And This Economic Depression Is Just 6 Weeks Old
Michael Snyder – The Economic Collapse April 30, 2020
In all of U.S. history we have never seen anything like this. I have been sitting at my desk for quite a while searching for the proper words to convey the gravity of what we are facing, and to be honest it has been quite a struggle. On Thursday, we learned that another 3.8 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits last week. That was much higher than many experts were anticipating, because by now the initial surge of unemployment caused by the coronavirus lockdowns should have started to fade quite a bit. But instead, the job loss tsunami continues to roll on, and at this point a total of 30.3 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the past six weeks. The following comes from ABC News…
Roughly 30.3 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the six weeks since the coronavirus outbreak began forcing millions of employers to close their doors and slash their workforces. That is more people than live in the New York and Chicago metropolitan areas combined, and it’s by far the worst string of layoffs on record.
According to numbers that come straight from the Federal Reserve, more than 152 million Americans were working in February, and that was an all-time high.
So losing 30.3 million jobs in six weeks means that nearly one-fifth of all jobs in the United States have officially vanished in just a month and a half.
And actually things are even worse than that, because millions of Americans still have not been able to successfully file claims because state unemployment websites have been so overloaded. Just check out these truly alarming numbers from the Economic Policy Institute…
The Economic Policy Institute found that for every 10 people who said they successfully filed a jobless claim in the previous four weeks, three to four more attempted to apply but couldn’t get through the system to file a claim.
Meanwhile, another two people didn’t even bother to try because it seemed too hard.
State unemployment websites were never designed to handle this sort of an onslaught. For some unemployed Americans, attempting to get the benefits that they have been promised can be an exceedingly frustrating experience…
Marci Oberst sat down at her computer Tuesday and embarked on what’s become a daily ritual – trying to log onto the Maryland Department of Labor’s website so she can extend her unemployment insurance.
At 9:30 AM, she was number 88,000 in line, according to the state’s labor website.
Number 88,000 in line?
How is that even possible?
Sadly, this is what an economic collapse looks like, and the months ahead are going to be exceedingly painful.
Needless to say, economic activity has come to a virtual standstill during these lockdowns, and this is really starting to show up in the numbers. For example, Edmunds is projecting that U.S. auto sales will be down by more than half compared to last April…
The car shopping experts at Edmunds say that April will be a record down month for the auto industry due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, forecasting that 633,260 new cars and trucks will be sold in the U.S. for an estimated seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of 7.7 million. This reflects a 52.5% decrease in sales from April 2019, and a 36.6% decrease from March 2020. Edmunds analysts note that this is the lowest-volume sales month dating back to at least 1990; the second worst month for sales in the past 30 years was January of 2009, when 655,000 vehicles were sold.
And major retailers are failing so rapidly now that it is hard to keep up with all the carnage.
The latest major victim to make headlines is J. Crew…
Clothing apparel company J. Crew is preparing for a bankruptcy filing that could come as soon as this weekend, people familiar with the matter tell CNBC.
Privately held J. Crew is working to secure $400 million in financing to fund operations in bankruptcy, said the people, who requested anonymity because the information is confidential. They cautioned that timing could still slip, and plans are not yet finalized.
COVID-19 has created an environment of great fear, and as I have been warning for a very long time, financial institutions tighten the flow of credit in such an environment.
We saw this happen during the last financial crisis, and it is starting to happen again now.
All over America we are seeing lending conditions being greatly tightened, and Wall Fargo just announced that they will no longer be taking applications for HELOCs at all…
Wells Fargo, one of the largest home lenders in the U.S., is stepping away from the market for home equity lines of credit because of uncertainty tied to the coronavirus pandemic.
The bank informed its mortgage personnel of the news Thursday in a conference call, according to a source, and the move was confirmed by company spokesman Tom Goyda.
I was absolutely floored when I first read that.
Our entire system depends on easy credit, and these changing conditions are going to create quite a bit of chaos for the foreseeable future. Americans are going to find that it is much, much more difficult to be approved for home loans, auto loans and credit cards, and that is going to greatly depress economic activity.
Fear is also deeply affecting U.S. consumers, and at this point they are hoarding cash at a pace that we haven’t seen since the 1980s…
Americans are so nervous about the state of the economy that they are stashing cash in the bank at a rate not seen since the first year of Ronald Reagan’s presidency.
The United States government’s Bureau of Economic Analysis reported Thursday morning that the savings rate surged to 13.1% in March — up from 8% in February.
But of course there are tens of millions of Americans that have already run through their savings and can’t hoard cash because they don’t have any left.
According to one brand new survey, many of those Americans now find themselves unable “to pay the rent, mortgage or utility bills”…
The coronavirus’ seismic hit on the U.S. economy is rattling people’s finances. Roughly 41% of working-age adults say their families have experienced a job loss, a decrease in work hours or other employment-related declines in income in recent weeks, according to a new analysis by the Urban Institute.
Underscoring the jump in financial distress around the country: More than 4 in 10 of Americans whose work was affected by the pandemic said they weren’t able to pay the rent, mortgage or utility bills; skipped medical care; or were at risk of going hungry.
Fear of COVID-19 turned out to be the “black swan event” that burst our debt-fueled economic bubble, but this economic depression would not end even if the coronavirus pandemic suddenly disappeared tomorrow.
Now that the economic dominoes are tumbling, all of the economic momentum is taking us in just one direction, and nobody is going to be able to reverse this process now that it has started.
Next week, a couple more million unemployed Americans will probably be added to our rapidly growing total, and it is just a matter of time before “great civil unrest” starts breaking out.
