Keep Our Service Free-Donate

Showing posts with label economic woes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label economic woes. Show all posts

Monday, August 3, 2020

Economic Suffering, Some Parts Of The U.S. Are Feeling It Far More Than Others



Poor Man Survival
Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…
www.poormansurvivor.net
ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources




When It Comes To Economic Suffering, Some Parts Of The U.S. Are Feeling It Far More Than Others


2020 has been a very tough year for the U.S. as a whole, but some portions of the country have been hit much harder than others. For example, if you live in a rural area [like I do…and we’ve prepped for years] that hasn’t seen any civil unrest and that hasn’t been hit very hard by the COVID-19 pandemic, the way that you are living your life now may seem nearly unchanged from the way you were living your life in 2019.

But if you live in an urban area that has experienced endless protests and rioting and that has seen COVID-19 sweep through local neighborhoods like wildfire, your life in 2020 may look radically different from the way it looked in 2019. Unfortunately, conditions in our largest cities are not likely to improve dramatically any time soon.

But many people that live in rural communities are feeling pretty good about things right now. Even though more than 52 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the last 18 weeks, the official unemployment rate in many rural counties is still in the single digits.
New York City was one of the early epicenters of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and many of us will never forget watching video footage of the looting that took place in the heart of Manhattan earlier this year. As a result of all of this chaos, the unemployment rate in the state as a whole is nearly twice the national average…

New York’s unemployment rate rose to 20.4% last month, according to state-level data issued Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics that detailed figures for some large metro areas. That’s up from 18.3% in May and 15% in April.

We see a very similar story when we look at the city of Los Angeles.
Thanks to COVID-19 and endless civil unrest, the official unemployment rate in the city is hovering near 20 percent…

Los Angeles, the second-largest U.S. city, has seen a similar level of joblessness.
Its unemployment rate recovered slightly in June but remains startlingly high — at 19.5%, versus 20.6% in May, according to data published Friday by California’s Employment Development Department.

Unfortunately, it appears that the COVID-19 pandemic and the violence in our major cities are both going to be with us for the foreseeable future.

Some people think that the civil unrest will disappear if Joe Biden wins in November, but I do not believe that is the case. Nearly all of the major cities where the violence is happening are controlled by radical Democrats, and those radical Democrats have been completely unable to control the riots. To the protesters, Republicans and Democrats are both two sides of the same coin and are both responsible for the injustices in our society, and they are not going to give up on their goals just because a moderate Democrat like Joe Biden wins the election.

At this point, millions upon millions of Americans are sticking closer to home these days because of COVID-19 and all the unrest, and this has been particularly devastating for the leisure and hospitality industries…



The unemployment rate in the leisure and hospitality industries, including restaurants, soared from 5.7% in February to 39.3% in April, and in June was still at an unprecedented 28.9%. By comparison, the overall unemployment rate is 11.1%, and no other industry comes close to restaurants’ level.
The restaurant industry employed nearly 9.2 million people in June, almost 3 million more than in April but still 25% below where it was in February. Anecdotally, though, restaurant workers—even those who’ve spent decades in the industry—say they’re looking to get out.

The line of work that had been stable, geographically flexible, reliable and largely safe for generations is no more, they say.

As I discussed the other day, we have already lost thousands upon thousands of small and independent restaurants, and this “restaurant apocalypse” is only going to get worse with each passing month.

Moving forward, some cities may never be the same again. In Las Vegas, the official unemployment rate recently hit 29 percent, and everyone agrees that tourism will never recover until the pandemic ends.

If this pandemic stretches on for several years, many of those unemployed workers will be forced to abandon the city entirely in order to find work elsewhere.

Sadly, competition for the few good jobs that are available will become increasingly fierce, and this will result in millions of Americans falling out of the middle class.

And we are starting to see some numbers that indicate that this process is already moving along very quickly. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, “24 million Americans say they have little to no chance of being able to pay next month’s rent”.
Just think about that.

We never saw anything like this during the last recession, and the Census Bureau says that things are particular dire for Black and Hispanic renters…

This month, nearly 28% of Black renters say they haven’t paid last month’s rent, and about 46% say they have slight or no confidence they’ll be able to pay next month’s rent, according to figures from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. Hispanic renters face similar economic strain: 22% say they missed last month’s rent and 46% fear they won’t make rent next month.

Those numbers are simply eye-popping. As people increasingly get behind on their bills, the cries for more direct government assistance will become deafening, and it appears that Republicans and Democrats in Congress both want to pass yet another stimulus bill.

