa posted the highest foreclosure rate at one in every 1,373 housing units.
Following Tampa were Jacksonville (one in every 1,576 housing units), Orlando (one in every 1,703), Riverside (one in every 1,983), and Cleveland (one in every 2,114).
What a mess.
The good news is that it looks like there will soon be a lot of homes on the market in Florida.
We live at a time when our nation is facing a very serious housing affordability crisis, and this has hit our young adults particularly hard.
The following chart which was once posted by Charlie Kirk demonstrates how home ownership among young adults has plunged in recent years…
These days, a lot of young adults are convinced that they will never be able to become homeowners.
Others that have really stretched themselves financially to purchase homes are now being hit with foreclosure notices.
I really detest what Wall Street has done to the housing market, and now we are reaping the consequences.
Renting is the primary alternative to home ownership, but renters are having a really hard time right now too.
As Daisy Luther has aptly pointed out, vast numbers of renters are being ruthlessly evicted from their homes in this very harsh economic environment…
Rents in America are ridiculously high in many areas, and nearly impossible to find in other areas. This is harder to track than foreclosures for two reasons.
Nobody official is keeping track of evictions, so we have to rely on extrapolated data from regions that do have somebody watching. One example of this is a company called “Eviction Lab” that tracks data from ten states, but only in specific cities and counties in those states. Even with this sparse reporting, their home page shows more than a million evictions over the last year, and more than 78,000 just last month.
The other reason we don’t have official numbers is something called “informal evictions.” Some states have laws against dramatic increases in rent, but not all states do. Both my daughter and I, living in a metro area, have faced a vast increase in rent when our leases were up. For my daughter, the increase was $900 a month and for me it was $600 a month.
Most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month.
So it is really easy to push most Americans into a state of financial disaster.
Just look at what is happening with subprime auto loans.
The share of subprime borrowers at least 60 days behind on their auto loans rose to 6.65% in October, the highest level on record, according to Fitch Ratings data going back to the early 1990s.
As auto loan delinquencies spike, we are seeing a shocking surge in vehicle repossessions as well…
A near-record number of cars are being repossessed as Americans continue to fall behind on their auto loans amid mounting financial strain.
According to data from the Recovery Database Network (RDN), analyzed by CURepossession, 2025 has seen over 7.5 million repossession assignments—authorizations given to an agency to recover a vehicle on behalf of a lender. Based on historic trends, this figure is expected to reach a record 10.5 million by the end of the year.
Although recovery ratios have fallen in recent years—potentially lowering the number of actual repossessions—it is projected that over three million cars could be repossessed in 2025, a level only reached in 2009 during the Great Recession.
Do you remember the “subprime mortgage meltdown” that we witnessed in 2008 and 2009?
Well, this time around we have a “subprime auto loan meltdown”, and a couple of very large lenders have already gone belly up…
PrimaLend, which serves the “buy-here-pay-here” auto financing market — where dealers sell and directly finance vehicles for customers with poor or limited credit — filed for bankruptcy protection last month.
Tricolor, which sold cars and provided auto loans mostly to low-income Hispanic communities in the Southwestern United States, also filed for bankruptcy in September.
Unfortunately, a lot more Americans will be getting behind on their mortgages and their auto loans during the months ahead because a lot more Americans will be losing their jobs.
With each passing day, we learn of more mass layoffs.
The optics look awful for Verizon Communications if the Wall Street Journal’s report is accurate: the carrier is preparing for its largest job cuts ever just days before millions of Americans hit the road for Thanksgiving.
WSJ says Verizon is planning to cut 15,000 jobs. If that figure is correct, Bloomberg’s latest data suggests this would be about 15% of its roughly 100,000-person workforce. WSJ notes this would be the largest workforce reduction on record for the carrier.
Does this mean that Verizon’s customer service is about to get even worse?
Of course it would be exceedingly difficult for it to get any worse than it is right now.
By the way, you may have noticed that stock prices are absolutely plummeting.
I think that we will see a lot more market volatility in the days ahead, because global events are going to get quite chaotic.
