Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The verdict is in.  Joe Biden is the worst president in the entire history of the United States, and that is really saying something because we have had some absolutely horrible presidents. 

Just about everything that Biden has done since he entered the White House has turned out badly, and our once great nation is now barreling down a deeply self-destructive path.  If we do not reverse course, our country is not going to have a future, and more Americans than ever are losing faith in the federal government.  In fact, a brand new survey has discovered that a lack of faith in the government in Washington is motivating large numbers of Americans to hoard “water, food, warm clothing, weapons, and cash” for the extremely chaotic times that are ahead of us…

People watching President Joe Biden’s shaky grip on Washington have lost faith the government will protect them in a doomsday event, and that’s driving a national prepper movement.

With the Doomsday Clock the closest to midnight it has ever been, over 70% in a new survey of 6,200 said they “do not have faith in the government” in a catastrophe such as a nuclear war or even climate-change-fueled disaster.

As a result, many are hoarding water, food, warm clothing, weapons, and cash to help them get through the worst days of a doomsday event.

These days, companies that are helping people get prepared for what is coming are generating more revenue than ever before.

In fact, the emergency food industry now generates approximately 500 million dollars in sales each year.

And it turns out that those that are in the 40-year-old to 65-year-old age bracket are the most likely to be prepping…

Those aged 40-65 are more likely to be prepping, and twice as many men as women are getting ready for a disaster.

Just what that disaster will be is dividing the nation. Some 55% cited climate change, 36% virus and disease, and 25% a nuclear attack. But there were other concerns. Over 15% are concerned about an asteroid strike, 15% about a robot or artificial intelligence “takeover,” and 7.5% about a “zombie apocalypse.”

It doesn’t surprise me that middle-aged Americans are the most likely to be prepping.

I have noticed that a lot of young people under the age of 40 just don’t understand the changes that we are witnessing all around us.

But those of us that are a little bit older and a little bit wiser can see where global events are taking us.

At this point, even middle-aged celebrities such as Josh Duhamel are preparing for what life will be like after things “hit the fan”…

“Transformers” and “Las Vegas” star Josh Duhamel has spoken out about becoming a doomsday prepper, stating that he’s planning on protecting his family if the “s*** hits the fan” in Los Angeles. The actor, who has starred in the TV show “Las Vegas,” gave an interview in which he explained, “I’ve become a bit of a doomsday prepper, I guess.”

Duhamel told the website Inverse, “I’m learning how to hunt. I fish.” He added, “Suddenly I had 54 acres out there. So I had two cabins, one with no electricity or water. They both have wells and electricity now, but they’re both really small.”

Overall, it has been estimated that over 20 million Americans are “actively planning” for some sort of a major emergency…

In 2020, more than 20 million Americans, nearly 7 percent of all U.S. households, were actively planning for an emergency, according to the latest analysis of Federal Emergency Management Agency data.

Plus, those stockpiling canned goods in the cupboards, caching ammunition and hoarding toilet paper now come in all stripes – from suburban ‘guardian moms’ to multi-millionaire tech gurus.

Since that figure is a few years old, I have a feeling that the true number would be significantly higher now.

And speaking of “tech gurus”, a group in Japan has actually come up with a survival plan that is truly bizarre.

It is a floating city that can hold up to 40,000 people, and some are calling it “a real life Noah’s Ark”…

TECH boffins have unveiled plans for a bizarre floating city likened to a real life Noah’s Ark.

The ocean-based metropolis would provide a “self-sufficient habitat” for 40,000 people, designers in Japan say.

It looks cool, but even once construction is started it will take many years before it is finally ready.

And even though the designers claim that it would be “resilient to an apocalypse”, I severely doubt that it could withstand being hit by a giant tsunami…

The developers, N-Ark, even claim the zone – named Dogen City – would be resilient to an apocalypse.

Measuring 4km in circumference, the plan would be for inhabitants to be able to get to any point in the zone within an hour.

At least they are trying to do something.

And the truth is that we should all be trying to do what we can, because all of us can see that our world is getting a little bit more crazy with each passing day.

This week, I was absolutely horrified to learn that three teens actually tried to light sticks of dynamite inside a Philadelphia grocery store…

The Philadelphia Police Department is searching for at least three teenagers who allegedly attempted to light sticks of dynamite inside a grocery store, according to reports.