Of course that will mean borrowing and spending more gigantic piles of money that we do not currently have, but at this point most Americans do not seem to care that we are literally completely destroying our financial future.

For such a long time, I warned that the next economic downturn would be worse than the last recession, and that has turned out to be precisely correct.

And what we are experiencing right now will pale in comparison to what is eventually coming.
But for most people, the only thing that seems to matter is what is happening here and now.
And at this moment we are seeing tremendous economic suffering in major cities all over the nation, and in an election year very few of our politicians want to be the “bad guy” that says that we can’t hand out “free money” to everyone.

So our currency will continue to be rapidly devalued, our debt levels will continue to explode, and we shall get to see where this relentless march toward socialism takes us.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now

Sidebar:
Who hasn’t noticed the price of food drastically increasing? For many, in a time of job insecurity, continued economic uncertainty it’s infuriating and borders on the line of price gouging. In April, when the pandemic panic was at its peak, the price of groceries rose 2.6%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, resulting in the biggest one-month increase in grocery prices since 1974. The Wall Street Journal has further reported these price fluctuations are the fastest-rising food prices in a decade and it looks like this won’t disappear anything soon.

Planning for a future of food price inflation now will help you save money and invest in your future. Price inflation and shortages of food and/or essential preparedness items will only continue as long as COVID is present. As much as we would like for this to all go away, it will not.
Here are some ways to concentrate your shopping efforts before the next panic wave of pandemic shopping happens.



READ MORE: How To Avoid the Fastest Rising Food Prices in a Decade

Other Bits n Pieces

Our cities are being destroyed and Democrat mayors and officials are defunding the police and encouraging the vandals and the arsonists, calling them “peaceful protesters.”

This new civil war now pits those of us who love our country and want a Constitutional government, as envisioned by our Founders, against those who would destroy our very civilization and freedoms.
Donald Trump is now the defender of our laws and our country, the leader of those of us who believe in America and want to keep our Constitution, and want our cities to be safe again.
Whole city areas have been seized by anarchists.

“Protesters” who claimed they only opposed Confederate monuments have now sought to deface and destroy the monuments of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and more of our American heroes.

They sought to burn a church across from the White House, one visited by every president since John Adams.

These radicals have gone well beyond where most people ever imagined. But it was no surprise to me because I was raised by leftists and understood the depth of their hatred for America.
Shockingly, these enemies of America have been accepted and supported by the establishment media and the leadership of the Democratic Party

He is our leader and freedom fighter

P.S. As you already know, however, it's this simple: one-world government and one-world religion require one-world propaganda.
Until one understands this fact, one cannot read between the lines or otherwise decipher mass media reports, thus begin to make sense of the "global loonies" and their "globaloney."

Powerful Picture Exposes The Double Standard Politicians Allow For Themselves On Social Distancing: Americans nationwide continue to be impacted by coronavirus-related restrictions implemented by their state leaders...Read More

Teacher Details How Schools Push To Ban History And Leftist Agendas: I recently spoke with a fourth grade teacher from the midwest, who shared her experiences of curriculum shifting from history and science and towards political indoctrination...Read More

Sootch00 Survival: 5 Essential Guns for When SHTF
Taking a look at the 5 guns you may need in an SHTF Situation and the various reasons for each type of firearm for survival.

https://www.getzone.com/sootch00-survival-5-essential-guns-for-when-shtf/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=banner&utm_campaign=300x250&utm_term=sootch%205%20guns%20shtf&trk_msg=1NH361U1ST0KT3BJET9EO57C38&trk_contact=NN6NUK7LKMDBS5RF1TE3BLD2EG&trk_sid=OVP51LFM2HJF62JUOIKAABH7J0

Made from a common driveway "weed..."
This brew is a powerful painkiller, without opiates or addictive effects.
Once used for everything from painful toothaches to leg amputations.
It helped save many lives and prevent trauma. If you made it in advance.
Similar to Morphine: The Natural Anesthetic That Grows In Your Yard

Freedom Self-Reliance Action




Additional FREE Resources


Living Frugally In Suburbia
You live differently than your neighbors.


14 Frugal Food-Rescuing Tips from Grandma
These depression-era frugal tips still work today!

8 Simple Ways to Put More Money in Your Pocket
Have more money without working harder!


Emergency Preparedness on a Budget
Affordable ways to prepare for an emergency.
Contributors and subscribers enable the Poor Man Survivor to post 150+ free essays & free reports that I provide annually. It is for this reason they are Heroes and Heroines of New Media. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales & ecommerce alone. You can make a donation at top of this page via PayPal.

