Via SchiffGold.com,

Turkey’s love affair with gold has had a major impact on global gold flows, especially through the first half of 2023.

Turks have historically held a lot of gold, both in jewelry and investment form. The country ranks as the fifth-largest gold market in the world. But with recent economic turmoil in the country demand for gold has exploded.

According to the World Gold Council, Turkish demand for gold bars and gold coins increased five-fold during the second quarter of this year, pushing total demand to a record 98 tons through the first half of 2023.

Gold jewelry demand has also surged in Turkey this year, posting a fourth consecutive double-digit percentage increase in Q2, H1 demand came in at 20 tons. That was up 25% year-on-year and marked a five-year high.

Since the start of 2020 Turkish bar and coin demand has made up, on average, 9% of the global total. That’s more than double the country’s 4% share between 2010 and 2020. Turkey’s surging investment demand accounted for 17% of global bar and coin demand in Q2’23.

What drove this big spike in demand?

In a nutshell: currency depreciation.

According to the World Gold Council, “A combination of high inflation and regular currency depreciation over the past few decades has fueled healthy growth in retail gold demand in recent years.”

The Turkish economy has long been subject to bouts of price inflation, but moves by the government and the central bank over the last two years put price inflation on steroids.

At the assistance of President Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s central bank began cutting interest rates in September 2021. According to a CNN report at the time, the Turkish president holds the unorthodox view that interest rate cuts can rein in price inflation.

Predictably, the lira crashed. It lost 15% against the dollar in a single day in November 2021.

When the Central Bank of Turkey began cutting rates, price inflation was already running at 19%. As the central bank slashed rates, the official Turkish CPI climbed to 85% on an annual basis by October 2022. Independent economists measured the country’s price inflation at 185%.

As price inflation soared, Turks piled into hard assets, including real estate and gold in an attempt to protect their wealth from the country’s rapidly depreciating currency.

Moves by the Turkish government earlier this year only served to increase the demand for gold.

After a catastrophic earthquake in February 2023, the country’s treasury imposed an additional 20% fee on gold imports from countries outside the EU that did not have a free trade agreement with Turkey. According to Reuters, the move was intended to shrink the country’s rapidly growing trade deficit.

The government later banned some gold imports.

Predictably, these import restrictions caused a big drop in gold supply within the country even as demand was surging.

In order to meet local demand, the Central Bank of Turkey sold 165 tons of gold into the domestic gold market over a three-month period.

Prior to March, the central bank ranked as the world’s biggest gold buyer. With the Turkish bank significantly reducing its gold holdings, net central bank gold reserves fell for several months.

The Central Bank of Turkey returned to gold buying in June.

As the government put the squeeze on the gold supply, premiums soared, hitting levels between $100 and $150 per ounce. But even those high premiums couldn’t dent the Turkish appetite for gold.

The country normalized gold import regulations in July. Premiums dropped back to normal levels, but according to the World Gold Council, there was little selling by the public, despite record-high gold prices in lira terms.

And this month, the Turkish government has reinstated gold import quotas in order to lower the country’s current account deficit and replenish central bank reserves. It also slapped additional taxes back on some gold imports.

The Central Bank of Turkey got a new governor in June. He reportedly holds more conventional views on monetary policy.

According to the World Gold Council, “Against this backdrop, it seems likely that Turkish investment demand will remain strong.”

The government is strictly controlling gold imports for now, but whether that continues – and whether the TCMB is again forced to sell gold domestically to satisfy unmet needs – depends upon the performance of the broader Turkish economy and the nation’s foreign exchange position. Needless to say, these issues will attract attention from global gold market followers.”

Western nations are alarmed at the prospect of Russia deepening its presence and influence in West and Central Africa, particularly following the tumult in Niger late last month, which culminated in the July 26 coup against democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum.

The West-friendly group of surrounding nations, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has since threatened military intervention towards restoring Bazoum, and there have been persistent rumors that France is encouraging concrete action. Mali has played a key role in all of this given it stands on the other side, and is dead set against any interference in Niger, with fresh reports that Mali’s military leader Assimi Goita has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin by phone. 