We are truly living in one of the most pivotal times in all of human history.
Sadly, the vast majority of the population still doesn’t understand what is happening to us, and that is very unfortunate.
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.
New York State Attorney General Letitia James, long claiming to be a public champion of tenants’ rights, has herself been in violation of New York City’s rent stabilization laws for more than two decades.
Since purchasing a four-story apartment building at 296 Lafayette Avenue in Brooklyn in 2001, James has failed to register the property with the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal (DHCR) as required for rent-stabilized buildings.
By failing to register, she denied her tenants the protections of rent stabilization, while collecting rents above the legally regulated amounts for 24 years. New York City’s housing code is based on its “Rent Stabilization Law of 1969,” which was designed to shield tenants from large rent raises, unlawful deregulation, and eviction abuses.
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It sets yearly allowable rent increases, typically at around 3% per year. The law applies to qualifying buildings and requires landlords to register with DHCR and file annual reports on tenants, rents, and lease terms.
The NYC Department of Buildings (DOB) issues Certificates of Occupancy to establish the legal number of units in properties. That designation is the one and only controlling legal authority for unit count. The three most recent Certificates of Occupancy for Letitia James’s building at 296 Lafayette Avenue are:
1961: Authorized as seven (7) family units, with the building officially designated as a “Class A Multiple Dwelling.”
1981: Two decades later, the legal unit count was reduced to four (4) apartments, reflecting an authorized combining of units. 2001: This Certificate of Occupancy updated the building to a FIVE (5) FAMILY DWELLING, which remains its designation today.
The Rent Stabilization Law of 1969 said that any building constructed before January 1, 1974, with six or more apartments, is subject to “Rent Stabilization” laws.
The critical point for Letitia James is that, according to the 1961 Certificate of Occupancy, the last one before the passage of the Rent Stabilization Law in 1969, her building at 296 Lafayette Avenue had seven (7) units. This meant that when the law took effect in 1969, James’s building was permanently entered into rent stabilization program.
Once a building is subject to rent stabilization, that status “runs with the building” forever. Later reductions down to four units, or back up to five units, can never legally strip the building of its original rent stabilization regulatory status.
Courts and DHCR have repeatedly emphasized that a landlord cannot deregulate a property from rent stabilization by simply reducing the number of units through alterations or new Certificates of Occupancy.
In Gersten v. 56 7th Ave. LLC (2005), New York’s highest court held that rent stabilization coverage cannot be destroyed by unilateral landlord action.
Despite her registration requirements, public records show that Letitia James has never registered 296 Lafayette Avenue with DHCR since her purchase in 2001. Nor has she filed the required annual tenant registrations for any of her building’s apartments.
The consequences of James’s failure to register are significant. Under RSC § 2528.4, a landlord who fails to register may not lawfully collect any rent increases. Having never registered since 2001, any rent increases by James since 2001 were unlawful.
In fact, if James charged tenants above the last legal rent increase in 2001, they can file overcharge complaints. DHCR and the courts may impose a refund of overcharges plus 9% annual interest, plus treble damages.
Given that her apartment building has been unregistered for nearly a quarter century, the potential overcharge and penalty exposure for Letitia James is massive.
Ironically, Letitia James has consistently positioned herself as a defender of rent stabilization laws and tenants’ rights in New York City.
She has argued that rent stabilization is a vital safeguard for working families, especially during periods of economic stress such as the COVID-19 crisis, and that her office would “do everything it can to defend New York’s rent laws and protect struggling tenants.”
James has even pursued direct legal action against landlords who violated rent stabilization protections. In August 2025, she sued Zara Realty for overcharging tenants in Queens, accusing the company of exploiting subsidy recipients, ignoring rent reduction orders, and pursuing unlawful evictions.
I have recently chronicled in The Gateway Pundit Letitia James’s fraudulent real estate and mortgage filings in which she obtained mortgages by misrepresenting her unit count.
Now, Letitia James’s failure to register with DHCR since 2001 undermines the integrity of New York City’s rent regulation as a whole.