The incident occurred at the Fresh Grocer located on the 5300 block of Chew Avenue in the city’s Germantown section on June 20 at 5:10 P.M., local news station Fox 29 reported.

Police have said that a member of security called the police after seeing teens roughly between the ages of 16 and 19 years old wearing all-black clothing “light sticks of dynamite within the store,” according to the report.

Our entire society is slowly but surely going completely nuts.

It is almost as if we are all stuck inside a really bad science fiction movie and we can’t get out.

Unfortunately, we are only in the very early chapters of this nightmare.  Things will eventually get much worse than they are now.

So if you have already been prepping, don’t stop.

If you have not been prepping, I would encourage you to get moving, because the clock is ticking.

*  *  *

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.

Authored by Terri Wu via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

With graduation less than a month away, many college students in China are still scrambling to find a job.

At a free live-stream webinar by a jobseeker training company in mid-June, many of the 800 participants—primarily unemployed 2023 and 2022 graduates—logged eager comments to claim free templates for resumes.

“Many of my trainees told me that they live with their parents, who had been scolding them for not trying hard enough to land a job,” the host told the attendees.

“I can tell them [parents]: finding a job this year is challenging. It’s the market; it’s not you,” the host added. “Forwarding my webinar to your parents will help you alleviate the anxiety.”

Anxiety was undoubtedly the prevailing mood among attendees of the webinar held on a popular Chinese social media app, as shown through emojis and remarks in the comments section. The macro numbers point to a similar picture.

China’s official youth unemployment rates were 20.8 and 20.4 percent in May and April, respectively—about four times the overall unemployment rate of 5.2 percent. It’s also about double the level of young unemployment just before pandemic measures kicked in.

This rate means that one in every five 16- to 24-year-olds seeking work in urban areas don’t have a job. And the percentage doesn’t include those not looking for employment: two-thirds of China’s 100 million young urban population.

This growing crisis prompted Chinese authorities in April to announce a series of policy incentives to take effect by the end of 2023, including subsidiaries for expanding hiring by state-owned enterprises (SOE), encouraging financial institutions to increase hiring and business loan issuance, offering more vocational training, and creating no less than a million internship positions.

Still, higher youth unemployment is expected for the next few months, according to a May estimate by Goldman Sachs.

On June 18, the investment bank also cut China’s 2023 gross domestic product (GDP) growth forecast from 6 to 5.4 percent, citing macroeconomic issues—property sector, debt issues, and U.S.-China tensions—that are unlikely to be addressed by China’s stimulus measures.

China’s central bank started cutting interest rates in mid-June, following a deposit rate decrease by major banks. Goldman’s downgrade followed similar assessments by a host of major banks, including UBS, Bank of America, and JPMorgan, that have lowered their GDP growth outlook for the country.

Long Before the Pandemic

Today’s high youth unemployment rate is a symptom of years of ambitious growth on paper supported by a heavily indebted economy, according to Christopher Balding, an expert on the Chinese economy at the Henry Jackson Society, a UK-based think tank.

The problem, he said, preceded the pandemic, and has been 15 years in the making.

“I don’t think the pandemic’s contribution to this is zero. However, I don’t think it’s a majority,” Balding told The Epoch Times. “The pandemic probably made it a little bit worse, but these problems would exist with or without the pandemic.”

In response to the global financial crisis, Chinese authorities released a fiscal stimulus package of 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion at the time), equivalent to 12.5 percent of the 2008 GDP, according to the World Bank. By comparison, the U.S. stimulus package was $939 billion from 2008 to 2010 and about 6 percent of its 2008 GDP. China’s central bank also loosened money policy significantly by cutting the interest rate by over 2 percent to 5.31 percent in December 2008.

Balding said that China went on a path of pushing for artificially high growth rates after 2008, growing infrastructure regardless of demand. At the same time, Chinese authorities, companies, and families have piled on debt.

China’s core debt—credit to the non-financial sector—is nearly three times its GDP, compared to the U.S. ratio at 2.5 and emerging market economics at an average of 2.2, according to the Bank for International Settlements, known as the central bank for central banks.

On June 17, China’s State Administration of Market Regulation issued a new regulation to “restore credit for business entities.”

“It’s basically advising banks to help firms repair their credit, ignore firms’ missed payments, and so on,” said Balding. “The fact that they’re putting out that type of advice to financial institutions, as a regulator, speaks to the depth of the problem related to debt.”

