U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is taking decisive action to address the non-domiciled commercial driver’s license (CDL) crisis, which has transformed America’s highways into both a public safety nightmare and a national security threat. Countless Americans have lost their lives this year at the hands of non-English-speaking migrants/illegal aliens operating 80,000-pound big rigs – yet they should never have been on the road, but were allowed to because rogue sanctuary states handed out CDLs like candy. Under the Biden-Harris regime, tens of thousands of these migrants flooded into the trucking industry, many unable to read road signs in English. 

“Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers,” Rubio stated on X on Thursday evening.

He added: “The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.”

Effective immediately we are pausing all issuance of worker visas for commercial truck drivers.

The increasing number of foreign drivers operating large tractor-trailer trucks on U.S. roads is endangering American lives and undercutting the livelihoods of American truckers.

— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) August 21, 2025

Rubio’s action at State comes days after U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy addressed the horrific crash in Florida involving an illegal alien operating a big rig, who made an illegal U-turn, killing three Americans. 

Duffy blasted “non-enforcement and radical immigration policies” for turning the trucking industry into a “lawless frontier,” allowing unqualified foreign drivers to operate massive 40-ton rigs.

This cannot happen again.

.@FMCSA is launching an investigation into both the driver and White Hawk Carrier.

Here’s what we know:

1. Washington State improperly issued the driver a full-term CDL. Asylum seekers or illegal aliens are NOT allowed to receive this!

2. New Mexico… pic.twitter.com/Qlf8T68IJz

— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) August 19, 2025

Responding to Rubio’s action is American Truckers United’s (ATU) Shannon Everett, whose trucking advocacy group has been one of the main forces driving urgency in alerting the Trump administration to the non-domiciled CDL crisis killing innocent Americans, in some cases, wiping out entire families. 

“At American Truckers United, we are forever grateful for the swift and decisive action taken by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who truly puts Americans first. We thank him for this bold step in pausing all work visas for commercial truck drivers, which we believe is the first occupation-specific visa restriction ever implemented by a Secretary of State to protect American workers,” Everett told ZeroHedge. 

He continued, “Secretary Rubio has shut off the supply lines. Now it will be up to Secretary Duffy to clean house!” 

ZeroHedge began covering the migrant CDL crisis in March, together with ATU, warning about the deadly consequences of open-border chaos.

Here’s the reporting:

• Advocacy Group Calls For U.S. Probe On Non-English Speaking Migrant Truck Drivers After Deadly Austin Crash

• Biden Handed Out CDLs Like Candy… Now U.S. Highways Are A Public Safety & National Security Nightmare

• Rolling Risk: Unvetted Migrants Behind The Wheel Of Big Rigs Threaten U.S. Safety & Security

• From North America To Australia, Migrant Truckers Are Fueling A Highway Safety Crisis

• English Trucking Rule Takes Effect, Federal Probe Begins Of Sanctuary State Migrant CDL Pipeline

• Letter Urges Transportation Sec. Duffy To Ban Foreign CDLs Amid Series Of Highway Crashes

• Highway Mayhem: Trucker From Sanctuary State Illinois Arrested After Baltimore Shooting Spree

• Walmart, Amazon Truck Depots Display Multilingual Signs, Raising Alarms Over Migrant Drivers With No English

• Watch: American Truckers United Issues Dire Warning On ‘Unsafe’ Highways Amid Flood Of Migrant Drivers, Crashes

• Florida Highway Horror: Migrant Truck Driver Leaves 3 Americans Dead Amid CDL Crisis

• Illegal Alien Behind Fatal Florida Big Rig Crash; Sec. Duffy Signals Major Action On CDL Crisis

• “This Cannot Happen Again”: Sec. Duffy Readies Major Action Against Rogue States Amid Migrant CDL Crisis

Everett told us that ATU began working with the State Department in July to address the crisis and restore safety to America’s highways. Within a month, Rubio took decisive action, and now all eyes are on Duffy to see whether the DoT takes action against this public safety crisis and national security threat spurred by the Biden-Harris regime. 