Tenants lose the protections they are entitled to, including regulated leases, lawful rent raise limits, and the ability to challenge illegal increases. Meanwhile, the city loses accurate data on housing stock, frustrating policymakers’ ability to assess affordability.
Above all, the issue is about fairness and accountability. There is no higher standard for a person who holds the office of state Attorney General than upholding the rule of law, not just in words, but in deed.
New Yorkers can no longer stand for an Attorney General who abuses both the law and her constituents for personal financial gain.
For the integrity of her public office, Letitia James should resign her position as Attorney General, register her apartment building with DHCR, and make financial restitution to the many tenants whom she has badly mistreated for the past 24 years.
Home prices are falling all over the nation. Should we be cheering or should we be concerned? In this article, I am going to discuss two distinct scenarios. In one scenario, lower housing prices could be a really good thing for our economy. But if another scenario plays out, we could potentially be looking at a repeat of the chaotic days of 2008 and 2009.
Zero Hedge is reporting that home prices in the 20 biggest cities in the United States declined for a 4th consecutive month in June…
Home prices in America’s 20 largest cities fell for the 4th straight month in June (the latest data available from S&P CoreLogic’s Case-Shiller data released this morning).
The 0.25% MoM drop was larger than expected and dragged the YoY price growth down to +2.15% – the weakest since July 2023…
Four months in a row is definitely a trend.
And other data points are confirming that a significant turning point has arrived.
Home prices are falling in half of the nation’s largest markets, a new report reveals —sparking fears that a housing crash is looming.
Sellers are slashing prices at record rates to to lure hesitant buyers put off by soaring mortgage rates and economic uncertainty.
In July alone, 27.4 percent of listings had a price cut — the highest rate ever recorded in Zillow’s monthly data going back to 2018.
When more than a quarter of all listings have their prices cut in just one month, that is a tsunami.
If this continues, things are going to get pretty crazy.
Personally, I think that it is quite noteworthy that prices are being cut the fastest in areas that were “booming” not too long ago…
Florida and Texas, in particular, are home to former boomtowns where prices have fallen at the quickest rate over the past year.
Tampa prices are down 6.2 percent, Austin 6 percent, Miami 4.6 percent, Orlando 4.3 percent and Dallas 3.9 percent, according to Zillow.
‘Metros where price corrections are steepest are among those with the largest increase in inventory compared to before the pandemic,’ said Kara Ng, senior economist at Zillow.
Needless to say, we have seen this happen before.
And it didn’t end well.
According to the National Association of Home Builders, prices on new homes are being cut as well…
A closely watched gauge of builder sentiment tracked by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) fell in August to its lowest level in more than two-and-a-half years. More than a third of builders reported cutting prices by an average of 5 percent, while two-thirds offered incentives such as help with closing costs to attract wary buyers.
Many Americans that have been frozen out of the market are very excited that prices are starting to come down.
Homes have become so unaffordable in recent years, and one recent survey discovered that the average American is spending 42 percent of his or her annual income on housing costs…
Four in ten American parents say they don’t believe, or aren’t sure, their children will be able to afford to live in the same neighborhood where they grew up, according to a sobering new poll. In fact, the survey suggests that more than half of all Americans think they’re already paying too much for housing, with the average person reporting that 42% of their annual income goes toward housing costs.
The study of 1,000 Americans, conducted by Talker Research and commissioned by construction finance platform Built, highlights how concerns about housing affordability have become widespread. What was once viewed as a problem mainly affecting the poorest households is now seen as an issue facing a much broader slice of the population.
42 percent is a level that was never going to be sustainable.
It was inevitable that home prices would start to come down, and now it is happening.
If home prices decline in an orderly fashion, eventually more Americans will be able to purchase homes and that will be a great thing for the entire industry.
Let us hope that is how things play out.
But there is also another possible scenario.
If home prices in the United States crash hard, all of a sudden millions of Americans could find themselves underwater on their mortgages.
In such a scenario, large numbers of those homeowners could simply choose to walk away from their mortgages just like we witnessed in 2008 and 2009, and that would cause chaos for financial institutions all over the nation.
