The Economic Collapse

The Hottest 4th Of July Ever Could Set More Than 300 New Records And The U.S. Wheat Harvest Is Expected To Be The Smallest In 150 Years

Michael — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 22:34:13 +0000

It is supposed to be hot on the 4th of July, but it isn’t supposed to be this hot. Temperatures will be 20 to 30 degrees above average in much of the eastern half of the country. I warned a few days ago that we were going to experience a “4th of July furnace”, and meteorologists are telling us that hundreds of new records could be established. Unfortunately, this entire summer is going to be extremely hot. The “Godzilla El Niño” that has now begun is going to mean the we will experience unusually hot weather, epic storms and severe droughts in key agricultural areas throughout the second half of this year. And that is really bad news, because it is being projected that the amount of wheat produced in the U.S. this year will be the lowest since 1877.

An absolutely gigantic heat dome is going to relentlessly bake half of the nation over the next few days, and CBS News is reporting that “more than 300 records are expected to be set by Saturday”…

This July Fourth could be the hottest on record for millions of Americans as a massive heat wave traps more than half of the United States under a heat dome through the holiday weekend.

Dangerously high temperatures continued to ramp up Thursday from the Midwest to the East Coast, forecasters said. Between daily high temperatures and warm overnight lows — which won’t be low enough to offer much relief — more than 300 records are expected to be set by Saturday.

That is nuts.

When is the last time that we saw over 300 records get set on the 4th of July?

The latest National Weather Service forecast says that in some areas high temperatures will go as high as 105 degrees and the heat index will go as high as 115 degrees…

If you live on the east coast, please take this heat wave very seriously.

It is going to be a monster.

Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston are all expected to hit triple digits…

Washington, D.C., is expected to experience its hottest Fourth of July on record, with temperatures reaching 101 degrees. From Thursday through Saturday, the city is forecast to endure its hottest three-day stretch of the year. Philadelphia could reach 104 degrees on Friday, while New York and Boston are also expected to hit 100 degrees.

I think that it is noteworthy that this will be happening at the exact moment when America’s 250th birthday will be celebrated in our nation’s capital.

According to the Washington Post, Washington D.C. will be among “the top 1.1 percent of the planet’s hottest places on Friday”…

What does D.C. have in common with desolate stretches of Africa’s Sahara, deserts in the Middle East and China’s Gobi Desert?

It has lots of hot air, of course.

So much hot air, in fact, that D.C. will find itself in the top 1.1 percent of the planet’s hottest places on Friday, when high temperatures will soar toward 105 degrees.

That is certainly not normal.

In New York, mobile medical vans that contain nurses and paramedics will be roaming the city looking for people to help…

For the first time, New York City is deploying vans staffed with nurses and paramedics who will hand out water, electrolytes and sunscreen, CBS News New York reported. They will also perform wellness checks, transport people to cooling centers and make in-home visits to vulnerable residents. The city is also opening cooling centers throughout the five boroughs.

This crisis will be a real test for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

He is encouraging New Yorkers to set their air conditioning at 78 degrees to help conserve power…

Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani has ignited a GOP firestorm after urging residents to set their air conditioners to a certain temperature to help prevent strain on the city’s power grid.

It comes as New York City braces for a sweltering Fourth of July weekend with temperatures expected to soar into the triple digits.

In a post on X, Mamdani encouraged New Yorkers and business owners to conserve electricity as demand for cooling surges.

‘New York: it’s hot out there, and the power grid is working overtime to keep us cool. Set your AC to 78 degrees, turn off lights/electronics you’re not using, and unplug what you can.’

Needless to say, this suggestion is not going over very well, and a lot of New Yorkers plan to ignore it entirely.

But without a doubt there is going to be enormous stress on our power grids, and an emergency has already been declared for the largest power grid in the country…

With 160 million people in 30 states under alert for extreme temperatures, the U.S. Department of Energy has declared an emergency as a heat wave bears down on a huge part of the nation’s electrical grid.

U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright issued an Energy Emergency Alert, directing officials of the biggest electrical grid, PJM Interconnections in the Mid-Atlantic region, to take action to prevent blackouts and ensure essential operations like hospitals are fully functioning during the heat wave.

“Maintaining affordable, reliable, and secure power in the PJM service territory is non-negotiable,” Wright said in a statement on Tuesday.

When the 4th of July weekend is finally over, the focus will shift to the western half of the nation.

A new heat dome is coming, and it will afflict areas that are already being ravaged by drought and wildfires…

A new heat dome will build between the Rockies and the Pacific coast.

As the jet stream bulges northward in the West, an area of high pressure will build over the region. The setup will allow temperatures to trend upward initially from several degrees Fahrenheit next week to 10-20 degrees above the 30-year average by the middle of July.

The heat dome will bring the highest temperatures of the season so far — even eclipsing the extreme marks set during the spring heat waves in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Palm Springs, California.

When conditions are unusually hot, ticks love it.

And we are being told that this tick season “is expected to be worse than usual”…

This summer tick season is expected to be worse than usual. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports the highest rate of emergency room visits from tick bites since 2017 across most of the country.

“It’s definitely concerning to see new ticks in new areas and then diseases that follow,” said Rebecca Osborn, an epidemiologist for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

In a previous article, I discussed the fact that serious diseases that are carried by ticks are spreading like wildfire in many areas of the country.

This year, authorities are particularly concerned about alpha-gal syndrome and the Powassan virus…

“So, warmer temperatures can bring ticks into new areas,” Osborn said.

One type of tick health officials are keeping an eye out for is the lone star tick. It can carry alpha-gal, which can create a red meat allergy in infected people.

They’re also tracking Powassan, a virus that attacks the central nervous system and can lead to memory loss, difficulty speaking and seizures.

Meanwhile, the heat is also having a huge impact on America’s farmers.

Earlier today, I was astounded to learn that the amount of wheat that will be harvested in the United States this year is expected to be the lowest since 1877…

America is expected to harvest its lowest acreage of wheat since 1877, due to drought, scorched crops, high input costs and uncertainty in export markets.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Agricultural Statistics Service released estimates on June 30 that the total area of all wheat planted was 42.7 million acres in 2026, down six percent from the previous year. This was also 1 million acres below the agency’s March forecasts.

In 1877, there were 40 million people living in the United States.

Today, there are 342 million people living in the United States.

We are supposed to be one of the breadbaskets of the world, but the past 12 months have been extremely warm and exceedingly dry…

Over the past year, the U.S. has experienced unusually warm conditions—May 2025 to April 2026 marked the warmest 12-month period on record for America, according to NOAA, and many of the country’s largest wheat farming states were hit with severe drought. Droughts are known to significantly reduce crop yields as the heat and lack of water can damage crops and stunt their growth.

Romulo Lollato, a wheat specialist at Kansas State University, told news outlet High Plains Journal that a lot of the wheat in Kansas—one of the state’s largest wheat producers, alongside Oklahoma and Texas—was “very short,” which he said was a “sign of drought stress.”

Now a “Super El Niño” is here, and the outlook for the months ahead is not promising at all.

For more than a decade I have been warning about so many of the things that are playing out right in front of our eyes right now.

We are witnessing a simultaneous confluence of catastrophic events that is unprecedented in our history.

A “perfect storm” is now upon us, and it is only going to intensify throughout the remainder of this year and beyond.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing. You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter. Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites. These are such troubled times, and people need hope. John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

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Traffic Through The Strait Of Hormuz Is Way Below Pre-War Levels As Trump Is Briefed On Options For “All-Out War”

Michael — Wed, 01 Jul 2026 20:11:44 +0000

The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is not even close to being resolved, and global oil supplies continue to get tighter and tighter. The world has been running an “oil deficit” for months, and we have been able to do that by running down commercial oil inventories and strategic national reserves. There was hope that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would return to pre-war levels before things got really hairy, but that isn’t happening. In fact, in recent days only about 30 to 40 commercial vessels have been traveling through the Strait each day. Before the war, the average was about 120 to 130 commercial vessels per day. The vast majority of the commercial vessels that have been getting through the Strait have been heading away from the Persian Gulf. Very few are headed into the Persian Gulf for understandable reasons. So once the backlog of commercial vessels that have been trapped in the Persian Gulf is finally eliminated, the level of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will likely drop to depressingly low levels.