“And if you’re a heavily indebted company, taking on more debt or taking on additional labor is a very big ask,” he added, referring to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) policies to stimulate hiring.

China’s household debt-to-GDP ratio rose steadily from 17.9 percent in December 2008 to 63.3 percent in March 2023, compared to 65.7 percent in the United States. More tellingly, the Chinese household debt as a percentage of disposable income reached 130 percent by the end of 2020, more than that of the United States at 100 percent the same year.

In Balding’s view, China’s supply-driven growth has hit a wall and can theoretically be solved by stimulating demand. However, he considers driving demand unrealistic because the CCP cannot do what’s required—that is, to empower consumers and give individuals the freedom of choice.

“I think there’s a lot of possibilities or a lot of hope for China, but it would absolutely require dismantling policies in China that are not going to be dismantled,” he said, citing restrictions on interprovincial migration and the latest rural management restrictions on the use of arable land.

Antonio Graceffo, a China economic analyst, said the regime has routinely responded to economic trouble by investing in infrastructure. But that approach might not work again this time around.

“All the sensible infrastructure has already been built in China; we’re at a point where all the major ports, the cities, everything is connected. So when they build more infrastructure now, it’s really just making work,” he told The Epoch Times.

“You’re just creating jobs, paying for it out of the public revenues, and it’s not necessarily yielding any sort of significant GDP advantage.”

The country, he said, no longer has the types of infrastructure projects such as the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed rail to fuel GDP growth again. “I think China has seen their biggest growth that they’re ever going to see,” Graceffo, a contributor to the publication, added.

Beyond the Official Number

China’s official youth unemployment rate may not capture the full story.

Jobseekers between the age of 16 and 24 include middle and high school graduates from rural areas seeking urban employment and city students with undergraduate degrees.

A professor at a private college in Guangzhou, a mega city in China’s affluent coastal south, believes the actual rate is much higher than the official 20 percent—as high as 80. She spoke to The Epoch Times on the condition that her name, college, and professional field be anonymous to avoid being tracked down by the CCP.

Only two of the 350 graduates in her department this year have found jobs. With graduation on June 28, students must provide employment information to get the diploma.

The official proof for employment is the “three-way agreements,” but schools also accept any form of labor contract. The “three-way agreement” is signed between the student, an employer, and the school to satisfy the requirements of the local government human resources agency.

“Students are not issued a diploma if they do not provide employment paperwork. The rule is understood but not written,” the professor told The Epoch Times, adding that if a student would challenge this rule to the school or the city’s education department, the school would then withhold the diploma citing insufficient internship credit.

As a result, students forge employment in various ways, according to the professor. He cited the example of a friend whose son has not worked for three years after graduation but is “employed” on paper.

In China, public colleges are of a higher academic caliber than private ones and charge less tuition. They are the common campus recruiting sources for SOEs, and they have creative ways to boost their graduates’ employment rate.

The professor, who previously taught at a public college, said that public institutions engage in a practice known as “hitchhikes” to skirt the rules. For example, if an SOE had a quota of two new hires for a college, the college would give the SOE a list of 12 more student names to ink fraudulent three-way agreements. In this way, the university’s “education quality” report looks better, and its unemployment rate is also lower on paper.

Since three-way agreements are not real labor contracts, signing such “hitchhiking” paperwork doesn’t result in actual employment.

Last year, the professor began to hear about employment difficulties from her students, a problem that become more prominent this year. In Guangzhou, most of the students find jobs in foreign or private Chinese enterprises; very few go to SOEs, where students’ family connections are essential for job placement. However, job availability in foreign and private companies has shrunken significantly due to foreign investment leaving China and the authorities’ clampdown on the private sector.

Read more here…

Submitted by Gun Owners of America,

The Hunter Biden laptop story has finally resulted in criminal charges for the President’s son. Hunter Biden made a deal with federal prosecutors, pleading guilty to two tax-related misdemeanors and resolved his felony gun charge. 

Hunter’s gun charge being resolved is a fancy legalese word for that charge being subject to a pre-trial diversion. This is a plea agreement that not only allows for a criminal defendant to maintain a clean record but avoid jail time as well, provided that they complete pre-trial probation requirements set by the judge. 

This means that Hunter Biden can still legally own a gun. 