In addition, when prices are falling very rapidly it can cause hesitancy among potential buyers.
After all, who wants to buy a home when it might be worth $20,000 less next month?
And it appears that we are already starting to see some early warning signs. Home purchases in the U.S. fell through at “the highest July rate on record”, and I think that the perception that home prices are starting to crash is contributing to this…
15% of home purchases fell through last month—the highest July rate on record—as high homebuying costs made buyers skittish. Cancellations were most common in Texas and Florida.
Roughly 58,000 U.S. home-purchase agreements were canceled in July, equal to 15.3% of homes that went under contract last month. That’s up from 14.5% a year earlier and marks the highest July rate in records dating back to 2017.
This is beginning to feel so much like 2008 and 2009.
And just like in 2008 and 2009, employers are conducting large scale layoffs all over the nation.
It will be a turkey of a Thanksgiving for thousands of Paramount employees.
The media giant is targeting early November for what one insider called an epic “bloodbath” — a massive round of layoffs following its merger with Hollywood studio Skydance Media, The Post has learned.
Jeff Shell — the former NBCUniversal boss tapped by Skydance as Paramount’s new president — has told managers at the home to Paramount Pictures, CBS, MTV and Showtime to start compiling “kill lists,” a source with knowledge said.
So many people are losing good jobs right now.
If you still have your job, you should consider yourself to be blessed.
Bravo Brio Restaurants LLC, the parent of Bravo! Italian Kitchen and Brio Italian Grille, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in five years, citing the “acute financial distress” facing the industry.
The company filed in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Florida on Aug. 18, aiming to restructure its debt, streamline and reduce operational expenses, shed underperforming leases, close underperforming locations and attract a new investor.
The worse that economic conditions get, the faster home prices are likely to fall.
And the faster that home prices fall, the more likely it is that we will see a financial panic.
The housing bubble that we are facing today is far, far larger than the housing bubble that burst in 2008 and 2009.
If you can’t see the storm clouds looming on the horizon at this stage, I don’t know what to say.
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.
America’s housing market has been in a “deep freeze” for more than a year. The combination of very high interest rates and very high home prices has frozen millions of potential buyers out of the market. As a result, home sales have fallen to extremely depressed levels. When I first warned that we were heading into a housing market depression, a lot of people thought that I was exaggerating. But now the numbers show that is exactly what has happened. The following are 6 signs that the housing market depression in the United States is getting even worse.
#1 Sales of previously-owned homes in the U.S. just fell again. In fact, we just witnessed the slowest April that we have seen since 2009…
The spring housing market continues to struggle amid high interest rates and low consumer confidence.
Sales of previously owned homes in April declined 0.5% from March to a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 4 million units, according to the National Association of Realtors. That is the slowest April pace since 2009.
In 2009, there were 306 million people living in the United States.
Today, there are 340 million people living in the United States.
So the fact that we have fallen to a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Recession should deeply trouble all of us.
#2 Sales of previously-owned homes are falling even though active listings and new listings are both rising…
Active listings—the total number of homes for sale—last month hit the highest level since March 2020. They climbed 1.2% from a month earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis and rose 16.7% year over year.
New listings rose to the highest level since July 2022, increasing 1.3% month over month on a seasonally adjusted basis and 8.6% year over year—the largest annual gain since May 2024.
“A lot of people are selling their homes and downsizing because they’re worried about the economy,” said Meme Loggins, a Redfin Premier real estate agent in Portland, OR. “During the pandemic, everybody wanted more space for a home office or for their kids to run around, but now people are more focused on saving money. A lot of folks are getting rid of their investment properties, and I’m working with a couple of federal employees who are afraid of losing their jobs, so they’re selling their homes and thinking of moving into condos.”
#3 Most potential young homebuyers have been completely forced out of the market. Shockingly, the average age of a homebuyer in the U.S. has surged to an all-time record high of 56…
The average age of homebuyers in the U.S. has risen by six years since July 2023 — another sign that younger Americans are being priced out of the market due to escalating ownership costs.