So we should be thankful that the price of oil has dropped a bit lower for now, but it won’t stay that way.

And that will especially be true if war with Iran fully erupts again.

We have seen fighting flare up multiple times in recent weeks, and it certainly wouldn’t take much to push things over the edge.

On Wednesday, it was being reported that President Trump has been briefed on options for “a return to all-out war with Iran”…

President Trump has weighed a return to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine on more strikes, but has decided to stick with diplomatic talks for now, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussion.

The conversations have centered on whether the U.S. should abandon negotiations and resume full-scale attacks on Iran, the officials said, a move some of them describe as “finishing the job.” While not making a final decision, Trump has told aides he believes another round of full-scale attacks could derail diplomacy and hurt Washington’s chances of ultimately dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

I was quite surprised when I read that.

I didn’t think that Trump and his team had an appetite for more conflict right now.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi just used some very strong language in an extremely inflammatory social media post…

The terms of the Islamabad MoU are crystal clear and public for all to see.

POTUS has committed the U.S. to muzzling its pets in Tel Aviv. If they ignore their master, Iran will school them.

Any threat against our People and Leadership will receive Immediate Powerful Response.

This is a threat to attack Israel.

The Iranians are demanding that the Israelis must withdraw from Lebanon, but the Israelis continue to tell us that this will simply not happen…

Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday that forces would remain “indefinitely” in so-called security zones established in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

“The IDF will not withdraw and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza – indefinitely – to protect our residents and communities from jihadist elements,” Israel Katz said.

“We are fighting to change reality and bring security to the residents of the north,” he added, referring to communities along Israel’s border with Lebanon from which thousands of people have been evacuated due to the threat posed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The Israelis are absolutely determined to stop the bombardment of their northern communities.

Since early March, Hezbollah has fired “more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones” into Israeli territory…

Israeli officials say Hezbollah has launched more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones into Israel since early March while embedding military infrastructure inside civilian areas and Christian villages in southern Lebanon.

The claims were made by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar during MUNI EXPO in Tel Aviv as Israel, Lebanon and the United States continue negotiations aimed at securing Hezbollah’s disarmament and a lasting peace agreement.

“Since March alone, Hezbollah has launched more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanese territory into Israel,” Sa’ar said. “What country can accept this and not act to restore security to its citizens?”

It is inevitable that Hezbollah will fire more rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

In response, Israel will bomb southern Beirut again.

The Iranians have already told us that if Israel does that again they will fire ballistic missiles at Israel.

And once that occurs, the IDF will strike back extremely hard.

I don’t know what those that are convinced that there will be peace in the Middle East are smoking, but it must be really strong.

When more fighting erupts in the Middle East, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will drop lower than it is now.

And that is very bad news, because even though the “Memorandum of Understanding” was signed a couple of weeks ago, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz continues to remain at very low levels…

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz began to rebound Monday following weekend tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran.

Reports from the maritime tracking firm Kpler said 40 vessels passed through the critical waterway on Monday, while 24 ships transited the strait on Sunday in addition to 39 ships on Saturday.

Almost all of the commercial vessels that are passing through the Strait are headed out.

Very few are headed in.

And many of the ships that are actually headed in are Iranian.

For now, most shipping companies continue to treat the Strait of Hormuz “as a war zone”…

Unions and shipping employers said in a statement Wednesday they will continue to designate the Strait of Hormuz as a war zone until at least July 9, maintaining double pay for seafarers in the area despite a fragile truce between the U.S. and Iran.

The status only covers ships whose companies are signatories of the International Bargaining Forum’s labor agreements — around 15,000 vessels worldwide, according to the IBF.

Seafarers covered by the agreement working on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters get paid double, and have the right to refuse to sail into the area and request repatriation at the company’s expense, increasing costs for shipping companies.

This is really bad news for the global economy.

On top of everything else, Ukraine’s endless bombardment of Russian oil facilities has caused gasoline shortages all over Russia…

Fuel shortages across Russia have triggered a new political challenge for President Vladimir Putin, as a relentless Ukrainian drone campaign aimed at the country’s oil refineries has brought the war home for most ordinary Russians.

While Ukraine has targeted Russian energy facilities for years, the quantity and firepower of Ukrainian drones and missiles have risen. This has allowed Kyiv to hit refineries as far as Tyumen, 1,200 miles away in Siberia, and permitted the spectacular raid that broke through thick layers of air defenses and destroyed Moscow’s main refinery on June 18, the turning point of the current crisis.

Some 28% of Russia’s refining capacity was offline as of June 20, estimated Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft, a large Russian oil company, and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

Russia is one of the largest oil producers on the entire planet.

But now the Russians are being forced to actually import fuel thanks to Ukraine.

Everything that I have shared in this article means that global supplies of oil are going to continue to become tighter and tighter in the weeks and months ahead.

In other words, the stage is being set for a severe global energy crisis and a mammoth global economic meltdown.

For the moment, many investors are still feeling very optimistic about things, but it won’t be too long before they are brutally blindsided by reality.

The post Traffic Through The Strait Of Hormuz Is Way Below Pre-War Levels As Trump Is Briefed On Options For “All-Out War” appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

The AI Jobs Apocalypse Has Begun: We Are Witnessing An Unprecedented Wave Of AI-Related Layoffs In 2026

Michael — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 19:23:05 +0000

We all knew that this would be coming. In 2026, the rate of AI-related layoffs has greatly accelerated, and that means that large numbers of good paying jobs are suddenly disappearing from the economy. This is occurring when we are already facing one major crisis after another, and so the timing could not be worse. Many young people specifically chose a major in college that would prepare them for positions in the tech industry because those were supposed to be the jobs of the future. Unfortunately, the AI jobs apocalypse is wiping out those jobs the fastest.

Let me give you some cold, hard numbers that will clearly demonstrate what I am talking about.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of announced job cuts in the United States last month was the highest that we have seen during the month of May since the peak of the last pandemic…

U.S.-based employers announced 97,006 job cuts in May, up 16% from the 83,387 job cuts recorded in April, and up 3% from the 93,816 announced in the same month last year, according to a report released Thursday from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

May’s total is the highest for the month since 2020, when 397,016 job cuts were recorded in May at the height of the pandemic. It also marks the third straight month that cuts have risen, climbing from 48,307 in February to 97,006 in May.

There is no way to spin those numbers to make them look good.

And for the third month in a row, artificial intelligence accounted for more layoffs than any other reason…

In May, Artificial Intelligence (AI) led all reasons for job cuts for the third month in a row, with 38,579 announced cuts. It is the highest monthly total ever recorded for the reason since Challenger began tracking it in 2023, and it accounted for 40% of all cuts announced in May — up from just 7% in January, 25% in March, and 26% in April. For the year, AI has been cited in 87,714 cuts, or 22% of all 2026 layoffs, already far surpassing the 54,836 attributed to the reason in all of 2025.

Read that last sentence again.

The number of AI-related layoffs in 2026 has already surpassed the grand total of AI-related layoffs for the entire year of 2025.

That is how fast things are now moving.

Needless to say, the tech industry is being hit the hardest.

At this point, tech layoffs are running 44 percent faster than last year…

So far this year, there have been an estimated 363 layoffs at tech companies this year, affecting nearly 150,000 people — a pace of about 974 people per day, 44% faster than last year — according to TrueUp, a tech job board and recruiting platform that also runs one of the most widely cited tech layoff trackers.

The trend appears to be accelerating. Tech layoffs hit their highest single month in two years last month, with nearly 40,000 cuts, and AI was the most-cited reason for layoffs across every industry for the third month running, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

There is no long-term loyalty in the tech industry anymore.

The moment that AI can do your work more efficiently than you can, you are in danger of being let go.

Some of you out there have personally experienced this.

During the past six months, we have seen some of the biggest names in tech radically transform their workforces…

Several major tech companies have announced significant workforce reductions this year while simultaneously ramping up investments in artificial intelligence.

Oracle disclosed recently that it has reduced its workforce by roughly 21,000 employees (4) over the past year. Meanwhile, Google has continued trimming staff (5) through performance reviews, buyout programs and reorganizations, with outside estimates suggesting between 1,500 and 3,000 engineering roles have been eliminated in 2026.