Hunter Biden just skirted 10+ years of federal prison with a cozy plea deal of two years probation for his “gun crimes” from his father’s Justice Department. 🤯⁰⁰Meanwhile, @DonaldJTrumpJr was FORCED to register his firearms to avoid Biden’s tyrannical pistol ban.

This is the… pic.twitter.com/IWZcRLladj

— Gun Owners of America (@GunOwners) June 20, 2023

The firearms charge that Hunter Biden faced resulted from a 2018 incident in which Hunter’s girlfriend tossed his revolver into the trash. This incident corresponded to later interviews in which Hunter detailed being addicted to drugs around the same time. This caused speculation that he broke federal law when buying the firearm.

For those unfamiliar with complex federal firearms law, when buying a firearm from an FFL or firearms dealer, you must complete Form 4473, also known as a firearms transaction record. This record is then used to file a NICS check, also known as a background check, with the FBI. 

On Form 4473, there is a question about whether the purchaser of the firearm is addicted to any drugs. Answering yes on the form automatically denies the firearm purchase, so for Hunter Biden to have been able to purchase his gun, he would have had to lie on the form.

Now you might be thinking that this isn’t a serious crime and that surely other people have been let off the hook as well. 

Exhibit A: Hunter Biden lied on this Form 4473, there’s literally video evidence that he lied on this Form 4473 and nothing has happened to him. pic.twitter.com/EqVL6rMggN

— Arthur Schwartz (@ArthurSchwartz) July 11, 2022

That’s where you’d be wrong. Rapper Kodak Black was charged with the same crime of falsifying information on federal forms to buy four firearms at a Miami gun shop in May of 2019. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison stemming from that charge. 

And Kodak Black isn’t the only one being convicted. In April 2023, a woman in Iowa was sentenced to a year in prison for lying about her address and drug use on Form 4473. 

Even more egregious is that just last week, a woman in Virginia was charged with making a false statement on her 4473 because she had previously used marijuana. Important to note Virginia legalized recreational marijuana use two years ago. The Biden DOJ is sending the American people a clear message: “Rules for thee, not for me.”  

In addition, Form 4473 has been weaponized by the Biden DOJ & ATF through regulatory policy to create an illegal backdoor firearms registry. We at Gun Owners of America have covered this at length, and you can read our in-depth report here.

All of this serves as a reminder that Form 4473s and background checks on firearms are unconstitutional in the first place. 

Over the last several weeks and months, a deluge of damning breadcrumbs have been revealed by various whistleblowers, congressional investigators, and investigative reporters – the entirety of which has been a shotgun blast of information overload.

When put together, they paint a picture of such shocking corruption, that one can only conclude that the period we’ve lived through, between the 2020 US election, the funding, origins, and coverup of the Covid-19 pandemic, and the overt corruption of the Biden family, one can only conclude that we’re living through one of the worst, if not the worst, periods of political scandals and institutional rot in American history.

Making sense the current state of affairs is journalist Tom Elliott, founder of Grabien, who has assembled what may be the world’s most perfect tweet on how Joe Biden owes his 2020 election victory to “blatant political corruption.”

The more we learn about the 2020 election, the more undeniable it becomes that Biden owes his “victory” to blatant political corruption. To wit:

1) An IRS probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his… pic.twitter.com/bHu49qGUST

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) June 24, 2023

The more we learn about the 2020 election, the more undeniable it becomes that Biden owes his “victory” to blatant political corruption. To wit:

1) An IRS probe into the Bidens money laundering payments from hostile nations — the normal outcome of which would have ended his candidacy — was instead given a stand-down order

2) The FBI & IRS wanted to search Biden’s house in September 2020 but were given a stand down order.

3) The @FBI authenticated Hunter’s laptop a year before the NYPost first reported on its contents

4) Rather than use the laptop’s voluminous documentation of myriad felonies to initiate criminal investigations, the FBI hatched a plot to warn social media companies of an imminent “hack & leak” operation of what they heavily suggested was Russian disinformation

5) The FBI used its 2016 Russia collusion probe — which the Durham probe has since proven was essentially an extension of the Clinton campaign — to rationalize its meddling in the 2020 election.