Goita announced that in the Tuesday call Putin “stressed the importance of a peaceful resolution of the situation for a more stable Sahel” – and the sides confirmed it was initiated by Mali.

According to a Kremlin statement, “The parties specifically focused on the current situation in the Sahara-Sahel region and emphasised, in particular, the importance of settling the situation in the Republic of Niger solely through peaceful political and diplomatic means.”

Putin separately told Tuesday’s Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) that “The countries of the Sahara-Sahel region, such as the Central African Republic and Mali, were under direct attack from numerous terrorist groups after the US and its allies unleashed aggression against Libya, which led to the collapse of the Libyan state.”

The handful of regional supporters of the Niger junta have emphasized the same point of late…

“NATO’s unilateral intervention in Libya led to the spread of terrorism in the Sahel and West Africa.”

It’s one of the key complaints of the military coup plotters who’ve overthrown governments in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger that had cooperated closely with the US and France. pic.twitter.com/X8kNURWeyC

— Seth Harp (@sethharpesq) August 9, 2023

Niger is known for having uranium, but it is the significant gold and oil resources which likely of greater interest to the large powers of Russia, China, the US, and Europe.

The West’s concern is likely to grow given Putin’s mediation with Mali’s leadership. Russia’s Wagner Group also has an extensive presence across the African continent, having long had security and counterterrorism contracts with multiple governments. 

So far, there’s still not been openness to negotiations on the part of the Niger coup leaders and Bazoum remains under hose arrest. Per the latest update in Reuters, “West African army chiefs will meet on Thursday and Friday in Ghana to prepare for a possible military intervention, which the main regional bloc, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) has threatened to launch if diplomacy fails.”

Any external military intervention could spark a broader war across the Sahel, and would also be seized upon by regional terrorist groups. In this scenario Wagner fighters would likely enter the fray.

Authored by Thomas O’Reilly via EuropeanConservative.com,

The chairman of the AfD in the Bavarian district of Augsburg and candidate for state legislature is nursing severe wounds after being set upon in what he describes as a politically motivated attack by migrants.

Andreas Jurca was returning home with a party colleague Sunday when he was approached by a group of foreign males who asked him if he was the AfD candidate featured on nearby posters. Before he could answer, Jurca was punched and kicked to the ground with shouts of “f*****g Nazi.” His party colleague was also assaulted.

After the altercation, Jurca, who is seventh on the AfD’s candidate list for state elections, was rushed to the hospital where his condition was referred to as stable Monday morning. In a post-attack statement, Jurca confirmed that the perpetrators of the attack were indeed of foreign origin. In his own words, “I don’t mean Spaniards or Italians.”

Photos appearing on social media show Jurca with two black eyes as well as facial lacerations. He is currently under observation in hospital due to the head injuries he endured. In an interview with the populist publication Deutschland-Kurier magazine, Jurca said that the assault would only make him redouble his political efforts undeterred.

De #AFD staat op flinke winst maar wordt in Duitsland door o.a de zittende coalitie en media gedemoniseerd.

‘AFD politicus Andreas Jurca in de nacht van vrijdag op zaterdag 12 augustus door migranten afgeranseld’

Complete interview Deutschland Kurier: https://t.co/Al351cuqWy pic.twitter.com/pfOkfZmudB

— Marc van der Vegt (@VegtDoor) August 14, 2023

Acts of violence by left-wing anti fascist groups are a regular occurrence for AfD representatives, as is state-backed harassment from domestic intelligence services, the BfV, which formally placed the party under surveillance last year.

The German political establishment is struggling both to comprehend and to deal with the continued rise of the AfD, which now sits as the country’s second most popular party. This puts the party in a position to potentially break the sacrosanct ‘firewall’ that prohibits mainstream parties from cooperating with them at a national or municipal level.

German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier issued a thinly veiled warning in favour of banning the populist party at a speech, a move that has been echoed by Berlin head of intelligence Thomas Haldenwang, and even Der Spiegel, which published an editorial endorsing proscribing the AfD.

Many observers have noted an ideological shift to the anti-Altanticist right within the AfD. This was shown by its recent conference in Magdeburg as the party comes under the de facto leadership of Björn Höcke and the East German Thuringian branch of the party.