The average age of homebuyers is now 56, up from 49 in 2023, according to the National Association of Realtors’ annual state-of-the-market report released Monday. That’s a historic high, up from an average age in the low-to-mid 40s in the early 2010s.
The median age of first-time buyers also rose from 35 to 38, while the share of first-timers dropped from 32% to 24% of all buyers for the year ending July 2024. That marks the lowest percentage since NAR started tracking the metric in 1981.
“In my two decades in the mortgage business, I’ve never seen a more difficult time for millennials to purchase a home,” says Bob Driscoll, senior vice president and director of residential lending at Massachusetts-based bank Rockland Trust.
This is a really bad thing for our society.
If most young couples cannot purchase a home until they are in their late thirties, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.
#5 Zillow is reporting that home values have fallen in 27 U.S. states so far this year. Is this the beginning of a price crash?…
Home values fell in half the country as the housing market faces a nationwide downturn.
According to Zillow, monthly home values dropped in 27 out of the 50 states this year. While Florida, Colorado, Washington, D.C., California and Washington state experienced the greatest value declines from March to April, the data could foreshadow a larger housing market shift.
#6 Meanwhile, employers continue to conduct mass layoffs all over the nation, and this is only going to increase pressure on the housing market. For example, Walmart just announced that it will be laying off about 1,500 very well paid corporate employees…
Walmart is laying off around 1,500 corporate employees across various departments within its home office in Bentonville, Arkansas, multiple reports say.
In a memo shared with associates on May 21, Walmart executives said the company is “reshaping” some of its teams in an effort to modernize its business and enhance “associate, customer and member experiences.”
Most of the U.S. population simply cannot afford to shell out several thousand dollars for a mortgage payment every month.
Either interest rates will have to come down or housing prices will.
And if housing prices start falling like we saw in 2008 and 2009, that will cause all sorts of problems for our major financial institutions.
So hopefully the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates before it is too late.
This is a very difficult time for real estate agents and homeowners that are trying to sell their homes. As I have documented below, sales of previously-owned homes in the United States just fell to the lowest level that we have seen during the month of March since 2009. Needless to say, in March 2009 we were in the middle of the Great Recession. Meanwhile, the number of unsold homes that are currently on the market just continues to pile up. This is likely to put an enormous amount of downward pressure on home prices in the months ahead.
Of course the collapse of U.S. home sales that we are now witnessing did not actually begin during the Trump administration.
In 2024, while Joe Biden was still in the White House, sales of previously-owned homes hit the lowest level in almost three decades…
The final figures for home sales last year are in, and the story is quite grim: 2024 was the slowest year for existing home sales in nearly three decades.
Existing-home sales last year totaled 4.06 million, the lowest on an annual basis since 1995, according to the National Association of REALTORS® on Friday.
A big factor behind the slowdown was elevated mortgage rates, which spent most of the year above 6.5%.
In 1995, 266 million people were living in the United States.
Today, 340 million people are living in the United States.
So on a per capita basis, things were even worse last year than they were in 1995.
And now it appears that our problems are accelerating. The number of previously-owned homes sold in March 2025 was even lower than it was in March 2024. In fact, we haven’t seen a March this bad since 2009…
Higher mortgage rates and concern over the broader economy are making for a weak start to the all-important spring housing market.
Sales of previously owned homes in March fell 5.9% from February to 4.02 million units on a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, according to the National Association of Realtors. That’s the slowest March sales pace since 2009.
The housing market is in a depressed state.
Nobody can deny that.
Sales are falling even though the number of homes being listed for sale has been rising at a very brisk rate…
Sales fell despite a sharp increase in available listings. At the end of March, there were 1.33 million units for sale, an increase of nearly 20% from March 2024.
The number of homes on the market in the Sunshine State rose 23% year over year to a record high in January amid a decrease in homebuying, an influx of newly built homes for sale, intensifying natural disasters, and surging insurance costs and HOA fees.
Florida ended January with 172,209 homes for sale—the highest inventory of any month in records dating back to 2012. That’s up 22.7% from a year earlier.