6) The FBI also conducted an influence operation with various reporters at major newspapers to convince them that forthcoming damaging reporting about Biden that they knew was true was in fact not

7) The FBI was spying on Giuliani when he shared the laptop’s contents with the NYPost

8) When the FBI told Twitter & Facebook a Russian disinformation campaign was coming, they had already concluded Russia wasn’t trying to game the election

9) In their attempt to corroborate their own rumor of Russian electoral influence, the FBI became aggressive with its demands for user data from Twitter, eventually getting shutdown for seeking users’ private info without a warrant

10) Nonetheless, in the preceding years, the FBI established a beachhead inside Twitter, with an operations center of former agents who communicated via their own dedicated slack channel. These ex-agents included Jim Baker, the FBI’s former top counsel who played a central role in the FBI’s Trump/Russia scam, as well as Comey’s former chief of staff, Dawn Burton, who started the FBI’s Russia collusion probe.

11) The CIA, in collusion with the Biden campaign, seeded disinformation claiming the laptop was itself Russian disinformation. The major media used this as a pretext to avoid reporting on its contents and instead attack those who were.

12) The FBI also arranged a meeting with Sens. Grassley & Johnson about supposed Russian disinformation & Hunter Biden.

13) The FBI then used this briefing with the senators to justify quashing their own agents’ probe into the Bidens’ corruption.  

14) When the story broke mere weeks before the election — one that polling later indicated would have altered enough Democrat votes to send Trump to a second term — Twitter & Facebook orchestrated an unprecedented & anti-democratic mass censorship campaign.

15) When Twitter initially resisted censoring the story, it was Jim Baker who convinced them to do so (despite the FBI having known for a year the informartion was true).

16) In December 2020, after the operation’s success and Biden’s “victory,” the FBI agents working at & with Twitter celebrated the outcome.

17) The FBI subsequently paid Twitter $3.5 million for the staff hours expended on their influence operations.  

18) At the time Trump was being impeached for asking Ukraine to investigate Biden’s alleged corruption in Ukraine, the FBI & IRS already knew the Bidens had indeed laundered more than $10 million from Burisma, via fake companies and dozens of bank accounts, while at the same time VP Biden had used U.S. aid as leverage in getting the Ukrainian prosecutor investigating Burisma fired.

P.S. And that’s to say nothing of Democrats orchestrating a state-by-state campaign to change voting rules to enable the widespread adoption of voting boxes … Left-wing activist groups, funded in part by Facebook, facilitated the exploitation of these drop-off boxes on behalf of the Democratic Party. That part may not have been illegal since they simply changed the rules, but it’s especially shady since it was done alongside federal health agencies then-knowingly overstating the threat of Covid, which was used as the rationale for the change of rules in the first place.

P.P.S. And this is just what we know despite the feds’ best efforts. Imagine how much we don’t.

*  *  *

And some reactions:

So basically the FBI has become the goon squad for the central banking system that controls all of our government right now.

— Mindy Robinson 🇺🇸 (@iheartmindy) June 24, 2023

And no one will ever do anything.

— Thomas Paradis (@TPDP_01) June 24, 2023

And Durham did nothing.

— 0.0 (@wiseguy702) June 24, 2023

19) often overlooked but the Mueller probe and Russia hoax was used to take Dems over the finish line and win the House in the 2018 midterms. This gave Schiff the power and ability to start House investigations/impeachments

— Jim Muessig (@JimMuessig) June 24, 2023

So, the next time you hear a Democrat decrying Republican efforts to dismantle democracy with their voter ID laws, or ending harvesting, consider the real threat to American democracy from the deep state. Their actions all sound very ‘insurrection-y’ to us.

One could be forgiven for considering it ‘meddling’ and ‘collusive’, but that would be the stuff of conspiracy theorists, right?

Authored by Micaela Ricaforte via The Epoch Times,

A California bill that would expand college financial aid to those seeking asylum passed the state Assembly and will now be heard in the state Senate.

Students walk through Sproul Plaza on the University of California–Berkeley campus in Berkeley, Calif., on April 23, 2012. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

Currently, Cal Grant financial aid awards are available only to U.S. citizens or eligible noncitizens, such as those who possess a visa or those who are a part of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals—commonly known as DACA—program.

State Assembly Bill 888—introduced in February by Assemblywoman Sabrina Cervantes (D-Riverside)—would expand all such financial aid to immigrants who have applied for asylum and who have a valid employment authorization document and social security number.

Under current law, asylum seekers are not eligible to receive Cal Grants if they have been in California for fewer than three years, Cervantes said in a March statement.