Accountability is coming. Rogue sanctuary states run by globalist Democrats have been put on notice: they will be held responsible for the death and destruction on U.S. highways. Also on notice are the globalist-controlled mega-corporations and major trucking firms that recklessly hired non-English-speaking CDL holders.

Authored by Gayle Jo Carter via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

It’s a poster on the wall in his 1979 high school guidance counselor’s office that all these years later motivates Mike Rowe, the Emmy award-winning TV host, producer, narrator, podcaster, spokesman, bestselling author, and recording artist, on his quest to reinvigorate America’s enthusiasm, passion, and educational foundation for the skilled trades.

The poster’s caption – “Work smart, not hard” – underscored an image of “the happy graduate with his diploma and the poor schmuck who won a vocational consolation prize,” recalled Rowe in a recent interview with The Epoch Times.

All these years later, Rowe remembers his guidance counselor pointing to the poster and asking him, “Which one of these guys do you want to be?”

“It was a very powerful moment for me,” said Rowe. “I remember thinking, ‘I wanted to lean across the table and give him a slap because the punchline in that poster is my granddad—the embodiment of a skilled worker had been affirmatively caricatured and lampooned and marginalized.”

At the time, Rowe was wrestling with his own future.

“I was 17 and I’d taken some tests and done well, and he wanted me to go to the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Maryland, maybe James Madison. I didn’t have any money, and there was no way I was going to borrow. Debt was the only four-letter word that was truly off limits in my house. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. My plan was to go to community college for 26 bucks a credit and figure it out.”

In the decades since that guidance counselor meeting, Rowe, who eventually did go on to a four-year college, has turned his visibility and success into the mikeroweWORKS Foundation. Launched in 2008, the foundation works hard to debunk the myths and misperceptions about the trades and help close the skills gap through job boards, corporate partnerships, and scholarships.

“The problem with the push for college when we were in high school wasn’t that college was a bad thing,” said Rowe. “It’s that the push came at the expense of all other forms of learning.”

Get Back to Hard Work

The disappearance of shop and home economics classes “turned out to be maybe the most boneheaded decision in the history of modern education,” said Rowe, who believes it’s the lack of opportunity for students to work with their hands in classes like those, along with the devaluing of skilled trades that has brought on the dramatic skills gap for the booming job market in the AI proof skilled trades.

The Towson University graduate turned opera singer turned QVC host turned “Dirty Jobs” legend tells the story of his “crooked, crooked path” nudged on by his former school teacher mother, Peggy Rowe—now a best-selling author and popular guest on Rowe’s podcast, “The Way I Heard It”—this way.

“Three years on QVC, and then eight years freelancing, probably 300 different jobs, and then a weird phone call from my mother—telling me that my grandfather was turning 90, and she had the perfect birthday present that I should get him,” recalled Rowe. “I said, ‘What?’ And she said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if before he died, he could turn on the TV and see you doing something that looked like work.’”

To honor his grandfather’s legacy and “mostly to shut my mother up,” laughed Rowe, at that time a host of a local San Francisco CBS show “Evening Magazine,” he took his cameraman into the sewers of San Francisco and profiled a sewer inspector.

“My pop was an electrician, but he only went to the seventh grade,” said Rowe. “And by the time he was 30, he was an accomplished welder, pipe fitter, steam fitter, and HVAC. I saw him build additions on people’s homes without a blueprint. He just had that chip. He just knew mechanically how everything worked. He could take that clock apart behind you and put it back together, blindfolded.”

Rowe was surprised that the profile of the sewer inspector generated so much mail and viewer engagement that a new recurrent segment, “Somebody’s Gotta Do It,” was born.

“We just kind of Forrest Gumped our way on the air,” said Rowe.

Inspire a New Generation of Skilled Tradesmen

But then came the real work as Rowe discovered his true calling.