The attack on Andreas Jurca was not the first physical attack on an AfD official. In 2019, the party’s regional leader in Bremen was beaten within an inch of his life by masked left-wing antifascists. Violent demonstrations outside AfD events have also been common.

The tragic disaster that we just witnessed in Hawaii should break all of our hearts. 

The death count just keeps going up, and it is being reported that these were the deadliest fires in the United States in more than 100 years. 

In addition, Hawaii Governor Josh Green is telling us that this was actually “the largest natural disaster” that his state has ever experienced.  More than 2,700 structures have been burned down in Lahaina alone, and it is being estimated that the value of the property that has been destroyed is over 5 billion dollars. 

But, there are some stories that are not making the evening news.

As Insider.com reports, Maui residents are becoming increasingly desperate for local leadership to take control of the emergency response to the catastrophic fires that leveled parts of the Hawaiian island and left at least 93 dead.

While rescue crews made their way across the island with water, food, and first aid, locals told Insider supply drops were being rerouted and anguished residents were taking matters into their own hands.

“There’s some police presence. There’s some small military presence, but at night, people are being robbed at gunpoint,” Matt Robb, a co-owner of a Lāhainā bar called The Dirty Monkey, told Insider.

“People are raped and pillaged. I mean, they’re going through houses – and then by day, it’s hunky-dory. So where is the support? I don’t think our government and our leaders, at this point, know how to handle this or what to do.”

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported a riot nearly broke out between police and about 100 residents after officers closed off access to a highway leading to Lāhainā, one of the hardest-hit areas on the island, preventing people from returning home to gather items that could be salvaged.

Members of the staff of The Dirty Monkey said they had been coordinating with local authorities and community members, organizing and trying to direct supply drops and shipments of essential medications such as insulin to families in need.

Kami Irwin, a Maui resident helping to coordinate relief efforts at the Maui Brewing Co. location in Kihei, told Insider that locals were working around the clock, forgoing sleep and creating neighborhood patrols to help keep each other safe and find essentials such as clean drinking water and medications.

Residents told Insider they believed the mayor, who has offered limited public comments regarding the tragedy, had floundered in response to the emergency.

“I think it’s the mayor’s fault,” Aivazian said.

“If he would’ve asked, they had Marines, Coast Guards sitting there waiting, ready to go, and he didn’t send them over. Why wouldn’t the feds send them over? The mayor didn’t ask and the governor didn’t push. I mean, what the hell are they doing over there? They’re just hanging out at the beach.”

How/why is this happening?!

We have never seen anything quite like this before, and, as Michael Snyder remarks, the following are 8 questions that we should all be asking about the fires in Hawaii right now…

#1 How did the fires start?  Governor Green is convinced that they were caused by a confluence of factors.  Do you buy his explanation?…

Echoing wildfire experts, Gov. Green said Friday that he believes a confluence of weather conditions contributed to the ignition and spread of the blazes.

“It is a product, in my estimation, of certainly global warming combined with drought, combined with a super storm, where we had a hurricane offshore several hundred miles, still generating large winds,” Green told CNN.

#2 How did the fires spread so rapidly?  According to multiple news reports, people were literally jumping into the ocean to escape because the fires were moving so rapidly…

With fires raging on Maui, two men felt there was nowhere to escape the flames – except for the ocean.

The two men live in Lahaina, a historic part of Maui loved by tourists, which appears to be heavily damaged by this week’s raging fire. They described a terrifying scene as they evacuated from Prison Street, right in the heart of Lahaina.

“I saw a couple people just running, I heard screams out of hell … explosions. It felt like we were in hell, it really was. It was just indescribable,” one of the men told Nexstar’s KHON.

#3 How did a fire that was supposedly “out” end up causing the most damage of all?  According to  Governor Green, the Lahaina fire was supposedly given new energy “by far-off Hurricane Dora”…

After first erupting early Tuesday, the fire was initially deemed to be out, but winds whipped up by far-off Hurricane Dora that reached up to 81 mph fanned the flames and spurred the blaze to travel about 1 mile every minute, Green said.