24 Mistakes That Send Energy Bills Soaring
Implementing these fixes will save you cold, hard cash all year long.

People who are spending more time at home because of the coronavirus pandemic may see their utility costs increasing
No-Brainer Device Cuts Power Bills Up to 90%
Easy-to-use---No Maintenance.
https://www.bonanza.com/listings/Home-Circuit-Power-Saving-Device-Save-30-90-on-Your-Monthly-Bill/813154600

Steel River Emergency Go Bag-22 Items included+Bonus
Amazing number of useful, life-saving items included…LAST ONE!
https://www.bonanza.com/listings/Steel-River-Emergency-Go-Bag-21-Items-Included-Bonus-Book/754985271
Get Your own copy of this eye-opening documentary-The Deep State Exposed!
https://www.bonanza.com/listings/The-Deep-State-Exposed-DVD/804793253

Find survival related books and items here!
Support our efforts by shopping my storefront…
http://RetroGuy.Net




A Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Does GM's Restructuring Equal Economic Panic?


Poor Man Survival

Self Reliance tools for independent minded people…


 

ISSN 2161-5543

A Digest of Urban Survival Resources

 


GM announced it would kill several passenger cars that weren't performing well. Included: the Chevrolet Volt and Cruze – Americans  like oversized SUVs & big trucks - despite many being upside down in 72 month loans…

America’s twin economic “generals” are both in very deep trouble.  General Electric was founded in 1892, and it was once one of the most powerful corporations on the entire planet.  But now it is drowning in so much debt that it may be forced into bankruptcy.  General Motors was founded in 1908, and at one time it was the largest automaker that the world had ever seen.  But now it is closing a bunch of factories and laying off approximately 14,000 workers as it anticipates disappointing sales and a slowing economy.

Our local news in MI interviewed a few of GMs factory workers after this announcement and of course the reaction was predictable.  Despite receiving the biggest bonus payout in history this year [some as high as $10,000] many of these union workers had already blown through their bonus cash and expressed huge dismay and concern over their coming job loss as few had socked away any money.

GM workers say they had 'no warning' of closure


Despite being given ample opportunity for early buy-out or retirements!

I grew up across the state line in Ohio but most of my relatives lived in MI and worked for the Big Three and experience the boom and bust times of working on assembly lines.  It was common to see such workers going into deep debt buying all sorts of toys including boats, snow mobiles, jetskiis, cabins and the like.  In the early years layoffs were almost welcome as workers not only received unemployment compensation but sub-pay through the union so in many cases they “earned’ almost the same wage for doing nothing…like a paid vacation and many were happy with that arrangement.
Union wages at the Big Three were the envy of working world, especially the health care and retirement packages which often exceeded even government workers!
Many said GM has been mismanaged for decades and the Obama should never have bailed it out using taxpayer funds [he forgave GM its last billion or so]…

GM’s “restructuring” is actually going to cost the firm 3.8 billion dollars

General Motors said Monday it plans to effectively halt production at a number of plants in the U.S. and Canada next year and cut more than 14,000 jobs in a massive restructuring that will cost up to $3.8 billion…management had been asking for voluntary layoffs for months to the rank and file but few took them up on the generous offers GM made choosing instead to wait and get the axe.

Of course GM doesn’t have 3.8 billion dollars just lying around, and so they are actually going to have to borrow money in order to close these plants and lay off these workers.

Needless to say, President Trump is not very happy with General Motors right now…

Trump said he spoke Monday with GM’s CEO, Mary Barra, and ‘I told them, “you’re playing around with the wrong person”.’

He told reporters as he left the White House for a pair of political rallies in Mississippi that the United States ‘has done a lot for General Motors. They better get back to Ohio, and soon.’

There is no way that Mary Barra should have ever been made CEO of General Motors, and now the entire world is getting to see why.

In addition to the elimination of about 6,000 factory jobs, GM will also be cutting about 8,000 “white collar jobs”

Did General Motors really have to announce job cuts just before the holidays?  According to the Daily Mail, some workers were seen wiping away tears when the layoffs were announced…

Heart-wrenching photos show General Motors workers wiping tears away after the company laid more than 14,000 people off without warning and just before the holidays…workers were given the option to take early retirement with six months of benefits and pay if they had 12 years of employment as far back as January of this year after being given record high bonus checks [which most promptly spent].

In a massive restructuring, the auto giant announced Monday that it will cut 15 percent of its workforce to save $6 billion and adapt to ‘changing market conditions’.

‘You’re going right into Christmas. You’re looking for celebration and that’s not there now,’ one GM worker told Today.