“MikeRoweWorks evolved very organically out of ‘Dirty Jobs’ in 2008,” acknowledged Rowe. As an apprentice on the TV series “Dirty Jobs,” Rowe traveled to every state and worked with plumbers, electricians, steamfitters, pipefitters, brick layers, farmers, fishers, and a bunch of other skilled workers who help keep our polite society humming along.

“And like the show itself, it was a tribute to Carl Knobel, my pop. It was a simple attempt at the time to shine a light on 2.3 million jobs that were wide open—good jobs. In 2009, the country was in a recession. There were 12 million people unemployed, but on “Dirty Jobs,” we just saw ‘help wanted’ signs all over the place. It seemed clear that there was another narrative going on that had nothing to do with the creation of jobs, but rather the creation of enthusiasm for the jobs that already existed. That was the skills gap. And that’s what got me on my soapbox on Labor Day 2008. We’ll be 17 this Labor Day.”

Rowe, who went on to narrate and host some of Discovery Channel’s most popular shows like “Deadliest Catch,” is just coming off awarding his foundation’s 2025 Work Ethic Scholarships to the tune of five million dollars to 526 men and women.

“We’ve given away, so far, 16 million dollars to over 2,600 recipients, supporting over 21 skilled trades in 46 states,” said Rowe.

Getting people interested in skilled trades—jobs AI can’t do—is helped by each and every one of these recipients who become shining examples of possibilities for potential workers.

“The workforce is out of balance,” said Rowe. “Five tradespeople leave and two replace them year after year.”

Hence, Rowe’s mission—“Work Smart and Hard”—“which began as an ad hoc PR campaign for a couple of million jobs,” turned into a lifelong commitment to the skilled trades.

“I went to Congress and I made some PSAs and stuff. The fans of “Dirty Jobs” were the ones who took it to the next level,” said Rowe.

“They helped me build an online trade resource center so anybody could go to MikeRoweworks.org and see thousands of jobs. That got the attention of Ford and Caterpillar, and a lot of other big, muscular companies that required a skilled workforce. They wanted to give me money, so I thought, ‘maybe work ethic scholarships’. That first year, we gave five hundred thousand dollars. The next year, we did 700,000. And the year after that, we did a million. It just kept building. We had 10 times the applicants this year as we did a year before. I can’t take a victory lap just yet. I’m not done.”

Amazon’s big move to roll out same-day grocery delivery across 1,000 new cities – on track for 2,300 by year-end – puts Instacart and traditional grocery chains squarely in the crosshairs. But the real shocker isn’t Amazon’s new expanded reach; it’s that Walmart still reigns supreme as the lowest-cost grocer, setting the stage for an intensifying last-mile grocery war. 

News last week (read here) of Amazon expanding its same-day grocery delivery across a thousand more cities by the end of the year sent Instacart (CART) and DoorDash (DASH) shares tumbling. Goldman analysts forecast that millions of Prime members will flock to the service as it becomes available in their respective areas. 

It’s increasingly clear that the last-mile grocery battlefield in the U.S. is shaping up as a two-horse race between Amazon and Walmart. There are other players, but none with the scale or firepower to compete seriously. 

Goldman analysts, led by Eric Sheridan, forecasted last week that Amazon can capture a low single-digit percentage of its 129 million Prime members for weekly grocery orders, potentially creating a “potential gross revenue opportunity of ~$30–200 billion.”

Prime members new to ordering groceries on the platform will undoubtedly be hunting for deals … unless their priority is more convenience.

In a separate note, Goldman analyst Kate McShane ran a pricing survey across broadline retailers (BJ’s, Walmart) and grocery chains (Kroger, Sprouts) on select items.

The results: Walmart had the most affordability for shoppers, with prices 9.8% below the group average, followed closely by Amazon at -9.3%. Sprouts had the highest markups at +19.2% (limited SKU availability noted), while Kroger landed modestly above average at +2.2%. In a direct comparison, BJ’s undercut Amazon with prices averaging 7.9% lower.