#4 According to U.S. Representative Jill Tokuda, the alarm system that is supposed to warn residents that a disaster is happening appears to have failed.  How is that possible?…

We know everybody who’s ever lived in Hawaii knows the warning sirens. It goes off once a month at the beginning of the month at 12 noon, and it blares and if it doesn’t, it gets fixed, because that is our first line of defense. Unfortunately, in this situation, sadly, tragically in this situation, those sirens likely did not go off. The warning signals that were on cell phones, we had no cell coverage or electricity in some of these areas. And the reality is with those warning signs, it tells all of us to turn on the television or look at our phones or turn on the radio. The reality is was how fast this burn was. And you could see it in the videos that survivors were showing me. You could see it in the wreckage. If you turned on your phone, you turned on a radio, if you even could. Remember things were out at that particular point, you would not know what the crisis was.

#5 Why are emergency supplies not getting to the people that desperately need them?  It is being reported that a “telecommunications blackout” has been one of the factors that has been hampering relief efforts…

But an enduring telecommunications blackout hampered government and grassroots efforts to distribute those supplies in the worst-affected neighborhoods, especially for an unknown number of survivors waiting out the aftermath in the few buildings still standing in the historic town of Lahaina and neighborhoods on the outskirts.

With their vehicles burned to a crisp, some sheltering at home have no way to drive to distribution centers miles away, or their cars have run out of gas. Others simply don’t know where to go for help. Toxic fumes and downed power lines with live wires make venturing outdoors dangerous.

#6 Why are people that have just had their homes burned down in the fires already being bombarded with calls with offers to purchase their properties?

The vultures are circling, and it appears that there are some people out there that are extremely interested in scooping up land inexpensively.

#7 Why has the FBI moved a “mobile refrigerated morgue” into Lahaina?…

A mobile refrigerated morgue has been brought to the devastated town of Lahaina as Maui officials continue their search for victims of the worst U.S. wildfire in 100 years.

The death toll on Sunday rose to 96, but Hawaii officials said it was likely to rise significantly.

John Pelletier, the Maui police chief, said only three percent of Lahaina – home to more than 9,000 people – had been searched so far.

#8 Why is Joe Biden lounging on the beach while all of this is happening?…

Outraged Americans blasting President @JoeBiden after he said ‘no comment’ when asked about the catastrophic Maui wildfire, now the deadliest US blaze in over a century. Despite the death toll climbing to about 100, Americans were outraged that Biden remained sunbathing on a beach near his Delaware home.

How can Biden be sunbathing on a beach while such tragedy is unfolding in Hawaii?

I don’t understand it.

This country has experienced so many great tragedies over the past few years, and it is inevitable that there will be many more in the years ahead.

When disaster strikes, we need a leader in the White House that knows how to act appropriately.

Those that have lost so much in these fires need our support and our prayers.

Hawaii will never be quite the same after this, and the people of the state deserve to get some answers to the very pressing questions that they are asking right now.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price, whose jurisdiction includes the crime-ridden city of Oakland, has become the latest ‘Soros’-funded DA to face a recall, after several groups have called out the rampant violence and lack of response.

A recap of recent headlines:

• “Failed Leadership” – Oakland, CA Faces “State Of Emergency” As Consequence-Free Crime Soars
• Oakland NAACP Begs For More Cops Amid ‘Heyday For Criminals’
• Oakland Fails Women As Staggering Crime Surge Goes Unpunished
• Mayhem Unfolds In Oakland As Soros-Backed DA Fails To Enforce Law And Order

On Tuesday, members of a “Save Alameda for Everyone” (SAFE) filed a Notice of Intent with Alameda County officials to begin the recall process, following years of inaction by Price.

“As crime spirals out of control on Alameda County streets, DA Price reduces sentencing for criminals and even refuses to charge violent felons with crimes,” reads a statement from the group which cites Oakland PD statistics stating that homicides are up 80% vs. pre-pandemic figures, and violent crime and burglaries are up 15% and 40% respectively over the same period.

“African Americans are disproportionately hit the hardest by crime in East Oakland,” the group states, per KRON. “Women have been beaten and robbed by youths; hate crimes against Asian Americans are surging; street vendors have been assaulted, and basic services are under attack.”

