(The Economic Collapse Blog)—When one of my readers sent me a photo of egg prices at a store in western Washington state, I could hardly believe what I was seeing. I clearly remember when I could purchase a carton of quality eggs at the grocery store for just 99 cents, but thanks to inflation and a bird flu crisis that never seems to end, those days are long gone. Now it is common to pay five, six, seven or even eight dollars for a carton of eggs. In fact, it probably won’t be too long before we crack the ten dollar barrier. In the old days, eggs were considered to be a very inexpensive way to feed your family, but now eggs prices have gone completely insane.
Unfortunately, it isn’t just egg prices that are spiking.
According to CNN, we just witnessed the largest monthly jump in grocery prices in almost two years…
In November, egg prices shot up by 8.2% nationwide, logging one of the highest monthly spikes in the past two decades, according to Consumer Price Index data released last week. And it’s not just eggs — shoppers have seen jumps in beef, coffee and non-alcoholic beverages, driving up overall grocery prices to their largest monthly gain since January 2023.
And more increases appear to be coming down the pike for the pulped-paper-packed protein: Wholesale prices for chicken eggs soared by nearly 55% last month, and wholesale food prices rose by 3.1% (their highest monthly increase in two years).
Our leaders in Washington promised us that food inflation was under control.
They lied.
I realize that this is very bad news. I have heard from so many of you that are deeply struggling at this moment. Now it appears that food prices are going to go substantially higher in 2025. All of us are just going to have to adapt to this new environment somehow.
If you are barely scraping by from month to month, I want you to understand that you are definitely not alone.
In fact, the U.S. Census Bureau is telling us that 37 percent of Americans are having trouble even paying their most basic bills…
The Census Bureau reports that 37% of Americans are struggling to pay routine bills. Add in the cost of Christmas gifts and other holiday expenses and it can feel overwhelming to keep up with the Clauses.
The National Retail Federation predicts an increase in holiday spending this year, but the rise is more indicative of the higher cost of goods than anything else. We aren’t buying more; it’s just what we are buying costs more than before.
That is more than a third of the country.
It is difficult for people to hear that they aren’t going to be able to live the way that they previously did.
In an attempt to keep their lifestyles the same, many Americans are racking up credit card debt like never before…
A new study of Americans credit card debt finds the average household credit card balance as of the third quarter of 2024, was around $10,757 after adjusting for inflation.
That according to the personal-finance website WalletHub which Friday released its new Credit Card Debt Study, which found that consumers added $21 billion in debt during the third quarter of 2024.
Early results for the fourth quarter of the year show preliminary data for October at a new record high for credit card debt in the month, in absolute terms.
Sadly, we have now reached a point where debt saturation is becoming a major problem and delinquencies are rising.
Consumers simply cannot spend money like they once did, and the retail industry is really struggling as a result. So far this year, retailers have announced the closing of more than 7,000 stores. That represents an increase of 69 percent from last year…
Retail store closures in the United States rose sharply in 2024, with over 7,100 closures announced through the end of November, according to data from the research firm CoreSight. This number marks a 69 percent increase from the previous year under the Biden-Harris administration, which has been plagued by inflation.
The spike in closures is tied to a wave of retail bankruptcies, with 45 retailers filing this year compared to 25 in 2023. Economic challenges, including persistent inflation, have led consumers to cut back on discretionary spending.
As I discussed last week, evidence that the economy is really slowing down is all around us.
I am sure that you can see this where you live, and with each passing day we get even more troubling news.
For example, it is being reported that Macy’s is planning to close dozens of stores by the end of this calendar year…
Macy’s is ramping up store closures this year as it struggles to revive its faltering business.
In February, the embattled retailer announced plans to shut 150 underperforming stores within three years – including 55 closures by the end of 2024.
But the company now expects to close 65 locations by the end of the year. Bosses said they will remain open through the holidays to let regular customers shop but then shutter for good before the end of December.
And in a year when so many restaurant chains have already bit the dust, we now have another one to add to the list…
Arizona’s iconic frozen drink and sub chain Eegee’s has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, making it the latest casualty in a brutal year for fast-food restaurants.
The announcement came with the closure of five locations across Tucson and Phoenix, leaving die-hard fans heartbroken.
The December 6 filing in Phoenix federal court gives the embattled chain – owned by private equity firm 39 North Capital – a chance to reorganize its finances.
Four years of “Bidenomics” has taken an enormous toll on our nation.
We have built up a tremendous amount of economic momentum in the wrong direction, and the very foolish policies of our leaders are taking us exactly where I warned they would take us.
Many are hoping that things can be turned around when the new administration takes over.
But considering how rapidly conditions are deteriorating both here and around the world, it would literally be a major miracle to pull us out of this mess before a horrifying global crisis erupts.
So let us hope for the best, but let us also continue to prepare for the worst.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