Meta also laid off roughly 8,000 employees earlier this year while shifting about 7,000 workers into AI-focused roles, highlighting how some companies are cutting jobs in certain areas while continuing to invest heavily in artificial intelligence.

This is just the beginning.

And it is going to spread to every industry.

If you can believe it, a major tobacco company just announced that it is planning to “cut about 20% of its workforce as it pursues an AI-driven ‌overhaul”…

British American Tobacco (BATS.L), opens new tab plans to cut about 20% of its workforce as it pursues an AI-driven ‌overhaul to lower costs and lift profits amid regulatory challenges and delayed launches.

The maker of Lucky Strike and Dunhill cigarettes said on Monday it would cut around 5,500 jobs and move roughly 3,500 roles to third-party firms, including Accenture . The restructuring would affect around 9,000 employees in total, but excludes the U.S., the company’s biggest market.

BitGo is another firm that is ruthlessly firing employees for AI-related reasons…

BitGo has joined the growing ranks of crypto firms slashing staff numbers as part of a pivot to AI.

The crypto custody and infrastructure company is cutting nearly 15% of its workforce, co-founder and CEO Mike Belshe said Thursday in a tweet that BitGo also filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

A lot of the workers that are hitting the bricks are relatively young.

In the past, it was fairly easy to find another tech industry job, but now that has completely changed.

In fact, it has become so difficult to find a tech job these days that many job seekers have resorted to “spraying and praying”…

To survive this nightmarish job market, candidates are now “spraying and praying,” as one career coach described it — or paying resume services to blast out thousands of CVs per day to game the system and land a gig. However, according to experts in the tech industry who spoke with SFGATE, this is only creating a vicious cycle of inefficiency that hurts both workers and companies.

According to a recent survey conducted by Robert Half, a Bay Area talent and business solutions firm, over 50% of hiring managers said that AI-generated resumes are “flooding the market,” making it difficult to weed out candidates who are actually qualified for roles. To combat this torrent of resumes, 33% of hiring managers are now using AI-detection tools and spending more time training employees on how to spot ones that feel authentic.

“Many hiring managers tell us it’s becoming harder to distinguish between applicants because AI-generated resumes often use similar language, formatting and keywords,” Terah Brossart Daniels, a technology jobs expert with Robert Half, said. “Another issue is authenticity. A resume may look impressive on paper, but employers are spending more time validating whether a candidate’s experience, accomplishments and technical skills hold up throughout the interview process.”

If conditions are this bad now, what will the employment market look like once things really start falling apart in this country?

We were promised that AI would unleash a new golden age of peace and prosperity for our society.

Obviously that is not what is actually happening.

AI technology will continue to advance at an exponential rate, and soon millions more human workers will become obsolete.

This story is not going to end well, but most of you have already figured that out.

The post The AI Jobs Apocalypse Has Begun: We Are Witnessing An Unprecedented Wave Of AI-Related Layoffs In 2026 appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

The Earthquakes Just Won’t Stop: The New Madrid Fault And The Cascadia Subduction Zone Both Get Shaken As The Warnings Continue

Michael — Mon, 29 Jun 2026 20:18:31 +0000

How much shaking is it going to take before most of the population starts paying attention? The ground underneath our feet just keeps shaking. Nobody can deny this. As you will see below, there has been a long list of large earthquakes that have hit our planet over the past week, and this is something that I have been writing about a lot in recent days. What we are experiencing is not normal, and many believe that all of this shaking is just a preview of what is to come.

On Monday morning, a magnitude 5.5 earthquake suddenly struck approximately 140 miles off the coast of Oregon…

The Pacific’s notorious ‘Ring of Fire’ has delivered another jolt amid a recent burst of seismic activity around the globe’s most earthquake-prone region. The US Geological Survey detected a magnitude 5.5 earthquake roughly 140 miles west of the Oregon coast at around 7:35am ET Monday. The earthquake struck deep beneath the Pacific Ocean and there were no immediate reports of damage or injuries. No tsunami warning was issued, although residents in Salem and Rockaway Beach reported feeling the shaking.

The reason why this was such a noteworthy quake is because it occurred along the Cascadia Subduction Zone…

The quake occurred along a tectonically active stretch of the Pacific coastline, part of the broader Cascadia Subduction Zone known for producing both frequent moderate events and the potential for far larger ones.

This is one of the most dangerous fault zones in the entire world.

It sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, and it has the potential to cause seismic events of cataclysmic proportions.

Scientists assure us that it is just a matter of time before a gigantic earthquake occurs along the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and I have repeatedly warned about what this will mean for those living near the coasts of Oregon and Washington once this happens…

Someday, an absolutely gigantic earthquake along the Cascadia Subduction Zone will send a colossal wall of water toward the west coast of the United States. We are talking about a disaster that would be greater than anything we have ever experienced in the entire history of our country so far, and scientists are openly warning us that it is just a matter of time before such a disaster happens. It is being projected that the wall of water could be up to 100 feet tall, and it will cause extreme devastation. Tall buildings will be instantly flattened, vehicles will be picked up and tossed around like toys, and countless numbers of people will instantly go to their watery graves. If you are directly in the path of such a tsunami, there will be no escape.

Do you remember the huge tsunami that hit Japan in 2011?

The tsunami that will eventually hit the west coast will absolutely dwarf that.

This latest earthquake off the coast of Oregon comes just days after a magnitude 5.6 earthquake hit Northern California and a pair of very large earthquakes caused catastrophic damage in Venezuela…

This comes after a 5.6 magnitude earthquake rattled Northern California and major back-to-back earthquakes struck Venezuela last Wednesday.

Days later, heightened seismic activity across the Pacific Ring of Fire brought earthquakes to Japan, the Philippines, and Nicaragua on Friday.

It is almost as if something has just suddenly snapped.

Over the past 7 days, we have witnessed a very long list of large earthquakes all over the world…

That is a stunning list.

And the shaking just won’t stop.

In fact, Venezuela just got hit by some more very big aftershocks…

Strong aftershocks have struck Venezuela’s capital as rescuers continue to search for tens of thousands of civilians who are still missing in the aftermath of two violent earthquakes.

The aftershock was felt shortly after 7.00am (11.00am GMT) in Caracas and La Guaira on Monday, as the search continues for survivors of last Wednesday’s quakes that have already claimed at least 1,450 lives.

It would be difficult to overstate the scale of the tragedy that we are witnessing in Venezuela.

At this stage, nearly 70,000 people have been reported missing…

The death toll from Venezuela’s twin earthquakes has risen to 1,430, with families reporting at least 68,900 people missing. The toll continued to climb even after the 72-hour window for rescuing survivors alive closed Saturday, while anger over the government’s response intensified in some of the hardest-hit areas.

I have a feeling that the vast majority of those that have been reported missing were killed by the earthquakes.

Many of them will never be found.

As our planet continues to become even more unstable, there will be even larger earthquakes.

One of the biggest danger zones is right in the middle of the United States, and very early on Monday a magnitude 3.5 earthquake rattled southern Illinois…

According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), a magnitude 3.5 earthquake registered at 1:05 a.m. in northwest Edwards County, just south of the Richland County line.

This is close to the Illinois-Indiana border.

USGS reports the epicenter was 3.7 miles northeast of West Salem and measured 11.8 miles deep.

I asked Google if West Salem is close to the New Madrid Fault Zone, and this is what I was told…

Yes, West Salem, Illinois, is in a region considered at risk from the New Madrid Seismic Zone and the nearby Wabash Valley Seismic Zone.

I believe that this was another warning.

This earthquake caused so much shaking that it was actually felt in St. Louis and Louisville…

So far, the USGS says hundreds of people have reported feeling shaking across a wide stretch as far west as St. Louis, Missouri, as north as Effingham, Illinois, as south as Evansville, Indiana and as east as Louisville, Kentucky.

The largest earthquakes in the history of the continental United States occurred along the New Madrid Fault Zone.

Now the New Madrid Fault Zone is waking up again.

One of these days, a colossal earthquake will literally rip the country in half from north to south. The scar that will be created in the middle of the nation will be so deep that the Great Lakes will actually flow into the Gulf of Mexico. Since all of the existing bridges will be destroyed, you will actually need to take a boat ride or a flight if you want to travel from the eastern half of the country to the western half of the country.