Comparing AMZN, KR, SFM, and WMT

Comparing AMZN and BJ

Comparing delivery costs between AMZN, BJ, COST, KR, SFM, and WMT

The last-mile grocery race is already crowded, with most major retailers offering same-day delivery directly or through Instacart. Walmart holds a big advantage, with stores within 10 miles of 90% of the U.S. population, and now Amazon’s aggressive push into the space ensures the battle will only intensify.

The only issue for Amazon: Walmart still owns the pricing advantage.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Americans should “beware” of sunscreen products in mousse form as they may not be effective, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said in an Aug. 12 X post, with the agency sending warning letters to five companies marketing sunscreen products.

The letters were sent on Aug. 6 to Texas-based Supergoop, Pennsylvania-based Fallien Cosmeceuticals Ltd., Israel-based K & Care Organics, Sweden-based Kalani AB, and Florida-based Vacation Inc.

According to the agency, the sunscreen products marketed by these companies are sold as drugs. However, based on section 505 of the FD&C Act, sunscreens can only be approved for marketing in oil, lotion, cream, gel, butter, paste, ointment, stick, spray, and powder forms—and not in mousse and foam.

As for specific products under these brands, FDA took issue with Supergoop’s Play SPF 50 Body Mousse; Fallien’s TiZOs Sheerfoam Non-Tinted SPF 30 Mineral Sunscreen; K & Care’s Botao Grow Naturally Kids Mineral Foam Spray; Kalani’s Sunwear Sun Mousse; and Vacation’s Classic Whip Broad Sunscreen Mousse, among a few others.

Vacation was also warned regarding the packaging of its sunscreen products, which the agency said resembled “metal canisters ordinarily used to package whipped cream products and similar dessert toppings.”

“Packaging drug products in containers that resemble food containers commonly used by adults and children can mislead consumers into mistaking the products for food, which is of particular concern as this increases the risk of accidental ingestion,” the letter said.

The FDA gave the companies 15 working days to address the violations.

The Epoch Times reached out to the companies for comment but did not receive a response by publication time.

Sunscreen Safety

According to an FDA post last updated August 2024, the agency regulates sunscreen “to ensure they meet safety and effectiveness standards” just as it does with other nonprescription drug items.

For instance, the FDA has recalled sunscreens due to benzene contamination. Benzene is a chemical used to manufacture industrial products such as chemicals and dyes, and used in items like sunscreens. Long-term exposure via inhalation and skin absorption can lead to cancers and blood disorders, the agency said.

A recall related to benzene took place back in July 2022, when the FDA announced that Edgewell Personal Care Company was withdrawing three batches of its Banana Boat sunscreens from the market. Samples of the products were found to contain trace levels of benzene.

Many sunscreens also fail to offer the expected protection, according to a May 20 statement from the Environmental Working Group (EWG).

The group evaluated 2,204 sunscreen products and found that more than 77 percent performed poorly in terms of skin protection or contained potentially harmful ingredients.

“Wearing any sunscreen is much more important and offers better sun protection for your skin than not applying anything,” said EWG acting chief science officer David Andrews. “But not all sunscreens are created equal.”

On the positive side, 63 sunscreens from 13 brands were found to qualify for EWG’s Verified mark, which is only granted to products meeting high standards.

According to EWG, a major shift in the sunscreen market is the increasing demand for mineral-based products containing zinc oxide and titanium dioxide for UV protection, which are the only active sunscreen filters “generally recognized as safe and effective” by the FDA.

Taxpayers are yet again on the hook for America’s supposed “closest Middle East ally” as the Pentagon is planning to allocate at least $3.5 billion to restock weapons used in defense of Israel.

A Bloomberg report issued this week has reviewed Department of Defense budget documents prepared through mid-May. Emergency expenditures are highlighted which include US combat operations “executed at the request of or in coordination with Israel for the defense of Israeli territory, personnel or assets during attacks by Iran” or its proxies.