Our debt-fueled economy and our Ponzi scheme financial system were never going to be sustainable in the long run, and many have been warning for years that we would eventually be facing this sort of a scenario.
Now it is here, and I wish that I could tell you that everything is going to be okay and that our leaders are going to be able to put the pieces of our shattered economy back together, but I can’t.
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, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with all many people as we possibly can.
It is unfortunate that there is so little understanding of what is really going on. Let’s look at a bank or a wealthy investor. They are willing to lend money on the basis that they can get a return on their investments. In simple terms, there are no good investments. Warren Buffet has been sitting on a mountain of cash for over a decade… he is considered to be a very long term investor and he says: “I can’t see any worthwhile long term stocks.” Buffet has just sold ALL HIS AIRLINE STOCKS. Now, there are two reasons why interest rates are low, zero, or minus zero, and that is the staggering debts, debts that need to be rolled over every 6 months, 1 year, 5 years and 10 years. The only thing that allows these staggering debts to be rolled over is the fact that money is cheap or costs nothing. Imagine if we could all borrow money at zero cost? This is why we are sheeple fools, the elite lives for free.
Every so often they need to inject some oil (digitally created money) into the system in order to keep it ticking over. For the real economy, they can’t borrow money on the same terms that the elite gets it. This means that there is no growth, or certainly not enough growth to counter inflation and rises in population. China used to has double-digit growth, now it’s around 6%, really 5% or less. At this rate, the Chinese economy is flatlining, because it can’t provide for the increasing population. So the UK gets anywhere between 300,000 and 550,000 immigrants per year. Accepted that government data is very dubious, but every one of these immigrants represents pure growth, yet, the UK has produced no real growth, so its easy to say the UK has been shrinking in real economic terms since 2007.
Here in the UK, as in the US, many, many jobs have no real value. Wipe away the trinkets of smartphones, endless crap TV, computer games, gambling and anything else used to befuddle the sheeple into thinking life is great – the fact is we are getting poorer. The plane crash of 2007/8 was delayed, the pilot managed to squeeze $75 trillion into the engines, but now the pilot is using the passengers as fuel. The plane will crash or the flight crew will have WW3 before it hits the ground.
A 5th of US jobs gone in the first few months of Covid… sorry, Covid is just a tiny scratch. The US has nearly 100 million working-age that are not in any paid work & this was before Covid. The UK has 10 million working-age that is not in any paid work and that doesn’t include the millions on zero hours, part-time work, or those who are underemployed. When I started work in the late 70s, 40 hours plus Saturday mornings (8 am – 1 pm) were required. Today, the government’s definition of full time working week is 30 hours. So the official annual salary is £26,000, or £500 per week, so on a 30 hour week, you’d be on £16.60 per hour, fantasy for many people, £9 x 30 = £270 per week. You can just about survive on £270. The point I am making is that work no longer pays, it hasn’t paid for 20 years & this is supported by the benefits that some can claim. Some credit (pun intended) to the Tories for admitting that the state (taxpayer) bankrolls many companies by subsiding low wages and there are companies who pay reasonably well, but somewhere in their business plan, they will use other companies/suppliers who are not paying any subsidised wages. When a business decides to work with another business, one of the first questions asked is; what is your green statement, what are your green policies, and how are you are offsetting your carbon bollox? The first question should be: can you show us your workforce wage rates and structure? No chance of that.
So Covid is a stone being thrown by the elite and they are attempting to (will) hit as many targets with that stone as possible. They can only throw these curve balls every so often, so they need to count. It is far too easy to say: ‘Oh dear. look, they’ve looked the economy down because of covid, no, there is much more to this than just Covid and lost jobs… the robots are coming and the WEF has been banging the ‘Robots Have Rights’ drum for years. Robots and AI will have more rights than sheeple humans. Not only that, but robots and AI will have the right to decide which humans live or die. I hope you enjoy your NHS tracking app.
Well said and good commentary, Carl Jones.
There were several significant bits in this piece: “Americans are going to find that it is much, much more difficult to be approved for home loans, auto loans and credit cards, and that is going to greatly depress economic activity”
-A big goal of the plamdemic was another huge transfer of wealth from those who had a little to those who already have a lot. Without some home equity credit, a lot of formerly fairly prosperous (relatively) people are going to lose everything. Part of the plan was to destroy small business owners and small land holders, so the billionaires could swoop in and scoop it all up for pennies on the dollar again.
“More than 4 in 10 of Americans whose work was affected by the pandemic said they weren’t able to pay the rent, mortgage or utility bills; skipped medical care; or were at risk of going hungry.”
-Since EVERYONE’S work was “affected” by the plandemic, that means a whopping 40%, minimum, of Americans are on the verge of complete ruin and abject poverty, if not already neck-deep in it. Yup, greatest country on earth, right? Keep telling yourselves that, morons.
“Our debt-fueled economy and our Ponzi scheme financial system were never going to be sustainable in the long run…”
-And there’s another thing, the system was corrupt to the core, a runaway shit-show, and it would have reached a breaking point soon anyway, but now the ruling and banking class have a convenient patsy to blame the crash on, the Covid-1984 plandemic.
In the Jew-S-A, the train started its way off the rails in 1913 when the Jew international banking cartel got its claws into the treasury and its paws deep into the pockets of every working person. The system of credit and currency, with fiat currency and fractional reserve banking, run by shameless thieving Jew parasites, is the biggest scam/crime in history. A hundred years later, a once-great and prosperous country wallows deeply in un-payable debt and moral bankruptcy.