But most of the population is not alarmed by the shaking that we are currently witnessing at all.

They have been assured that all of this shaking is just temporary and that things will soon return to normal.

Of course the truth is that there will be no return to normal.

Chaos is erupting all over the planet, and I believe that the second half of this year will be even more chaotic than the first half.

The post The Earthquakes Just Won’t Stop: The New Madrid Fault And The Cascadia Subduction Zone Both Get Shaken As The Warnings Continue appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

We Are Entering The Most Dangerous Chapter Of World War III That We Have Experienced So Far As The Agreement With Iran Collapses

Michael — Sun, 28 Jun 2026 20:55:47 +0000

A lot of people out there still don’t realize that we are literally watching World War III play out right in front of our eyes. The war between Russia and Ukraine is already longer than World War I was, and every single ceasefire in the Middle East that has been agreed to since October 7th, 2023 has ultimately collapsed. Just a couple of weeks ago, the world was celebrating because the U.S. had signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Iran and we were being told that we were finally going to have permanent peace in the Middle East. So how did that work out? I feel like a broken record when I keep saying that there isn’t going to be peace in the Middle East, but it is the truth.

At the end of last week, the Iranians attacked a commercial vessel that was traveling through the Strait of Hormuz using a route that they did not authorize, and the U.S. responded by bombing several Iranian military targets. This is something that I covered in an article for my core supporters on Friday.

Then on Saturday, the same cycle repeated again.

Iran attacked another commercial vessel that was attempting to slip through the Strait of Hormuz along an “unauthorized” route, and in response the U.S. conducted an even larger wave of strikes…

U.S. Central Command said its forces had carried out the new strikes after a Panama-flagged tanker was attacked by an Iranian drone on Saturday.

“Iran was given a chance to honor the ceasefire agreement but elected not to,” Central Command said in a statement.

U.S. strikes were “in direct response to continued Iranian aggression against commercial shipping” and targeted Iranian military surveillance, communications, air defence, drone storage and mine-laying facilities, it said.

Following that wave of strikes, President Trump warned that there “may come a point” when the U.S. must hit Iran so hard that it “will no longer exist”…

“United States aircraft just struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations, and coastal radar sites, for violating the Cease Fire Agreement, AGAIN!” Mr. Trump said in a Truth Social post.

The president issued an aggressive threat in the post, saying it was possible Iran “may never learn.”

“There may come a point when we are no longer able to be reasonable, and will be forced to militarily complete the job that we very successfully started,” the president said. “If that happens, the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist!”

That is very strong language.

Needless to say, conventional weapons would not be able to accomplish that goal.

In response to the latest wave of U.S. strikes, the IRGC launched missiles and drones at U.S. facilities in Kuwait and Bahrain…

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said in a statement its navy and air forces had launched missile and drone operations targeting U.S. military sites in Kuwait and Bahrain.

The Guards said U.S. strikes had violated the ceasefire and “will result in the complete halt of all diplomatic processes”, state-run Press TV said. The IRGC navy command said American bases in the region “will experience hell in the coming days”.

Most of the missiles and drones were intercepted, but significant damage was done to a residential building in Bahrain.

This is not what a ceasefire is supposed to look like.

I know that there was so much hope that the negotiations which were initiated once the Memorandum of Understanding was signed would finally resolve the central issues that the U.S. and Iran have been fighting about, but those negotiations have now been put on hold…

Talks to end the U.S. war with Iran are on hold after the U.S. struck Iranian military targets in retaliation for Tehran’s latest strikes on shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz.

A Pakistani source involved in the negotiations to settle the conflict between the U.S. and Iran told MS NOW that while the talks are now on hold, all sides are maintaining representatives in Switzerland to restart discussions when given the go-ahead.

The source did not make clear to MS NOW which side decided to pause negotiations.

Sadly, the reality of the matter is that these negotiations were doomed anyway.

Iran is never going to make the nuclear concessions that the Trump administration is seeking.

And Iran is never going to agree to allow commercial traffic to flow freely through the Strait of Hormuz the way that it did before the war…

The Iranian parliament’s national security committee spokesperson on Sunday said the Strait of Hormuz would not return to its pre-war state and that other countries would have no choice but to comply with Iran’s orders in the waterway.

“We firmly support the action of the ever-victorious Guards in a crushing confrontation with the American enemy and in asserting Iranian sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz,” Ebrahim Rezaei wrote on X. “The Strait of Hormuz will not return to its previous state, and others have no choice but to comply with Iran’s orders in the strait.”

The crisis in the Middle East is not going to have a happy ending.

I believe that we will witness some absolutely shocking escalations in the months ahead, and there are some Iranians that are convinced that now is the time to greatly accelerate their nuclear program…

Iran has “no choice” but to develop a nuclear bomb, a media outlet linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said — the latest threat to the peace deal.

The article, titled “No choice but to build the atomic bomb,” claims that Iran must negotiate with its enemies from a position of strength, and was published by Iranian state news outlet Fars on Sunday.

“To achieve the peace and calm that Iran needs, it must absolutely reach nuclear deterrence to ensure that the rest of the issues can be resolved through negotiation,” thunders the piece, before comparing Iran’s situation with the US to that of China in the 1970s.

Of course the Iranians are also furious about the fighting that has been going on in Lebanon.

The latest ceasefire with Hezbollah has already collapsed, and the IDF conducted even more strikes in Lebanon on Sunday…

Israel renewed its strikes on Lebanon on Sunday, Lebanese state media reported, two days after an agreement was signed by the two countries, which a Hezbollah lawmaker warned would lead to “internal conflict”.

The strikes come a day after one person was killed in an Israeli strike on the south, according to Lebanon’s health ministry, with the Israeli military saying it targeted Hezbollah members near its self-proclaimed “security zone”, which reaches 10 kilometres (6 miles) into Lebanon.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency reported several strikes on Sunday.

There will never be permanent peace between Israel and Hezbollah.

Anyone that believes otherwise is just being delusional.

Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine just continues to intensify.

In recent days, the Ukrainians have been conducting a series of stunning long-range attacks deep inside Russian territory…

Ukraine kept up its heavy drone assault on Russia, setting fire to a major oil refinery in the south and killing at least two people, Russian authorities said Sunday, as President Vladimir Putin acknowledged his country is going through a “difficult period.”

Ukraine has markedly stepped up its long-range attacks on Russian military industries and energy facilities in recent months, aiming to cut Moscow’s revenue for its invasion — now in its fifth year — and make Russians feel the consequences.

Russian leaders are running out of patience, and it would not surprise me at all if they decide to use tactical nukes at some point.

But for now, they continue to absolutely pummel Ukrainian cities with conventional weapons…

President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on Saturday, June 27, that Russian forces deployed approximately 1,400 attack drones, 1,500 guided aerial bombs, and 19 missiles of various types, including ballistic missiles, against Ukraine over the past week.

In a statement published on Telegram, Zelensky noted that 15 Ukrainian regions were subjected to Russian attacks during the seven-day period. He highlighted that the cities of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Sumy faced near-daily bombardment.

No matter how much the politicians have talked about peace, nothing has been able to stop the war in Ukraine.

And no matter how much the politicians have talked about peace, nothing has been able to stop the war in the Middle East.

We really are living at a time of “wars and rumors of wars”, and the truth is that this is just the beginning.

We are going to witness death and destruction on a scale that most people cannot imagine, and the world is simply not prepared for what is coming next.

The post We Are Entering The Most Dangerous Chapter Of World War III That We Have Experienced So Far As The Agreement With Iran Collapses appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Traffic Through The Strait Of Hormuz Is Not Going To Return To Normal, And That Has Enormous Implications For The Whole World

Michael — Thu, 25 Jun 2026 19:21:22 +0000

The Iranians have never wavered from their position that they intend to control traffic through the Strait of Hormuz permanently. They just underscored this point by launching an attack on a cargo vessel near the coast of Oman. During the 60 day negotiation window with the United States, Iran is not charging commercial vessels to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, but they are insisting that coordination with the Iranian military is mandatory. Any travel that does not go through “designated corridors” is strictly prohibited…

The IRGC Navy said that only the shipping routes designated by Iran are permitted for passage, and that coordination with Iranian forces via the designated communication channel is mandatory, according to Iranian local media.