 
In addition to the production cuts, GM said it will reduce its North American white-collar workforce by about 8,000. The deadline passed last week on a voluntary buyout for those workers, and GM spokesman Pat Morrissey told the Free Press that only 2,250 employees have asked to take the offer, meaning as many as 5,750 workers could be cut if the company keeps to its announced total. Analysts told the Free Press to expect involuntary cuts in January.

So why is General Motors doing this?

After all, if the U.S. economy really is “booming” that should mean increased sales for all of the major automakers in the coming years, right?

Unfortunately, the truth is that hard times are already here for automakers.  In fact, Bob Lutz told CNBC that “we’ve got a demand problem on cars”…

Former GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz said the automaker historically would have raised sales incentives to try to sell more cars before resorting to plant closures.

“Nowadays GM looks at the hard reality, says we’ve got a demand problem on cars, what are we going to do about it. We have to shut some facilities and move production to truck plants,” Lutz said on CNBC’s “Halftime Report. ” “So I think what we are seeing is a fast-acting and reality-oriented GM management.”

Over the past four years, General Motors spent a staggering 13.9 billion dollars on stock buybacks.

GM executives were able to prop up the stock price for a while, but at this point the stock is down about 10 percent from where it was four years ago.  The following comes from Wolf Richter

During this four-year period in which GM blew, wasted, and annihilated nearly $14 billion on share buybacks, the price of its shares, including today’s 5.5% surge – getting rid of workers is always good news for shares – fell 10%.

These stock buybacks are a massive Ponzi scheme, and everyone that was involved in blowing such a giant mountain of cash at GM should be fired.

And now thousands of hard working Americans are going to lose their jobs, but it didn’t have to happen.

General Electric has also been victimized by the exact same Ponzi scheme, and at this point they are in a struggle for survival which they are probably going to lose.

On Monday the stock slid another couple of percent, and so far this year it is down a total of 58 percent

Not a day passes lately without GE stock getting hit by some unexpected development, and today was no exception.

GE shares, which are down 58% YTD, dropped over 2% on Monday, after sliding as much as 4.1% earlier in the session and approaching its financial crisis low of $6.66, following a research report by Gordon Haskett analyst John Inch which prompted fresh questions about the treatment of goodwill at GE Capital.

In the end, GE is probably heading for total collapse. GE is a horrible firm that began the massive offshoring of US jobs back in the mid-1980s [I wrote about the folly of this action in my business journals back then and some scoffed saying it was only temporary…]
 
 

But if GE had not blown 40 billion dollars on stock buybacks in recent years, they would be in far, far better shape.  The following comes from the Marketwatch article …

GE was one of Wall Street’s major share buyback operators between 2015 and 2017; it repurchased $40 billion of shares at prices between $20 and $32. The share price is now $8.60, so the company has liquidated between $23 billion and $29 billion of its shareholders’ money on this utterly futile activity alone. Since the highest net income recorded by the company during those years was $8.8 billion in 2016, with 2015 and 2017 recording a loss, it has managed to lose more on its share repurchases during those three years than it made in operations, by a substantial margin.

Even more important, GE has now left itself with minus $48 billion in tangible net worth at Sept. 30, with actual genuine tangible debt of close to $100 billion. As the new CEO Larry Culp told CNBC last Monday: “We have no higher priority right now than bringing those leverage levels down.”

Combined, General Electric and General Motors have blown more than 53 billion dollars on stock buybacks, and now both companies are in huge trouble.

The executives that gutted the finances of both firms by engaging in these sorts of Ponzi tactics should all be fired and should never be hired by anyone else in the corporate world.

For years, big corporations have been borrowing massive amounts of money to fund reckless stock buybacks, and that has helped to fuel an amazing bull market run.

But now the game is imploding, and the unraveling of this massive Ponzi scheme is not going to be pretty.
 
 

AND TAKE NOTE ABOUT WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE ECONOMY:

Economic panic is a very useful tool in the hands of the banking elites for molding social conditions in a way that gives them greater psychological power over the public. In every instance of financial catastrophe, it is the banking cabal that is asked to step in and save the day. In 2008 it was the Federal Reserve that was tapped to act as a hero to the mainstream, and only through the tireless efforts of alternative economists and liberty activists has this fallacy been exposed to some in the population.

In the next crisis, it will be the IMF that is used as the front organization for the next rescue as market collapse leads into a crisis in confidence in the U.S. dollar. I outlined the plan for this in my recent article 'IMF Reveals That Cryptocurrency Is The New World Order End Game.'