The largest single portion of the funding is $1 billion that is earmarked for replenishing Standard Missile interceptors, specifically the SM-3 IB Threat Upgrade models made by Raytheon and deployed by US Navy ships to intercept ballistic missiles.

Each of these big missiles are estimated to be between $9 million and $12 million, and these were used in the initial April 2024 flare-up and brief round of fighting between Israel and Iran.

The US assisted Israel following the Netanyahu government’s airstrike on the Iranian embassy in Damascus – which was the first such deliberate attack by a sovereign government on a foreign embassy in history (the lone precedent being the Chinese embassy strike in Belgrade in 1999, which the US apologized for as an ‘accident’).

The second-largest funding request in the documents is $204 million to restock THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) interceptors, produced by Lockheed Martin at a price tag of about $13 million each.

All of this will be pushed through despite recent polls showing public support for Israel being at a recent all-time low. The American public is also generally war-weary, given the now years-long conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, and the fact that Washington has sunk billions into supporting one side of each war.

The American Right has also begun to shift, with notable figures like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene now actively pushing to cut all funds to Israel, being the first Republican to ever label what Israel is doing “genocide”.

Authored by Austin Alonzo via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal appeals court has temporarily blocked a land transfer for a major Arizona copper mine, prompting a rebuke from President Donald Trump.

On Aug. 18, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued a temporary administrative injunction to halt a congressionally mandated land exchange that would have given control of a large tract of land in Tonto National Forest in Arizona to international mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP.

The court’s order stated that it was taking no position on the merits of the case but was acting to “preserve the status quo” as it expedites a review of the legal challenge brought by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and other plaintiffs.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump criticized the delay, saying the project was needed to create 3,800 jobs and secure a vital resource.

“Our Country, quite simply, needs Copper—AND NOW!” he said in an Aug. 19 post.

“It is so sad that Radical Left Activists can do this, and affect the lives of so many people. Those that fought it are Anti-American, and representing other Copper competitive Countries.”

The ruling came shortly after Trump met with the CEOs of the two companies at the White House, a meeting that highlighted his administration’s support for the mine.

The United States Forest Service is listed as a defendant alongside Resolution Copper Mining LLC.

The appeals court is scheduled to hear arguments for the case in September.

On July 30, Trump signed an executive order creating a 50 percent tariff on imports of semi-finished copper products and intensive copper derivative products. The same order raised the possibility of further tariffs on imported copper in the future.

In a statement, Resolution Copper, a joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP, called the injunction a temporary pause so the court can consider “eleventh hour motions” by the San Carlos Apache Tribe and other plaintiffs.

“We are confident the court will ultimately affirm the district court’s well-reasoned orders explaining in detail why the congressionally directed land exchange satisfies all applicable legal requirements,” the statement said.

The statement said the proposed mine has the potential to become one of the largest copper mines in the United States, “contributing $1 billion annually to Arizona’s economy and creating thousands of local jobs.”

In a statement he posted on LinkedIn on Aug. 19, BHP CEO Mike Henry thanked the Trump administration for its “strong leadership to reinvigorate mining and processing supply chains in and for America.”

The tribal leader at the center of the court case, San Carlos Apache Tribal Chairman Terry Rambler, responded directly to Trump’s comments in a Facebook post, saying that the tribe is “protecting America’s interests.” Rambler stated that the president’s comments “mirror misinformation” from foreign mining interests.

He said the project was a “rip-off” that would allow companies to extract billions in copper while paying “almost no royalties” to the federal government.

Rambler’s post also noted that Rio Tinto’s largest shareholder is a company owned by the Chinese government, and he alleged the copper would be shipped to China. The chairman reiterated the tribe’s primary concerns that the mine “will destroy a sacred area, decimates our environment, [and] threatens our water rights.”

On its website, Resolution Copper listed detailed responses to Rambler’s allegations.