“Navigation outside these routes is highly dangerous and prohibited, and we warn all vessels to strictly avoid any movement outside the designated corridors,” the IRGC Navy said, according to the report.

The warning came after a key naval information group had proposed alternative shipping corridors on Saturday, asking shipowners to consider transiting the strait along the southern route with their transponder signals on. “The southern transit route, along Omani [territorial waters], has been confirmed clear of mines and is the recommended route,” the notice said.

It is true that there are certain areas of the Strait of Hormuz that are highly unsafe because they still have mines in them.

But the routes that have been designated by Iran are not the only safe routes.

Some ships have been getting through the Strait of Hormuz by sailing close to the coast of Oman, and one such vessel was just attacked…

A cargo vessel in the Strait of Hormuz was struck by an “unknown projectile” on Thursday evening near the Oman coast, according to the U.K. Maritime Trade Operations.

The vessel suffered damage to its bridge, but said no one was injured, according to the UKMTO, which receives reports of suspicious activity from all vessels in the Gulf region.

The strike took place at 5:40 p.m. local time (10:10 a.m. ET).

There is no use in pretending.

Everyone knows that it was the Iranians that did this.

They are making it clear that they intend to control all traffic through the Strait of Hormuz from this point forward.

And once the 60 day negotiating window with the United States is over, they intend to impose “hefty fees” on all vessels that pass through the Strait…

Despite Rubio’s warning while meeting with GCC allies in Bahrain, Iran is planning to move forward on charging hefty fees for vessels wishing to transit the Strait of Hormuz under its protocol, which is to be enforced by the IRGC. What’s more is that it’s seeking Beijing’s approval and help.

Iran’s chief negotiator and Parliament Speaker, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, asserted during a prior visit to Oman this week: “Everyone needs to know that management of the strait will never return to the way it was before.”

When the Iranians say “never”, they actually mean never.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Iranians plan to make about 40 billion dollars a year by holding the global economy hostage…

Iran is pushing to make billions of dollars from the Strait of Hormuz as the regime positions itself to manage the global oil artery it severed at the start of the war.

The Islamic Republic estimates that charging for security, safety and environmental services in the strait would bring in $40 billion a year in revenue for states involved, according to officials familiar with the matter. The idea, if implemented, would give Tehran cash flow and control that it didn’t command before the war.

Those that pay up will be able to go through.

Those that do not pay up will not.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is insisting that what the Iranians intend to do cannot ever be allowed…

Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned Thursday that allowing Iranian tolls on ships passing the Strait of Hormuz would create a precedent to other waterways, risking “total chaos.”

“International waterways do not belong to any nation state. This is a foundational principle in the world today, without which the world would be in total chaos,” he told a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Bahrain.

“If in fact we accepted that you can charge money to use an international waterway because it happens to be near your territorial space, well then this will spread throughout the world like a contagion.”

He is right.

But it would take war to stop the Iranians from imposing tolls.

And if war erupts again, it would completely close the Strait of Hormuz until the war was finally resolved one way or the other.

Of course it is inevitable that more fighting will erupt between Israel and Iran.

It is just a matter of time.

Meanwhile, global supplies of oil just keep getting tighter and tighter…

Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut off around 13 million barrels of oil per day, roughly a fifth of the world’s supply. All told, the global economy will lose 1.6 billion barrels of oil supply between February and August, according to JPMorgan.

The good news is that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has increased this week, but it is still way below pre-war levels…

70 ships transited the Strait of Hormuz on Wednesday, a 105% increase of traffic day on day, according to maritime business intelligence firm Kpler.

In a social media statement, the firm said ships were increasingly using a southern route through the strait that hugs Oman’s coastline, as opposed to one that brings them close to Iran’s coast in the north of the waterway.

Even if Iran fully reopened the Strait of Hormuz permanently with no restrictions and no tolls, the amount of oil and natural gas coming through the Strait of Hormuz would not return to normal for a very long time because it is going to take years to fully repair and rebuild all of the oil and natural gas infrastructure that was damaged or destroyed during the war.

And that is a major problem, because oil stockpiles all over the planet continue to drop even lower.

In Cushing, Oklahoma, the storage tanks are now “dangerously close to empty”…

The amount of crude oil inventory at the Cushing Hub in Oklahoma fell to a 12-year low in the past week, according to the latest report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and in the opinion of some experts, puts the hub at nearly empty. Dangerously close to empty.

The inventories at the northern Oklahoma storage site, known as the “Pipeline Crossroads of the World,” fell by 6 million barrels. Considered the delivery hub for West Texas Intermediate futures traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange, Cushing’s new total as of this week was just 19 million barrels. Cushing is where dozens of pipelines intersect, carrying oil from the Permian, Bakken, SCOOP/STACK, Rockies and Western Canada.

The new level means the Cushing Hub is dangerously close to “empty” according to some experts. The 19 million barrels reflects about 25% of the 76-million barrel working capacity at the hub. It also results in an operational stress level which is the point where tanks struggle to supply customers with usable oil due to pipeline residue and structural minimums.

Those that are convinced that the global energy crisis is behind us need to explain where we are going to get enough oil and natural gas to keep inventories from continuing to decline throughout the world.

Even in a best case scenario, things are going to be very tough for many months to come.

Of course if a worst case scenario materializes and all-out war between Israel and Iran erupts, we really will have a major energy disaster on our hands.

The global economy cannot operate normally without sufficient quantities of oil and natural gas from the Middle East.

The Strait of Hormuz must be reopened permanently without any restrictions or tolls, but the Iranians are absolutely refusing to compromise.

The post Traffic Through The Strait Of Hormuz Is Not Going To Return To Normal, And That Has Enormous Implications For The Whole World appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

California Just Got Another Major Warning That “The Big One” Is Coming

Michael — Wed, 24 Jun 2026 19:51:33 +0000

The magnitude 5.6 earthquake that just shook portions of three different states should be a huge wake up call for everyone that lives in California. The San Andreas Fault system is locked and loaded, and it is just a matter of time before an absolutely cataclysmic earthquake permanently alters the geography of the state. A day is coming when large portions of Southern California will no longer be above water. I have written about this over and over again, and I have warned about this more times than I can possibly count. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the people that live in the region do not believe that such a disaster will ever happen.

Just hours ago, a magnitude 5.6 earthquake violently rattled the Bay Area…

A magnitude 5.6 earthquake rattled northern California the morning of Wednesday, June 24, triggering alerts across the Bay Area, according to the United States Geological Survey.

The quake was recorded just over 6 miles from Redwood Valley at 8:10 a.m. PT and felt by people across the region, the USGS said.

This was no ordinary earthquake.

In fact, it was so powerful that it was felt in parts of Oregon, parts of Nevada and all over Northern California…

While the strongest shaking was reported right at the quake’s epicenter near Redwood Valley, the tremors traveled more than 600 miles up and down the West Coast, reaching Coos Bay, Oregon in the north and Salinas, California in the south.

That range includes the entire San Francisco Bay Area, home to more than seven million people, and affecting multiple cities including San Jose, Sacramento, Concord, Oakland, Stockton and Modesto.

A lot of people were really freaked out by how strong this quake was.

One woman that lives in Mendocino County is claiming that it was “the biggest earthquake I have felt in my life”…

Moneca Vargas at Saint Mary’s Catholic School in Ukiah told KTVU: ‘That was the biggest earthquake I have felt in my life, and I’ve lived in Ukiah for most of my 54 years. My whole house shook.’

Other residents close to the source in Northern California compared the shockwaves to a ‘freight train’ rolling through their homes, causing items to fall from shelves and officials to sound the official earthquake alert system for quakes stronger than magnitude 4.5.

The epicenter of this event was located very close to the Maacama Fault zone.

And it turns out that the Maacama Fault zone “is part of the larger San Andreas Fault system”…

The epicenter of Wednesday’s earthquake was recorded within seven miles of the Maacama Fault zone.

The Maacama is an major active strike-slip fault capable of causing strong shaking and damage in areas like Mendocino and Sonoma counties, where it runs through rural communities and wine country.