When supply is very high but demand is very low, that is inevitably going to force prices down.
And we are already starting to see condo prices decline precipitously in some areas of the country…
Condos are often the first and biggest movers in local housing markets. Prices exploded in many of them over the three years between mid-2019 and the peak in mid-2022, by 60% such as in Austin, TX; by 70% such as in Tampa, FL, and Chula Vista, San Diego County, CA; or by 80% such as in Mesa, AZ, and Lakeland, FL.
But this absurdity is now coming unglued, and prices have begun spiraling down. In Austin, which is on the forefront of this movement, prices have already given up nearly two-thirds of the 60% three-year gain. People who bought at the top in mid-2022 are 22% underwater. People who bought in mid-2019 are still sitting on a 20% gain that is shrinking.
Unless the Federal Reserve cuts interest rates, it is likely that home prices will decline significantly.
But of course the truth is that the Federal Reserve may soon be forced to start cutting rates because economic conditions are really starting to deteriorate.
Once rates go down, home prices could start rising again.
In this economic environment, there is just so much uncertainty.
But what we do know is that much of the population is really struggling right now.
In fact, a brand new survey that was just released found that approximately two-fifths of all U.S. adults under the age of 30 are barely getting by financially…
Young Americans are sounding the alarm about their finances, with roughly 2 in 5 people under 30 saying they’re either “struggling to make ends meet” or “getting by with limited security.”
That’s according to a survey of 2,096 adults ages 18 to 29, conducted by Harvard’s Institute of Politics between March 14 and 25, 2025. The survey found that among that age group, financial insecurity most affected women, Hispanics and those without college degrees.
Times are tough.
Four years of Bidenomics did an incredible amount of damage to our economy, and now consumers have far less discretionary income than they once did.
This is one of the reasons why so many restaurant chains are now in such deep financial trouble. This week, we learned that Jack in the Box will be closing “between 150 to 200 underperforming restaurants”…
Jack in the Box said Wednesday it is planning to close between 150 to 200 underperforming restaurants and could sell the Del Taco brand it acquired three years ago.
The San Diego-based chain, which currently operates and franchises 2,200 restaurants across 22 states, primarily on the West coast and Midwest, said it plans to close 80 to 120 locations by the end of 2025, with the “remaining underperforming restaurants closing thereafter based on respective franchise agreement termination dates.”
I wish that I had better news for you.
I really do.
But what we are facing is undeniable.
When the Federal Reserve started to raise interest rates, I warned that it would be absolutely devastating for the housing market.
And that is exactly what has transpired. March 2025 was the worst March for home sales since the Great Recession.
Hopefully the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. If they choose to do so, I will cheer.
But for now, we have got a real mess on our hands.
The collapse of U.S. home sales is here, and so far the Federal Reserve is choosing to sit on the sidelines and watch it happen.
My favorite economist is Thomas Sowell, who is famous for making the findings of academic economists accessible to ordinary people. I always joke to my friends that Thomas Sowell books are like Lay’s potato chips – you can’t read just one. Well, if you’ve read Dr. Sowell’s flagship book “Basic Economics”, you know that the early chapters are about how prices work in the economy.
So, I thought I would link to a VERY good article on price controls by Thomas Sowell. If you’ve never read him, I think you’ll really enjoy how me makes sense of the world for you. Learning how the world works is fun – now you see how to make good decisions.
Those old enough to remember the gasoline crisis of 1979 may recall sitting in long lines of cars at filling stations, waiting — sometimes for hours — to reach the pump. This was one of the most common consequences of price control throughout history — a shortage. Yet how many Americans ever made the connection between the price controls of the 1970s and the gasoline shortages of the 1970s? How many have noticed that they haven’t been waiting in gasoline lines since Ronald Reagan got rid of the price controls on oil?
Why do price controls cause shortages? There are basically two reasons: supply and demand.