The average person is completely unaware of the Hegelian con-game being played here. And, when banking institutions step in as the designated "caregivers" to the ailing economy, what we sometimes see is a kind of reverse Florence Nightingale effect, in which the patients fall in love with the nurse merely because they have associated the extension of economic function to an extension of their lives (or at least, an extension of comfort in their lives).

The next engineered crash is shaping up to become the most epic in history, and make no mistake, it has already started. Even now mindless optimism and blind faith in the markets continues, and the assumption on the part of the investment world is that the banks will eventually be forced to admit their "policy error" on tightening and that they will revert back to lower rates or even more QE. This is not going to happen.

Hopium sellers have been peddling several scenarios lately in which the current downtrend in markets will stop and the bull rally party rekindled. The three most pervasive are...

Scenario #1: The Fed suddenly skips rate hikes in the near term under pressure from markets and the White House.

Scenario #2: The Fed fully admits to policy error in light of stock market declines and re-launches QE.

Scenario #3: Trump announces successful trade war negotiations, primarily with China, and ends tariff measures.

Today, Jerome Powell is taking the exact actions in policy that he originally stated would cause a crash. Powell is not tightening out of stupidity, nor is he tightening out of a misguided error in policy. Powell is tightening because the banking elites want a crash. Period.

Because of this, it is highly unlikely that the Fed will stop tightening measures, let alone reverse them. The Fed does not care about "pressure" from markets, or pressure from the White House

The Fed will continue hiking up to the neutral rate of inflation, and probably well beyond that into 2019. This is exactly what they did during the Great Depression to escalate the crisis, and it is exactly what they will do today.

Trump's trade war rhetoric is now the only lever that can be pulled to stall the market landslide. But it appears that this stalling is meant to make the crash more manageable, not stop it from happening. Trump will jawbone markets up at times, but overall there will be no progression in negotiations. The trade war will eventually escalate to include threats to U.S. bond markets and the dollar itself.

 
Get my free ebook and related materials about the Washington-Wall Street Cartel and how they screw Middle Class America below…

Yours for a brighter season,

Bruce ‘the Poor Man!’

Final Notes…
 

We are living at a time when everything is in a bubble – the current housing bubble is much larger than the one that collapsed in 2008, student loan debt has now surpassed the 1.5 trillion dollar mark, corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, U.S. consumers are 13 trillion dollars in debt and the federal government is nearly 22 trillion dollars in debt.  And even though stock prices have fallen dramatically in recent weeks, the truth is that stocks are still wildly overpriced.  

A stunning new study that was just released came to the conclusion that the globe is heading for “a massive worldwide financial meltdown”that will be unlike anything that we have ever experienced before…

Previous crashes will appear as “minor stumbling blocks” in comparison to what nuclear scientists are predicting as a massive worldwide financial meltdown “such as never before” in the mid-2020s. Analysts from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Kraków are forecasting the future of the global economy as “extremely bleak” as “nervousness of the world market is growing all the time”. The academics’ “catastrophic” predictions come from “multi-fractal” analysis of financial markets published in the journal Complexity. The researchers looked at various economic measures, including Standard & Poor’s 500 index – the largest global stock market index including the largest 500 firms, largely of a worldwide nature – from January 1950 to December 2016.

 

Contributors and subscribers enable the Poor Man Survivor to post 150+ free essays annually. It is for this reason they are Heroes and Heroines of New Media. Without your financial support, the free content would disappear for the simple reason that I cannot keep body and soul together on my meager book sales & ecommerce alone.

 

 (More) Forever Foods for Your Prepper Pantry
 

 


·         Special Offer for our Readers

 72-hour Emergency Meal kit that's being offered contains 16 total servings of such delicious meals as Blue Ribbon Creamy Chicken Rice, the always-loved Granny's Homestyle Potato Soup and the stick-to-your-ribs breakfast favorite Maple Grove Oatmeal.

This kit normally sells for $27, plus shipping and handling and is rated 4½ out of five stars by customers.

While supplies last, these kits are available for only $21.95 and that includes Priority Shipping [we were forced to increase prices due to another round of USPS price hikes]. Go here for this deal:


Support our efforts by shopping my storefront…


 

 

Additional Resources

 
Your Free Middle Class Survival Kit

SAVE & MAKE Money

Researched by our editors and include 100s of tips, tricks and insider methods of saving money, earning extra money [many from the comfort of your home], the best places to live,  How to find little-known freebies, discounts and other benefits-over 2,000 programs!


 

or…


 


 

How to Survive the War on the Middle Class


14 of the best reports I’ve assembled on protecting your freedom-Download link.


 

 


 


 

A Smoking Frog Feature, Shallow Planet Production