There were many contributing factors to the economic downturn of 2008-09, but there was one major challenge in the subprime mortgage market that was the singular catalyst. All of the other factors could have been remedied pretty easily if the housing market hadn’t sent shockwaves across every financial sector. As a result, I’ve always considered the downturn to be a one-cause event.
What we’re facing going into 2023 is very different. Instead of one major factor exacerbated by many smaller factors, we’re seeing multiple existential threats to the sanctity of the western economic structure. Individually, these factors could be catastrophic much like subprime mortgages were catastrophic 14 years ago. Unfortunately, there are at least six major factors that are individually catastrophic which puts us in the perfect storm.
The boat is ready to sink and most of the lifejackets are either gone or faulty.
On today’s episode of The JD Rucker Political Report on America Out Loud as well as America First Report, I discussed an article by Michael Snyder over at The Economic Collapse Blog, cross-posted to one of my Substacks. He listed 12 numbers pointing to an economic collapse between now and the end of 2023. It doesn’t take a degree in economics to realize that everything he pointed out should be of major concern to every American and pretty much every member of western society.
For reference, here is his list:
- The government is telling us that the unemployment rate only went up to 3.7 percent in August.
- According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if honest numbers were being used the real rate of unemployment in the United States would be over 24 percent.
- About half of all U.S. companies say that they will be eliminating jobs within the next 12 months.
- The government is telling us that the inflation rate in the United States is only 8.5 percent.
- According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if the rate of inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the real rate of inflation would be somewhere around 17 percent right now. That is worse than anything that we experienced during the Jimmy Carter era.
- At one company, the number of Americans taking out short-term loans for groceries has nearly doubled this year.
- One out of every five home sellers in the United States dropped their asking price last month. This is more evidence that home prices are starting to rapidly move in a downward direction.
- Sales of previously-owned homes were about 20 percent lower this July than they were last July.
- One recent survey found that 3.8 million Americans believe that they could be evicted from their homes within the next two months.
- According to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, approximately 20 million U.S. households are currently behind on their utility bills.
- The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen for three weeks in a row. We also witnessed this sort of a gradual slide just prior to the big crash of 2008.
- In August, a whopping 2,150 corporate executives sold off shares in their companies. Are they trying to cash in while they still can?
I absolutely respect Snyder’s understanding of the economy and collapses. He has been writing about economic collapses for longer than I’ve been writing about politics in general. But on this topic, I take exception to one notion.
He continues to reference how bad things were in 2008-09 as something we may face. I think he’s dramatically understanding the challenge.
I think the possible upcoming economic collapse will make 2008-09 seem like great fiscal times.
Critics will likely point out that Snyder is selling his book. They’ll say I have gold sponsors so it behooves me to promote the notion of a coming economic collapse. In other words, they’ll get on comments here and say we’re fearmongering for profit.
Let me be perfectly clear. I do NOT want an economic collapse. I am not hoping things keep going south so I can sell more precious metals. Unlike the vast majority of conservative pundits and commentators out there, I have not been promoting gold for years. I started BECAUSE of the challenges I believe are coming. This isn’t about fearmongering. The possibility of an economic collapse is real. I do not believe it’s a foregone conclusion… at least I pray it isn’t. But I also would never paint a rosy picture of an economy when I believe things are anything but rosy.
I’m just calling it how I see it.
Beyond the multiple existential threats that I believe are causing a perfect storm to form around us, there is the motivation component. It seems the powers-that-be and their puppets are pushing for collapse. The World Economic Forum, Club of Rome, and Council for Inclusive Capitalism, among others, have been doing everything they can to launch The Great Reset. You don’t need to reset something that hasn’t crashed. If it ain’t broke, it’s hard to convince the people to make sacrifices to fix it. In other words, they need capitalism to break.
Then, there are the “failing” world leaders, including the Biden-Harris regime. I put “failing” in scare-quotes because I think pretty much every conservative commentator is wrong to declare the regime’s policies have been failing. They’re working exactly as they’re intended to work. Yes, they’re supposed to increase inflation dramatically. Yes, they’re supposed to make driving gas vehicles cost-prohibitive. Yes, they’re supposed to launch an energy crisis, food crisis, and every other possible crisis they can muster.
This is an intentional, semi-controlled demolition of western capitalism.
There are three things we should do in order to salvage what we can and possibly prevent the economic collapse. First and foremost, we must take our righteous objections to damaging policies to the highest possible level. It’s not just about griping on social media. We need protests. We need lawsuits. We need our voices to be heard.
Second, we need a red wave in November, one that is much bigger than is even being predicted. If the GOP takes back control of the House, Senate, or both, the best they can do is prevent further damaging policies from coming forward. Unless we unleash a massive red wave that can actually get veto-proof legislation passed, all we’re doing is slowing the bleeding. Having Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy in charge is only marginally better than Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, but at least it’s something.
Last but not least, we must prepare locally. That means many should strongly consider becoming “preppers.” It means feeding as many of our purchases into our local economy as possible. Stop buying through Amazon. Stop buying through companies aligned with the Chinese Communist Party. Strengthen your local economy because if an economic collapse comes, having a localized infrastructure upon which you can rely is far better than needing to stand in government breadlines.
Eventually those breadlines will become cricketlines.
Pray for America, folks. We’re facing hard times ahead and a federal government bent on taking advantage of our hardships. Become as self-reliant as possible before you no longer have that option.
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.