“While both companies have operations and investors on nearly every continent around the world, Rio Tinto and BHP are committed to being transparent, ethical, and responsible corporations that provide the materials that shape modern society,” a statement posted on an undated “Myths and Facts” page states.

Rio Tinto is a British and Australian mining company traded publicly on multiple global exchanges. BHP is an Australian company publicly traded on that country’s Australian Securities Exchange.

The land transfer for the mining project was originally approved by Congress and signed off on by then-President Barack Obama in 2014. Various tribal interests and environmental groups have fought the transfer for years.

There is some good news in the lumber market: contracts have plunged more than 14% in recent weeks, reversing highs last seen during the pandemic shortages. The sharp reversal comes as bets on tariff-driven cost pressures and lower interest rates failed to lift demand. At the same time, disappointing housing data and weak earnings across the housing industry underscored the trouble festering. 

Traders ramped up bets that U.S. tariffs on Canadian imports and lower interest rates would lift costs and demand, but housing activity has failed to deliver any demand tailwinds.

There has been weak builder confidence (hitting 13-year lows), disappointing housing permits, and earnings misses at Home Depot, James Hardie Industries, Builders FirstSource, and UFP Industries.

Earlier today… 

Why is the housing market completely frozen? A new 30Y mortgage costs 6.80%. The average existing mortgage is almost 3% lower, or 4.11%. https://t.co/hOcBSnWZre pic.twitter.com/ctJozi9CGI

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 21, 2025

Canadian mills are operating at a loss, which will likely mean lumber supply cuts are just ahead. Even as tariffs doubled this summer, traders remained in “wait-and-see” mode on interest rates. Now the FOMC is preparing for an interest rate decision next month.

On Thursday, lumber futures for September delivery traded around $604 per thousand board feet, down about 14% from the settlement of $695.50 per thousand board feet on Aug. 1. 

Greg Kuta, president and CEO of lumber broker Westline Capital Strategies, told MarketWatch that lumber demand is sagging, with possible stabilization next year after Canadian mills dial back production.

Prices “got ahead of themselves with some overbuying on the way up, and a very large and unsustainable futures premium” developed, according to Steve Loebner, vice president of forest products and risk management at Sherwood Lumber, adding that upward pressure in price was driven by tariffs and future supply levels. 

Authored by Savannah Hulsey Pointer via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Donald Trump said that he will be patrolling the streets with police and the National Guard in Washington on the evening of Aug. 21.

“I’m going to be going out tonight, I think, with the police and with the military, of course. We’re going to do a job,” Trump told Todd Sternes on his radio show.

The president went on to say that the military stationed in Washington is doing a “fantastic job” at law enforcement in the nation’s capital.

President Donald Trump federalized control of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department on Aug. 11, ordering about 800 National Guard troops to assist with law enforcement.

“I’m announcing a historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam, and squalor, and worse,“ Trump said at a White House press briefing at the time.

“This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back.”

Starnes responded to Trump’s news of his plans to go on patrol, pondering whether the president would be given a uniform, and joked, “I want to see my president tase someone tonight.”

The selling continued for a fifth day: despite a modest attempt at an early bounce, the unexpectedly strong housing and PMI data, which saw US manufacturing surge to the highest level since 2022…

… sent odds of a September rate cut lower, from 80% before the economic data to as low as 65% before rebounding to the low 70% ahead of tomorrow’s 10sm ET Powell speech at Jackson Hole …

… which weighed on risk prices, and kept the S&P in the red for the 5th day in a row – it’s longest stretch since the start of the year, when we saw a similar selloff at the end of 2024 and culminating on Jan 2.

Once again, the selling was focused on mega cap tech names (see the Goldman TMT Mega cap basket), which are also down for 5 days in a row…

… even as the rest of the market has been surprisingly resilient. Indeed, as shown in the next chart, while the market-cap weighted S&P index (which is of course the default version) has been dropping, the equal-cap weighted one has been flat. Of course, that’s only because the equal-weighted version has vastly underperformed on the way up as it gets less benefit from AI tech giants. It is only logical that it would be less penalized on the way down.