Making the fault even more of a concern to locals is the fact that it is part of the larger San Andreas Fault system, the infamous 800-mile-long fault running through much of California.

Shaking along one portion of the San Andreas Fault system can affect other portions of the San Andreas Fault system.

A number of years ago, this was vividly portrayed in a film entitled “San Andreas” that received a lot of attention at the time.

Unfortunately, the San Andreas Fault system is perfectly primed for a major event.

Last Friday, I shared an article with my core supporters that warned that the San Andreas and San Jacinto fault systems “have reached the highest stress levels seen in the past 1,000 years”.

Scientists have told us that someday the San Andreas Fault system could potentially rip wide open all at once.

In my most recent book, I described what that could look like…

If the San Andreas fault does rupture all at once, scientists have warned us that it could produce an earthquake that would be powerful enough to cause the ground on the western side of the San Andreas fault to suddenly drop several feet. Since most of southern California is just barely above sea level, that would allow water from the Pacific Ocean to come pouring in.

Can you imagine the kind of death and destruction that such a disaster would cause?

It would look like much of the southern California coast had just gone into the Pacific Ocean, but actually the Pacific Ocean would suddenly be covering vast stretches of the coast that have now dropped several feet lower than they were previously.

Researchers tell us that similar catastrophes have actually happened along the west coast in the past, and it is just a matter of time before it happens again.

If you live in southern California, it critical for you to understand that it is just a matter of time before “the Big One” strikes.

I have been attempting to sound the alarm about what is going to happen for years, but of course most of those living in the region are not interested in such warnings.

Of course I am not the only one that has been issuing such ominous warnings. Scientists have repeatedly told us that the San Andreas fault appears to be “locked and loaded” and that it could potentially “unzip all at once”.

Cal State Fullerton professor Matt Kirby was the lead author on a study that discovered that land on the western side of the San Andreas fault can instantly sink by up to 3 feet when a major earthquake strikes. He says that it has happened before and that it will happen again.

According to Kirby, a seismic event of this nature is something “that would happen relatively instantaneously”, and he has said that if such a disaster occurred today “you would see seawater rushing in”.

Coastal areas such as Santa Monica are barely above sea level.

A large enough seismic event could leave those areas completely covered by water.

But most people that live in Southern California will not take the warnings seriously until disaster finally strikes.

Meanwhile, there has been more unusual activity at the Yellowstone Supervolcano.

Earlier this month, an unexpected hydrothermal explosion suddenly created a new pool of super-heated water…

Another hydrothermal explosion has occurred at Yellowstone National Park, highlighting the unstable nature of the reserve’s extensive volcanic network, the U.S. Geological Survey says.

On June 13, a small hydrothermal explosion occurred at Yellowstone’s Biscuit Basin — a popular thermal area located less than 2 miles northwest of Old Faithful, according to the USGS.

The explosion occurred at 5:09 a.m. local time and did not cause any injuries, according to the USGS. A new pool formed as a result of activity.

We have been witnessing so much unusual activity all over the globe in recent months.

But I am convinced that what we have experienced so far is nothing compared to what is coming.

The giant space rock that we all exist on as we hurtle through space is exhibiting increasing signs of instability.

One of these days time will run out for those that are living along the San Andreas Fault, and for many of them there will be no escape.

The post California Just Got Another Major Warning That “The Big One” Is Coming appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Generational Crisis! Nearly A Third Of U.S. Adults Under The Age Of 35 Are Still Living With Their Parents

Michael — Tue, 23 Jun 2026 20:31:04 +0000

Americans that are over the age of 55 control approximately 73 percent of all wealth in the United States. Americans that are age 55 or younger control just 27 percent of all wealth in the United States. Never before in history has there been a generational divide of this magnitude. One of the reasons why there is such a generational divide is because housing has become so insanely unaffordable. If you purchased a home 20 or 30 years ago, it has appreciated in value a great deal and you are sitting pretty. But many young adults today look at current housing prices and wonder how they will ever be able to buy a home.

During the pandemic, we witnessed a surge of young adults moving back in with their parents.

But once the pandemic was over, things were supposed to go back to normal.

Unfortunately, that never happened.

In fact, the percentage of young adults that are living with their parents is now higher than it was at any point during the pandemic…

A record 25.2 million adults under 35 lived with their parents in 2025, according to new research from Realtor.com®. That’s nearly 1 in 3 young adults and higher than even the pandemic-era count—but the more surprising finding is just how many of them were working.

“Roughly 70% of 25- to 34-year-olds living with parents are employed,” says Hannah Jones, senior economist at Realtor.com and author of the report. “That share held steady even as the overall co-residence rate has climbed—meaning the growth is coming from working adults, not people waiting to find jobs.”

The finding challenges one of the most persistent narratives about adults living at home today: that they’re simply languishing in a tepid job market and failing to launch.

We have tens of millions of young adults that cannot form their own households.

That is a major national crisis.

A lot of those young adults would love to move out and live on their own, but home prices are simply way too high…

The report said that the median prices for new and existing homes are both over $400,000 and that existing home prices have risen 54% since 2020 and are about 5-times the median income – a level well above the ratio of 3-times that prevailed in the 1990s.

Mortgage rates are over 6%, which makes the payment on a median-priced home $3,100 in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from $1,700 in early 2020. That has pushed the income needed to afford that payment to more than $120,000 – a significant increase from $66,000 in 2020.

In 1975, the median home price in the United States was under $40,000.

But now it is over $400,000.

That is how much the purchasing power of our money has declined.

And we are being warned that housing affordability is “unlikely to return to more favorable levels of the past”…

The affordability of the U.S. housing market may not improve significantly over time for would-be homebuyers, with a new report suggesting that they shouldn’t wait in the hopes of affordability measures returning to their pre-2022 levels.

Sarah Wolfe, a senior economist and strategist at Morgan Stanley, said in a report that while housing affordability could improve modestly over time, it is “unlikely to return to more favorable levels of the past, as the market adjusts to a higher-cost, tighter-supply environment.”

That is quite sobering.

I guess our young adults are just out of lock.

At this stage, it is being projected that the median home price in this country will hit a million dollars by 2050…

According to new projections from National Association of Realtors (NAR) chief economist Lawrence Yun, the national median home price is on track to hit $1 million by 2050 — just as millennials reach the traditional retirement age.

“Essentially, in about 25 years the national median home price will be a million dollars,” Yun said at a conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. “It may be hard to envision that, but back in 1990, the national median price was $90,000.”

Many of those that are on the outside looking in may remain in that position permanently.

Meanwhile, the middle class continues to shrink as large employers eliminate good paying jobs all over the nation.

Today, we learned that U.S. factories are laying off workers at a frightening pace…

Job cuts at U.S. factories ran near their highest levels since the end of the global financial crisis in 2009 and the Covid-19 pandemic as worries grew over global demand and rising costs, S&P Global reported Tuesday.

Though the firm’s manufacturing index ran better than expected for June, it came largely from an inventory rebuild and despite sharp job cuts that were the most since 2009 — excluding the massive labor reductions at the onset of the Covid crisis in 2020.

And our most prominent tech companies continue to mercilessly slash payrolls.

For example, it is being reported that Oracle has given the axe to 21,000 highly paid workers over the past year…

Oracle shed 21,000 jobs, almost 13% of its workforce, in the past year, as tech giants carry out sweeping layoffs as a result of AI.

The company’s total workforce stands at 141,000 full-time employees as of May 2026, it said in its annual regulatory filing on Monday. That’s down from 162,000 employees at the same time the previous year. This represents an almost 13% cut in its total workforce.

Almost every big tech company that you can name has laid off workers within the past 12 months.

Once upon a time Electronic Arts was doing really well, but now they are conducting yet another round of job cuts…

Electronic Arts has undergone yet another round of layoffs, seemingly impacting its recruitment, customer support, trust and safety, and IT teams.

Kotaku has learned about these layoffs both from sources aware of the situation as well as 12 separate public postings from individuals impacted by the layoffs. The total number of impacted employees is unknown, but Kotaku has found online postings both from people formerly in several remote roles in the U.S. as well as a number of laid-off individuals from EA’s office in Hyderabad, India. Multiple individuals laid off from the Hyderabad office had been with the company for more than ten years.