The recall, organizers say, is a community-led effort comprised of “residents, business owners, survivors, and family members of victims that demand justice and a return of law and order to Alameda County.”

DA Price has addressed the recall effort and likened its organizers to those that stormed the U.S. Capitol to try and prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 election.

“In what appears to be a page out of the January 6th playbook, outside special interest groups, supported by the Republican Party, are trying to seize control from local voters because they refuse to accept the results of a legitimate, democratic election to remove the status quo,” said Price’s campaign in a statement.

“So far, the Soros PAC has spent more than $559,000 to help [Oakland DA] Price” who “said she was drawn into the race by what she sees as the ‘absolutely outrageous’ over-prosecution of young blacks” pic.twitter.com/FmvuxkMPFw

— Michael Shellenberger (@shellenberger) May 6, 2023

Boy did Soros get his money’s worth! 

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Doctors are warning popular drugs taken for weight loss, such as Ozempic and Wegovy, may include the risk of life-threatening complications under anesthesia.

Patients who take drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss may face life-threatening complications if they need surgery or other procedures that require empty stomachs for anesthesia.

This summer’s guidance to halt the medication for up to a week may not go far enough, officials said. Some anesthesiologists in the United States and Canada say they’ve seen growing numbers of patients on the weight-loss drugs who inhaled food and liquid into their lungs while sedated because their stomachs were still full—even after following standard instructions to stop eating for six to eight hours in advance.

The drugs can slow digestion so much that it puts patients at increased risk for the problem, called pulmonary aspiration, which can cause dangerous lung damage, infections, and even death, said Dr. Ion Hobai, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

“This is such a serious sort of potential complication that everybody who takes this drug should know about it,” Mr. Hobai, who was among the first to flag the issue, told The Associated Press this week.

Mr. Hobai suggested that individuals taking the drugs first tell their doctors before sedation and discuss the risk profile. “If you’re taking this drug and you need an operation, you will need to have some extra precautions,” he said.

It’s not clear how many patients taking the anti-obesity drugs may be affected by the issue. But because the consequences can be so dire, Mr. Hobai and a group of colleagues decided to speak out. Writing in the Canadian Journal of Anesthesia in mid-July, they called for the drug to be stopped for even longer—about three weeks before sedation.

That accounts for how long semaglutide, the active medication in Ozempic and Wegovy, remains in the body, said Dr. Philip Jones, a Mayo Clinic anesthesiologist who is also deputy editor-in-chief of the journal. “When 90 percent of it is gone, which is after three weeks, hopefully everything should go back to normal,” Mr. Jones said.

Several weeks ago, the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) said that people who take GLP-1 agonists like Wegovy or Ozempic every day should stop taking the drugs on the day of their surgery.

That guidance was disseminated after “many reports from medical literature and anesthesia leaders about people who fasted but still vomited either going to sleep or waking up from anesthesia,” said Dr. Ronald L. Harter, the incoming president of the ASA and a professor of anesthesiology at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

“This was very concerning and something we needed to address and communicate to the public like we are doing right now,” Mr. Harter told ABC.

Anesthesiologists have long discouraged patients from drinking or eating before surgery to ensure the stomach is empty to reduce the chance of vomiting during the procedure.

“This is really a fairly unique situation where you have a relatively new class of drugs that are very, very quickly being taken up by and are being used by a fairly significant portion of the population,” Mr. Harter said. “One of the potential side effects of these medications is to delay gastric emptying, which has a unique risk or potential for aspiration for patients undergoing anesthesia. It was a combination of all those factors that really prompted us to give guidance, really to our anesthesiologist and to our patients who are on these medications.”

The group stated that if the patient is having symptoms such as vomiting, bloating, abdominal pain, or nausea, doctors should consider delaying the surgical procedure.

Several weeks ago, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) said it was investigating a connection between Ozempic and Wegovy and suicidal thoughts. About 150 reports of possible cases of self-injury among people taking semaglutide GLP-1 agonists were flagged.

Sales of semaglutide products—particularly Ozempic—have soared in the past few years after the drug was shown to spur fast and significant weight loss. The drugs manufactured by Novo Nordisk include the brands Ozempic and Rybelsus, which are approved to treat diabetes, and Wegovy, which is approved by the FDA to treat obesity.