However, while yesterday a majority of stocks closed green, there is no such distribution today, and virtually every sector (except Energy which has become the natural pair trade hedge to every “stonk” in the world and rises when momentum sinks), is in the red.

The only names that eaked out modest gains today were small caps: the Russell outperformed both the S&P and the Nasdaq.

Meanwhile, it appears that Goldman’s reco to buy momentum (read tech) was accurate, because after its sharp rebound yesterday, the index is up again today, rising more than 1%, after yesterday closing just above the 200DMA which has served as critical resistance ever since Liberation day.

Other names that have recently found support are MSFT and META which Goldman earlier pointed out, have bounced off their 50 DMA.

Another index that was saved by the 50DMA was the Goldman basket of most short names: here too, the recent selloff was halted at the 50 day moving average after the tremendous post-Lib day ascent.

One place where demand remains solid despite today’s modest dip, is the Goldman index of retail favorites: here the price remains well above the 50DMA, and a whopping 57% higher than the April lows! 

Elsewhere, treasury yields drifted higher all day, with the 10Y closing about 4 bps higher at 4.325%, amid modest curve flattening.

The selloff in rates also helped push the Bloomberg dollar index, which in turn send the USDJPY to the highest in 10 days, hardly the action one would expect ahead of a dovish announcement by Jerome Powell.

This hawkish read did not help bitcoin or ether both of which have been selling steadily for the past 12 hours.

Finally gold continues to do… absolutely nothing, as it remains stuck in a narrow $150 range between $3300 and $3450 for the past 4 months.

And after what was a relatively boring day we brace for what may be tomorrow’s big Jackson Hole fireworks to close out the summer.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,m

What I am about to share with you is some of the clearest evidence yet that the middle class in America is being systematically destroyed.  Young adults are forming middle class households at an extremely depressed rate, and that is because the American Dream is simply out of reach for most of them in this very harsh economic environment.  If you can’t get a good job that pays an adequate wage, you aren’t going to be able to live a middle class lifestyle.  Sadly, many older Americans simply do not understand how difficult things have become for our young adults in this day and age.

The Census Bureau has produced a paper entitled “Changes in Milestones of Adulthood” that absolutely blew me away.

According to the Census Bureau, the 5 major milestones of adulthood are living away from your parents, completing your education, getting a job, marrying, and living with a child.  Since 1975, the success that our young people have had in attaining these milestones has declined dramatically…

According to the working paper, “Changes in Milestones of Adulthood,” almost half of all young adults in 1975 had reached four milestones associated with adulthood: moving out of one’s parents’ home, getting a job, getting married and having a child.

Five decades on, that progression has changed dramatically. The share of young adults that have followed the traditional pathway to adulthood has dropped to less than a quarter, according to the paper.

After reading that CBS News article, I had to go find the original paper.

I found it on the official Census Bureau website, and it says that in 2023 only 17 percent of young adults had attained the 5 major milestones of adulthood…

In 2005, the most common combination was young adults who had all five milestones (about 26% experienced all five milestones). By 2023, however, the proportion of young adults who experienced all five markers of adulthood declined to about 17%, and young adults who reported only experiencing the three economic milestones of living away from parents, completing education, and participating in the labor force was the modal combination. Finally, the residual category in Figure 2 representing the proportion of young adults who experienced any other combination of milestones declined from 36% to 30%, suggesting that the experiences of young adults have become more homogeneous for contemporary cohorts.

17 percent!

Just think about that.

If our society was in good shape, most of our young adults would be in a position to achieve all 5 milestones by the age of 25.

But our society is not in good shape.  According to the Census Bureau paper, the primary reason why young adults are not achieving these milestones is because they are “facing economic barriers”…

The reason for this, according to the paper, is that more young adults between the ages of 25 and 34 are facing economic barriers compared with previous generations. Changing societal attitudes around family formation are also contributing to the sharp decline in the share of young people reaching what the U.S. Census Bureau considers to be “key milestones.”