People will not supply as much at a lower price as they will at a higher price. Some oil wells that will repay their costs and earn a profit when the price of oil is $25 a barrel will not cover their costs when the price is $15 a barrel. Some people who will rent out a bungalow in their backyard when rents are high will not bother when rents are low. Some farmers will give up farming when food prices are kept below the point where they can earn a living.
On the demand side, people will demand more when the price is kept artificially low by price controls. Before rent control laws were passed in Sweden, less than one-fourth of unmarried adults there had their own separate housing units, but afterwards more than half did. People buy more of anything that is cheaper. With more being demanded and less being supplied, shortages are inevitable, whether with housing, food, medical care or whatever.
It is not just the quantity supplied that declines under price controls. Quality also declines.
When there are more people trying to rent apartments than there are apartments for rent, landlords no longer have to maintain the appearance of their buildings. They do not need to pay for painting, repairs or maintenance as often as they did when there was no housing shortage and they needed to attract tenants.
Sometimes quality deterioration takes the form of waiting — not just cars waiting in line at filling stations, but also sick people remaining on waiting lists for months to get surgery or other medical treatment they need. Cheap medical care is one of the most expensive things there is.
So, if you force producers to charge less for what they are making, you might see a shortage, you might see a decline in quality, or you might see waiting lists.
Now, one of the examples that Sowell uses in his books is the example of rent control. This is when the government responds to people complaining that “the rent is too damn high” by forcing landlords to charge less. If you’re paying attention, then you can predict what will happen next. There will be a shortage of housing, because people with capital invest it in other places, rather than building and renting out places to live. Why? Because there is no money to be made by investing in renting properties when the government is pushing prices down.
So, let’s look at a reverse case, where price controls are removed. What would you expect to see when a country that has had rent control laws for a long time repeals it?
Well, Argentina just elected a new free market capitalist government, and they repealed their rent control laws.
Argentina’s recent repeal of rent control by libertarian President Javier Milei has led to a surge in housing supply, with the freedom to negotiate contracts, previously restricted, directly causing a drop in rental prices.
Milei, a self-described “anarcho-capitalist” known for his free-market approach, repealed the 2020 Rental Law, enacted by former leftist President Alberto Fernández, which had imposed restrictions on landlords and led to a significant decline in rental availability.
[…]For many locals, finding a new apartment had become “mission impossible.” But after the repeal, Buenos Aires saw a doubling of available rental units, and rental prices have stabilized. Under the new rules, landlords and tenants have more freedom to agree on lease terms. If the duration isn’t specified, it defaults to two years.
“We’ve seen a significant increase in rental apartments, and in some cases, we had to lower prices in pesos because of fewer viewings,” Soledad Balayan, head of the real-estate agency Maure Inmobiliaria, told Argentine newspaper La Nación.
Since Millei’s repeal of rent control laws took effect on December 29, the supply of rental housing in Buenos Aires has jumped by 195.23%, according to the Statistical Observatory of the Real Estate Market of the Real Estate College (CI).
If you guessed that repealing price controls on rental properties would reverse the shortage and cause an abundance of high quality properties, then you guessed right. This is how the world works! Naturally, as supply increases, consumers have a lot more choice, and they get the benefit of better quality at a lower price, because of increased competition among suppliers of rental properties.
The article notes that Joe Biden has proposed rent control at the federal level, which is exactly the kind of policy that you would epect his successor, Kamala Harris, to push if she is elected President. If you know someone who rents, maybe you should tell them about the consequences of rent control laws?
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.
If you live in a warm home and you have plenty of food to eat, you should consider yourself to be extremely blessed, because millions of others are deeply suffering right now. Most of the country is living paycheck to paycheck, the number of homeless Americans is higher than ever, demand at food banks is back to pandemic levels, and many victims of Hurricane Helene are living in very thin tents and are not getting the help that they need from the government. Children in the mountains of western North Carolina are literally shivering in the freezing cold all night long because their parents have nowhere else to go…
Nearly two months since Helene hit, hundreds of local families are left with nowhere to go.
Now some of these children are living in tents and cars as their parents try desperately to find a new home.
One of those parents is Dana Wunsch.