Earlier this year, Novo Nordisk promised to boost its supply of Wegovy. However, in the company’s first-quarter earnings report, the firm said that it would “temporarily” reduce U.S. supply.

Demand for the medications has outstripped supply. As of May, Ozempic and Wegovy remain on the FDA’s list of drug shortages. When drugs are in short supply, compounding pharmacies are permitted to produce versions of those medications.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2014 approved semaglutide for weight loss among overweight or obese individuals with high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol.

The Epoch Times has contacted Novo Nordisk for comment on Wednesday.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The middle class in the U.S. has been steadily shrinking for decades, but in recent years our leaders have greatly accelerated that process.  In 2020, 2021 and 2022 they absolutely flooded the system with new money, and almost all of that new money went into the pockets of the wealthy.  The gap between the wealthy and the rest of us is now larger than ever, and that isn’t a good thing for our society.  Even if you are still making as much money as you did a few years ago, you have lost a lot of ground financially, because the cost of living has been rapidly eating away at our standard of living.  As I covered the other day, household income in the United States has declined by 9.1 percent since April 2020 after adjusting for inflation and taxes.  In other words, the middle class is a whole lot smaller than it was in April 2020, and it continues to get smaller with each passing day.

According to Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi, on average Americans are now spending “$709 more per month on everyday goods and services than they did two years ago”…

Americans are spending $709 more per month on everyday goods and services than they did two years ago, according to Moody’s Analytics.

Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi made the statement Friday on X, formerly known as Twitter, as part of his analysis of July’s consumer price index report.

Is the rising cost of living causing financial stress for you?

If it is, you are definitely not alone.

The wealthy are doing just fine for the moment, but inflation has caused a lot of pain for the vast majority of the rest of us.

Just paying for a place to live has become incredibly oppressive.  Personally, I was astounded to learn that the average rent in Manhattan has now reached $5,588 per month…

New Yorkers are feeling the squeeze as rents hit a new high.

Rent in Manhattan soared to a record-high average of $5,588 in July, up 9% from 2022.

It’s hurting tenants struggling to find apartments they can afford. One apartment hunter said she can’t find a studio to suit her work-from-home needs for less than $5,000.

Who can afford that?

Only the wealthy.

Of course the truth is that rents have been soaring all over the country.

It is being reported that the nationwide average rent-to-income ratio has exceeded 30 percent for the past two years.

This is the very first time in the entire history of our country that this has ever happened.

With rents being so high, a lot of Americans are being forced out into the streets.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the United States “has seen a record increase in homeless people this year”.

Please let that statement sink in for a moment.

So far in 2023, the number of homeless people in the U.S. is up 11 percent from last year.

That is the biggest jump that the government has ever recorded.

Not even during the recession of 2008 and 2009 did we see anything like this.

Unfortunately, the outlook for the months ahead is not promising, because it looks like the cost of living is going to continue to rise at a brisk pace.

According to CNN, the average price of a gallon of gasoline has nearly reached 4 dollars a gallon…

Pump prices are creeping towards $4 a gallon nationally.

The national average for regular gasoline hit $3.85 a gallon on Monday, according to AAA. That’s the highest level since October 19 and comes just weeks ahead of Labor Day weekend when millions of Americans will hit the roads.

I remember the days when I could fill up my vehicle for less than 20 dollars.

But the other day I spent 70 dollars at the gas station and that didn’t even fill the tank.

And we are being warned that U.S. consumers are going to have a lot less discretionary income in the months ahead as tens of millions are forced to start making payments on student loans again…

For more than three years, federal student loan borrowers have not had to make monthly payments. But that pandemic-era pause is coming to an end this fall, setting up a financial shock for millions of Americans and the big-name stores, such as Target, Nike, Under Armour and Gap, where they shop.

About 44 million borrowers in the U.S. were affected by the payment pause, which initially began in March 2020 at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Biden administration extended the pause for the eighth time in November but will not do so again as part of the bipartisan debt ceiling deal approved by Congress.