If I keep hitting people with more evidence day after day, maybe the skeptics will finally start getting it.

Our young adults are not entering the middle class fast enough to replace the older middle class adults that are dying off.

As a result, the middle class is steadily shrinking.

To be a part of the middle class, you have to be able to get a middle class job.

And right now the competition for middle class jobs among our young people is extremely fierce.

If you doubt this, just consider what a 23-year-old college graduate recently admitted to NBC News…

“Every guy I know that is without a job right now wants to work, but they just can’t get it,” said Eli McCullick, who has been looking for a job for more than a year after he graduated with a degree in sociology from the University of Colorado Boulder. “It’s demoralizing for guys who really want to get ahead and it’s just not happening.”

McCullick, 23, said he hasn’t even been able to get an hourly job at a restaurant or doing cleaning work at a hotel in the Boulder area, where he’s living at a property his father owns. The only way he has been able to earn money to cover his food and daily expenses has been to do odd jobs for friends and relatives, like shoveling horse manure, mowing lawns and helping an older woman prepare for a yard sale.

There is no way that I would want to be a fresh college graduate looking for a job right now.

It is terrible out there.

Another recent college graduate told NBC News that nearly all of his friends are unemployed and living with their parents…

Sean Breen, who graduated this spring with a communications degree from California State University, Long Beach, said he and nearly all of his high school friends, both men and women, are back home living with their parents and unemployed. He said even those who went to top-ranked colleges and got seemingly in-demand degrees are unable to find work.

“It is like a high school reunion,” Breen said. “We’re all, we are back in Marin County this summer, all unemployed, all trying to find a barista job, a part-time something, because we haven’t found anything.”

After having applied to hundreds of jobs, he said, Breen now plans to go to graduate school in the fall at Trinity College in Ireland, where tuition is significantly lower and, he hopes, jobs will be more plentiful.

This is the reality of what is really going on out there.

Those that keep insisting that “everything is fine” just need to stop.

The job market is freezing up and layoffs have absolutely skyrocketed compared to last year…

Layoffs have risen 140 percent from a year ago, a new report reveals.

Companies have already announced more than 800,000 job cuts this year alone, the highest since the pandemic upended the economy in 2020.

US-based employers cut 62,075 jobs in July compared to 25,885 in the same month last year.

Those numbers are staggering.

Unfortunately, 62 percent of U.S. consumers believe that unemployment will continue to get even worse during the months ahead…

• About 62% of consumers believe unemployment will worsen in the year ahead, according to the University of Michigan’s latest monthly survey.

• That’s bounced around a little in the last few months, but consistently hung around levels not seen since the Great Recession.

Do you remember how difficult it was to get a good job during the Great Recession?

Well, now we are entering a similar time.

That may help to explain why “job hugging” has become a thing in 2025…

Job hugging is the act of holding onto a job “for dear life,” consultants at Korn Ferry, an organizational consulting firm, wrote last week.

The rate at which workers are voluntarily leaving their jobs — known as the quits rate — has hovered around 2% since the start of the year, according to data from the U.S. Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Outside of the initial days of the Covid-19 pandemic, levels haven’t been that consistently low since early 2016.

The quits rate is a barometer of workers’ perceptions of the broader labor market, said Laura Ullrich, director of economic research in North America at the Indeed Hiring Lab. In this case, they may be nervous about getting another job or aren’t enthusiastic about their ability to find one, she said.

If you have a job that you highly value, don’t let go.

Hold on to it as tightly as you can, because if you lose it you may not find work again for a long time.

A lot of people are shocked by what is happening, but the truth is that nobody should be surprised.

There was no way that we were going to be able to defy the laws of economics forever.

The inexorable march of time cannot be stopped, and our future is going to look a whole lot different than most people anticipated.

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.