We are witnessing a tsunami of tech layoffs that seems to have no end.

Those were supposed to be the “jobs of the future” for our young people.

But now many of our young people are being ruthlessly replaced by AI.

An entire generation of Americans is deeply struggling, and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

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This “Super El Niño” Has The Potential To Be The Strongest Ever, And Absolutely Crazy Weather Events Are Already Happening All Over The Globe

Michael — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 20:38:23 +0000

Global food supply chains are under threat like never before. The war with Iran has created a worldwide fertilizer crisis, diesel prices have risen to very painful levels, and farmers in the U.S. have been dealing with an epic multi-year drought. Now a “Super El Niño” is here, and Fox News is telling us that it has the potential to be the “strongest Super El Niño ever”. In fact, we have being warned that as it is influenced by a gigantic “9,000-mile marine heatwave” that has developed in the northern Pacific, it could actually become a “Godzilla El Niño”. I am convinced that over the next 12 months we will see things happen on this planet that most people never even imagined were possible. In fact, absolutely crazy weather events are already happening all over the world.

Let me start with the basics.

Earlier this month, the NOAA announced that an El Niño had begun, and now NASA has officially confirmed this…

The Super El Niño is ‘underway’, NASA has confirmed, following satellite observations of sea surface height across the Pacific.

Measurements taken by the Sentinel–6 Michael Freilich satellite show that sea levels across parts of the equatorial Pacific are elevated.

‘When ocean water warms, it expands in volume and causes the sea surface to rise—making the water’s height a reliable indicator of ocean temperatures,’ NASA explained.

‘Warmer–than–normal temperatures, hence higher sea surface heights, in parts of the equatorial Pacific Ocean are associated with El Niño.’

Every El Niño throughout human history has brought warmer temperatures.

But things will get especially hot during this “Super El Niño”.

In Europe, we are already witnessing a truly insane heat wave. Records are falling all over the continent and today heat alerts were issued in 26 different countries…

Europe is sweltering under its second heat dome in two months, with temperatures spiking above 104 degrees Fahrenheit, bringing dangerous conditions across swaths of the planet’s fastest-warming continent. France banned public alcohol consumption, Spain closed a World Cup fan zone and the UK is bracing for an annihilation of its all-time June temperature record.

Heat alerts were posted Monday by 26 countries, from Ireland to Greece, as soaring temperatures deliver one of Western Europe’s worst June heat waves on record.

The punishing temperatures are the result of a heat dome parked over the continent for the second time in two months. Heat domes are persistent high-pressure systems which act like a lid on a pot, trapping hot air and pushing it downward.

Conditions are particularly bad in France.

If you can believe it, the high temperature in Bordeaux was expected to reach 107 degrees on Monday…

⁠⁠Three people died in France from health issues caused by extreme heat and almost 2,700 of the country’s schools were set to close or modify timetables as authorities across Europe issued heatwave warnings for Monday.

Temperatures in Bordeaux in southwestern France were forecast to exceed 42 degrees Celsius (107.6 degrees Fahrenheit) Monday and weather agency Meteo France said 49 regional administrative areas will be under a red heat wave warning.

“We’re heading for, at the very least, ⁠several days of very, very hot weather. We don’t know when temperatures will ⁠start falling,” French Health Minister Stephanie Rist said on TV channel TF1.

This isn’t Phoenix, Arizona that we are talking about.

This is France.

The mercury isn’t supposed to ever hit 107 degrees in Bordeaux, but it just did.

When it gets this hot, epic lightning storms can be easily produced, and that is exactly what just occurred in the Netherlands…

A storm system that developed after the recent heat produced more than 188,000 lightning discharges across the Netherlands, a level the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI) described as exceptional in its records. The storms have resulted in one death, as well as multiple fires.

The KNMI said its lightning archive shows only a few recent storms have exceeded 100,000 discharges. A spokesperson told NOS, “The energy in the air was exceptionally high.”

That is just shocking.

Of course things are getting quite wild here in the United States as well.

During the first part of this week, it was being projected that large portions of the country would be dealing with “extreme heat and potent thunderstorms”…

The first few days of summer, which officially began on June 21, will feature extreme heat and potent thunderstorms across large swaths of the country, forecasters said.

This includes a potential severe weather outbreak for June 22 from the Northeast to the High Plains, NOAA’s Weather Prediction Center (WPC) said in an online forecast.

I hope that you are ready for a long, hot summer.

And we are going to experience some absolutely epic storms.

In Oklahoma City, a storm that just swept through was so powerful that it knocked over shipping containers that weigh thousands of pounds each…

Severe storms with strong and damaging winds moved through central Oklahoma early Monday, leaving behind some damage in a well-known park in OKC.

Aside from downed power lines and tree debris being thrown about OKC, crews were picking up the pieces at Wheeler Park.

The large shipping containers that are used to help block the wind on normal days for people enjoying the park were knocked over during the storms early Monday. The stacked containers weigh thousands of pounds, showing just how strong the storm was.

Yes, we always see high temperatures and thunderstorms during the summer.

But this year is just different.

As I noted in a previous article, fish were “literally being cooked to death in lakes and rivers all over the country” even before we reached the official beginning of summer…

At the same time, fish are literally being cooked to death in lakes and rivers all over the country…

A team of contractors spent their weekend hauling thousands of dead fish carcasses from the waters of Minnesota’s Como Lake, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Tuesday. Located in a suburban park in St. Paul, the lake is now down about 1,000 bluegill and crappies, which died en masse as a result of low oxygen — a side effect of a rapid influx of heat.

Down south in Arizona, state wildlife officials closed public access to San Carlos Lake indefinitely after drought conditions and a nearby dam release “resulted in a major fish kill affecting approximately 100 percent of the fish population.” Across the country in Massachusetts, the Charles River was the site of a massive die-off of carp after a pre-summer heat wave baked fish exhausted from spawning.

Does anyone out there want to claim that this is “normal”?

On the other side of the world, severe drought is already causing serious water shortages in Indonesia…

Drought has begun affecting several regions across Java as the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) warns that the country’s dry season is expected to peak in August and may last longer than usual.

The National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB) reported earlier this week that prolonged dry conditions have already caused clean water shortages across parts of Java, despite flooding that continues to affect several regions nationwide.

A month without rainfall has impacted residents in Bekasi regency, West Java, with the worst conditions reported in Ridogalih village, Cibarusah district, where 296 households, or around 800 people, are struggling to access clean water.

Every time there is a “Super El Niño” some parts of the world are going to experience drought.

That is just the reality of what we are facing.

In the late 1870s, a particularly strong “Super El Niño” caused widespread global droughts that resulted in the deaths of approximately 50 million people…

History can give us some examples. In 1877, one of the strongest El Niños ever recorded was associated with historic droughts across Asia, as well as in parts of Brazil and northern Africa. These droughts, “along with colonial policies, contributed to famines in many regions which were really devastating,” said Deepti Singh, an associate professor at Washington State University who co-authored a study on this period of global famine.

The fatalities associated with these famines, upward of 50 million people, said Singh, “are humbling to think about.”

From everything that I have seen, I would say that it is very likely that the Super El Niño that has now begun could potentially be much stronger than the Super El Niño of 1877-1878.

And that is quite noteworthy, because that Super El Niño was one of the worst environmental disasters in recorded history…

“It was arguably the worst environmental disaster to ever befall humanity and one of the worst calamities of any sort in at least the last 150 years,” the authors of a 2018 research article in the Journal of Climate wrote in their paper. “In a very real sense, the El Niño and climate events of 1876–78 helped create the global inequalities that would later be characterized as ‘first world’ and ‘third world.’”

Even if there was no Super El Niño, global food production would be way down this year due to the global fertilizer crisis, higher diesel prices and ongoing droughts in major breadbaskets around the world.

But now the Super El Niño that is upon us threatens to cause “deep production shortfalls” in some of our most important crop producing regions…

El Niño events cause droughts in major crop producing regions across the Western Pacific (e.g., eastern Indonesia, the Philippines, SE China), southern Africa, the western Sahel, north-central India, and the northeast part of South America. These conditions in turn lead to significant declines in staple crop production in those areas. A one-in-a-hundred year El Niño is likely to cause deep production shortfalls, driving up demand for traded products to compensate, and raising global food prices.