She showed News 13 the camper where she and her partner, along with her two daughters, are now staying.
We are taxed extremely hard, and one of the things that our tax dollars are supposed to pay for is disaster relief.
But while FEMA personnel in North Carolina are sleeping in heated trailers, many victims of Hurricane Helene are sleeping in extremely flimsy tents that look like they could literally be blown away at any moment.
Could you imagine having your kids sleep in a flimsy tent night after night?
And now snow has arrived in the mountains of western North Carolina…
Some survivors in western North Carolina have had to navigate their recovery efforts around potentially hazardous conditions as snowfall ranging from a light dusting up to about 2 feet has blanketed the area.
In addition to snow, those living in tents have also been facing very high winds…
Additionally, Helene survivors in western North Carolina will also have to manage with powerful winds. Wind gusts are expected to reach 30-40 mph in Asheville, while other areas may feel gusts of 50 mph or greater.
Of course Hurricane Helene is just one of the historic natural disasters that have hit our country here in 2024.
Overall, there have been 24 “billion dollar disasters” in the U.S. so far this year…
During the first 10 months of this year alone, 24 disasters have occurred in the U.S. with losses exceeding $1 billion, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information.
That’s roughly three times the average annual number since 1980.
Our nation just keeps getting pummeled over and over again.
Is there anyone out there that still believes that this is just a coincidence?
Meanwhile, the homelessness crisis in the U.S. just keeps getting worse, and there are millions more Americans that could soon be joining the ranks of the homeless.
If you can believe it, one recent survey discovered that 22 percent of all U.S. renters say that “all their regular income goes toward rent payments”…
22% of U.S. renters say all their regular income goes toward rent payments, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey. 19% of renters report they have worked a job they hated to afford rent.
Just over one in five (22%) U.S. renters say all of their regular income goes directly to paying their rent, according to a recent Redfin-commissioned survey.
Working a second job is also a fairly common way for renters to pay housing costs, with 20% of renters citing that method. Nearly the same share (19%) say they have worked a job they hated to afford rent.
If all of your income is going to paying rent, you are just one step away from being homeless.
Sadly, most of the country is just barely scraping by from month to month at this point.
According to Bank of America, from 2019 to 2024 there was a 10 percent jump in those that are living paycheck to paycheck…
The share of U.S. households living paycheck to paycheck has grown across all income brackets over the past five years, according to a new study from the Bank of America Institute.
A new analysis released by the think tank on Tuesday found that more than a quarter of Americans, 26%, have necessary expenses that chew up more than 95% of their takehome pay, and nearly a third, 30%, of households spend upwards of 90% of their income on critical bills like groceries, housing, utilities, gas, insurance and child care.
The data showed a 10% increase in those living paycheck to paycheck in 2024 compared to 2019.
Economic pain is all around us, and the cost of living just continues to go even higher.
Once upon a time, if you were making $50,000 a year you were doing well.
But now the average American believes that it takes an income of $270,000 a year in order to be “financially successful”…
The average American thinks a salary of just over $270,000 a year qualifies them as “financially successful,” but there are huge disparities between generations, according to a new study.
Needless to say, the vast majority of the population does not make that sort of money.
Instead, the vast majority of us are just trying to survive.
Unfortunately, the outlook for the year ahead is not good because our economic momentum is heading in the wrong direction very rapidly.
In fact, it is being reported that the Conference Board’s index of leading economic indicators has fallen for eight months in a row…
Weakness in the housing market and manufacturing, as well as higher jobless claims, pulled the leading indicators for the U.S. economy down for the eighth consecutive month in October.
The Conference Board said its index of leading indicators dropped 0.3 percent last month. The Conference Board pointed out that over the six-month period between April and October 2024, the index declined by 2.2 percent, slightly more than its two percent decline over the previous six-month period, suggesting that drags on the U.S. economy picked up.
If we are seeing such tremendous economic suffering now, what will conditions be like if the U.S. economy continues to deteriorate?
For decades, we have been living a debt-fueled standard of living that is way beyond what we have actually earned.
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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