More than 60 percent of all Americans are already living paycheck to paycheck, and many are increasingly turning to debt in order to make ends meet.

In fact, total credit card debt now exceeds the one trillion dollar mark for the first time ever, and that is not a good sign at all.

Also, an increasing number of Americans are now dipping into their 401(K) plans…

When father-of-two Ivan Marusic lost his job overnight in 2020, he was left panicking about how he would cover his mortgage.

It prompted the 35-year-old, from Texas, to do something he never thought he would: withdraw $20,000 from his 401(K). It is a decision he is still paying for now.

‘I was really hesitant to do it because I knew it would set me back financially in the long run. But I didn’t have any other options. I had already maxed out my credit card and I was running out of money,’ Marusic, a tech worker who has since founded the website Game Taco, told Dailymail.com

We really are witnessing a middle class meltdown.

I have been warning about this trend in my books for years, and now the evisceration of the middle class has greatly accelerated.

I wish that I could tell you that there is economic hope on the horizon.

But I can’t do that, because our leaders continue to make incredibly self-destructive decisions which are going to cause immense economic pain for the entire country.

*  *  *

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.

Pandora, the world’s largest jewelry brand, upgraded its full-year revenue outlook following a solid second-quarter earnings report. As the industry faces a contraction, the Danish jewelry giant is capturing a significant market share due primarily to the soaring demand for its lab-grown diamonds. 

“Given our solid performance so far, our updated guidance now sees another year of positive organic growth,” Pandora CEO Alexander Lacik wrote in a statement. 

Pandora updated its full-year projections, anticipating an organic sales growth of 2% to 5%, compared to the previous estimate of -2% to 3%. Before today’s announcement, Wall Street analysts were forecasting 3% sales growth for the year based on a survey provided by the company.

Lacik told Bloomberg in a phone interview that the company is winning a “massive” market share this year as it grows amid mounting macroeconomic uncertainty and an industry in contraction. 

Lacik said, “We’re building market share in a very tough environment, which just shows that the brand is growing stronger and stronger all the time.” 

He said, “Pandora is back to growth,” the plan is to introduce new collections with lab-made diamonds to all the company’s top markets.

Even though lab-created stones made up less than 1% of the revenue in the first half, these cheaper alternatives to mined gems represented Pandora’s fastest-growing segment. 

Hot demand for synthetic stones is likely due to thrifty consumers who no longer can afford the real thing. 

Here are the earnings highlights from the second quarter:

• Ebit before significant items DKK1.19 billion, estimate DKK1.17 billion

• Revenue DKK5.89 billion, estimate DKK5.73 billion

• Organic revenue +5%, estimate +3.06%

• Net income DKK778 million, estimate DKK819.8 million

• Ebitda DKK1.69 billion, estimate DKK1.7 billion

And full-year:

• Sees organic revenue +2% to +5%, saw -2% to +3%, estimate +3.08% (Bloomberg Consensus)

•  Still sees adjusted Ebit margin about 25%, estimate 25.6%

Analysts were overwhelmingly pleased with the results, with Jefferies highlighting the ability to navigate the challenging US market. 

Here’s more commentary from analysts (courtesy of Bloomberg):

RBC Capital Markets, Piral Dadhania (underperform)

• Pandora posted better-than-expected results, with revenue and gross margin coming ahead of expectations

• Dadhania sees “modest” consensus earnings upgrades

 Jefferies, Frederick Wild (hold)

• Results show Pandora is navigating a difficult US market “surprisingly well”

• Expects debate to stay focused on resilient organic growth dynamics against the uncertainty inherent in a margin guidance that so heavily relies on 4Q inflection

• “But the fact remains the stock has managed to navigate challenges in key markets relatively well, even as peers have struggled”

Bloomberg Intelligence, Deborah Aitken and Andrea Ferdinando Leggieri

• “Pandora’s upgraded 2023 organic-growth outlook to 2-5% could still be cautious given its 2Q revenue beat and accelerated trading in 3Q to date”

Shares of Pandora in Copenhagen are flat after the earnings release. Shares have rebounded in the last year after peaking around DKK 937 in late 2021. 

Lab-grown diamonds are gaining popularity, a reflection of a more budget-conscious consumer.