There are just four crops that account for over 60 percent of all calories consumed by the global population.

Unfortunately, it is being projected that those four crops will be hit really hard…

Globally, there is a heightened risk of a shock to global food supply chains. Four crops – wheat, rice, maize and soybeans – provide more than 60% of the world’s calorie intake.

Maize and rice are especially sensitive to El Niño, with drought and disrupted monsoons reducing yields in major producers such as South Africa, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Brazil. Wheat is affected by heat and drought in key exporters like Australia, Canada and China, while soybean production has fallen in countries such as Brazil and Argentina.

None of us have ever experienced anything like this in our entire lifetimes.

Global famines are ahead of us. The only question is how widespread they will become.

Right now we are still eating food that was produced last year to a very large degree.

The turning point will come at harvest time this fall.

Food prices will start to rise even higher in wealthy nations, and in poor nations there simply won’t be enough food to eat at all.

The post This “Super El Niño” Has The Potential To Be The Strongest Ever, And Absolutely Crazy Weather Events Are Already Happening All Over The Globe appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

Is It Just A Coincidence That So Many Disasters Are Suddenly Hitting The United States The Same Week The Memorandum Of Understanding Was Signed?

Michael — Thu, 18 Jun 2026 20:07:06 +0000

Why isn’t anyone else writing about this? On Wednesday, the Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the presidents of the United States and Iran. Meanwhile, major disasters were breaking out all over America. Is this just some sort of really bizarre coincidence, or is something else going on here? Read the evidence that I have compiled below and decide for yourself.

On Wednesday, the very first named storm of the season, Tropical Storm Arthur, suddenly formed and slammed into the Texas coastline…

Tropical Storm Arthur made landfall along the coast of Texas on Wednesday, and as the first storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, it is bringing significant flooding and severe weather to the Gulf Coast.

Arthur formed on Wednesday after a sprawling area of showers and thunderstorms over Texas tracked over the warm waters of the Gulf, which helped it organize and strengthen. Hours later, the center of the storm moved inland over the Texas coast.

In 2025, only one named storm hit the U.S. the entire year.

And it is very rare for a named storm to make landfall this early.

As this storm travels east, it is expected to bring “extreme” flooding to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle…

As many as 40 million people across eight states are in the deadly path of Tropical Storm Arthur after the first named storm of hurricane season made landfall Wednesday night.

Arthur, which has been downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone on Thursday, slammed into the Texas Coast last night, and is now projected to barrel across the South, bringing severe flooding from Louisiana to the Carolinas.

Meteorologists with AccuWeather warned that Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle will see ‘extreme’ levels of flooding along the coast and in urban areas throughout Thursday, with as much as 12 to 18 inches of rain falling.

Then on Friday, it is being projected that this storm will bring “life-threatening flooding” to Georgia and the Carolinas…

Georgia and the Carolinas are expected to be impacted on Friday, as forecasters say Arthur will continue to bring ‘life-threatening flooding, property damage and disruptions to commerce and travel.’

AccuWeather meteorologist Alex Duffus warned in a statement: ‘Heavy rainfall will be fueled by tropical moisture, delivering rainfall rates of 2-4 inches per hour across portions of the Gulf Coast.’

However, flooding is not the only concern tied to Arthur, as the National Weather Service has also issued a widespread tornado watch across coastal areas in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle.

Tropical Storm Arthur formed and made landfall on the exact same day that the Memorandum of Understanding was signed by the presidents of the United States and Iran.

This storm is going to cause a massive amount of damage all the way from Texas to the Carolinas.

Is this just a coincidence?

I don’t think so.

Also on Wednesday, a series of extremely violent tornadoes suddenly broke out in the Midwest and the Southeast…

At least seven tornadoes broke out Wednesday night across the Midwest and Southeast, as severe weather descended on a large swath of the country.

According to the National Weather Service, a confirmed tornado was reported near the small northeast Iowa community of Harpers Ferry at 5:10 p.m., while a second confirmed tornado rolled through Charleston in central Illinois at about 6:40 p.m. local time.

Both tornadoes were flagged by the weather service as a “particularly dangerous situation,” a rare designation used by the weather service for environments in which “strong and violent tornadoes” are possible.

The town of Charleston, Illinois was hit particularly hard.

At one point, a trailer was actually picked up and torn away from its foundation…

Photos and videos obtained by CBS News showed extensive damage to homes and buildings in Charleston, where a mess of downed trees and power lines covered the streets. Emergency responders in the city could also be heard in dispatch audio describing some of the treacherous scenarios they encountered, including multiple overturned semitrucks and a trailer that had been torn from its foundation, possibly with someone inside.

Hail measuring between 2.75 and 3 inches was also reported in Charleston and surrounding parts of Illinois, where powerful winds at times climbed as high as 78 mph, according to the weather service.

Is it just another coincidence that this also occurred on Wednesday?

As you can see, the “coincidences” are starting to pile up.

Let me give you another one.

An enormous wildfire in eastern Washington state that is being driven by very high winds caused all sorts of chaos on Wednesday…

High winds drove a wildfire into an eastern Washington neighborhood, forcing the evacuation of about 1,500 people and destroying at least 15 homes, officials said Wednesday.

The Spokane County Sheriff’s Office announced Wednesday that its forensic unit found what appeared to be human remains inside a home destroyed in the fire. A family member had requested a wellness check because one of the residents had refused to evacuate and could not be reached, officials said in a news release.

Of course the skeptics will insist that this is yet another coincidence.

Meanwhile, the screwworm plague that just broke out in the Southwest just continues to pop up in even more Texas counties…

Screwworm cases are rising in the US as the outbreak spreads beyond the initial contamination zones.

Twelve animal cases have been confirmed so far, a significant increase from the first case detected in a calf in south Texas on 3 June. The growing number of infections has alarmed agricultural experts, who warn that a wider outbreak could have serious consequences for the Texas beef industry.

Of the 12 reported cases, 11 remain active and one is inactive, according to an update issued last Thursday by the US Department of Agriculture’s animal and plant health inspection service. The most recent case was reported on 12 June in Sutton countyin west Texas, where a sheep was discovered with the infection. Other cases have been identified in the Texas counties of Edwards, Tom Green, Gillespie, La Salle and Zavala, as well as in Lea county, New Mexico.

And just within the last 24 hours, we have officially hit “tank bottoms” in Cushing, Oklahoma…

As I discussed yesterday, once we get below 20 million barrels of oil at Cushing, there won’t be enough pressure in the pipelines to keep operating.

So this is it.

At the same time, fish are literally being cooked to death in lakes and rivers all over the country…

A team of contractors spent their weekend hauling thousands of dead fish carcasses from the waters of Minnesota’s Como Lake, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported on Tuesday. Located in a suburban park in St. Paul, the lake is now down about 1,000 bluegill and crappies, which died en masse as a result of low oxygen — a side effect of a rapid influx of heat.

Down south in Arizona, state wildlife officials closed public access to San Carlos Lake indefinitely after drought conditions and a nearby dam release “resulted in a major fish kill affecting approximately 100 percent of the fish population.” Across the country in Massachusetts, the Charles River was the site of a massive die-off of carp after a pre-summer heat wave baked fish exhausted from spawning.

This is happening even though summer has not even officially begun yet.

That is certainly not a good sign.

And now a “Super El Niño” has begun…

The forecasted El Niño—a mysterious but well-documented climate phenomenon—has officially begun, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced on June 11. Meteorologists expect it to evolve into one of the most powerful ones on record, and the event will likely bring about extreme weather worldwide and consequently affect the economy.

If you believe that it is just a “coincidence” that all of the things that I have shared in this article are happening simultaneously, that is okay.

We will just have to agree to disagree.

Personally, I am convinced that what we are currently experiencing is yet more evidence that history is taking us in a very particular direction.

So many prominent voices are crying out “peace and safety”, but the truth is that apocalyptic times are upon us.

Global events have been spinning out of control for quite some time now, but what we have been through so far is not even worth comparing to what is eventually coming.

The post Is It Just A Coincidence That So Many Disasters Are Suddenly Hitting The United States The Same Week The Memorandum Of Understanding Was Signed? appeared first on The Economic Collapse.