The University of California–Los Angeles is seen in Westwood, Calif., on Jan. 22, 2018. (Joyce Kuo/The Epoch Times)

Federal immigration courts can take up to four or five years to schedule an asylum hearing in California, but Cervantes said those who have a pending application for six months may obtain a social security number and work authorization, and he argued if they are able to work and participate in the economy, they should also be able to get an education.

“However, because they and their family members often are only able to get low-paying jobs, the cost of education in California is well beyond their financial means,” she said.

The assemblywoman noted that California recently had an influx of asylum seekers from both Afghanistan and Ukraine.

“Among these asylum seekers are prospective college students and individuals who were attending university in their home countries who now wish to attend a California university to begin to [make] a new life for themselves,” she said.

The fiscal impact is currently unknown, according to an Assembly floor bill analysis, because “[n]either the state’s colleges and universities nor [the California Student Aid Commission] collect data on the number of asylum-seeking students.”

University of California–Irvine, in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 25, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)

The Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities, an organization representing more than 80 independent higher education institutions, expressed support in a statement submitted to the bill’s legislative file.

“California higher education institutions play an important role in welcoming displaced students and supporting their long-term success and contribution to the state’s workforce and economy,” the organization stated.

“A diverse student body with different lived experiences benefits everyone as students, faculty, and community members gain a greater understanding and appreciation of individuals from different backgrounds.”

The bill has also garnered support from groups such as First Gen Empower, Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, John Burton Advocates for Youth, Los Angeles United Methodist Foundation, and University of California Student Association.

It has received no recorded opposition as of June 20.

The bill passed the state Assembly’s Higher Education Committee, its Appropriations Committee, and the Assembly floor last month, and is scheduled for a hearing in the state Senate’s Education Committee on June 28.

Despite the worst affordability crisis in decades and a national housing shortage, individuals from Generation Z, born between 1997 and 2012, are purchasing homes. A new report reveals which cities these youngsters are attracted to the most. 

LendingTree analyzed mortgage purchase requests across 50 major metro areas in 2022. They found Gen Zers are buying the most homes in affordable cities and avoiding expensive ones. 

Key findings from the report show Salt Lake City had the largest share of mortgage purchase requests from Gen Zers at 22.59%. 

“Though the average mortgage amount in Salt Lake City is higher than in many of the nation’s other large metros, it’s a hot spot for younger homebuyers, likely owing to — among other factors — its strong jobs market and a good blend of urban and rural amenities,” LendingTree analysts said. 

Besides Salt Lake City, inexpensive Oklahoma City and Birmingham, Alabama, were next on the list of the most popular cities youngsters were purchasing homes. Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Nashville, and Kansas City were also popular for Gen Z homebuyers.

The least popular areas for Gen Z homebuyers, and not surprisingly, were San Francisco and New York City. Here’s the complete list: 

These findings suggest Gen Z homebuyers are migrating to affordable metro areas. Migration trends are due to high borrowing costs and a lack of affordable housing. 

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

Money supply growth fell again in April, plummeting further into negative territory after turning negative in November 2022 for the first time in twenty-eight years.  April’s drop continues a steep downward trend from the unprecedented highs experienced during much of the past two years.

Since April 2021, money supply growth has slowed quickly, and since November, we’ve been seeing the money supply repeatedly contract—year-over-year— for six months in a row. The last time the year-over-year (YOY) change in the money supply slipped into negative territory was in November 1994. At that time, negative growth continued for fifteen months, finally turning positive again in January 1996. 

During April 2023, the downturn accelerated even more as YOY growth in the money supply was at –12.0 percent. That’s down from March’s rate of –9.75 percent, and was far below April’s 2022’s rate of 6.6 percent. With negative growth now falling near or below –10 percent for the second month in a row, money-supply contraction is the largest we’ve seen since the Great Depression. Prior to March and April of this year, at no other point for at least sixty years has the money supply fallen by more than 6 percent (YoY) in any month. 

The money supply metric used here—the “true,” or Rothbard-Salerno, money supply measure (TMS)—is the metric developed by Murray Rothbard and Joseph Salerno, and is designed to provide a better measure of money supply fluctuations than M2.

The Mises Institute now offers regular updates on this metric and its growth. This measure of the money supply differs from M2 in that it includes Treasury deposits at the Fed (and excludes short-time deposits and retail money funds).

In recent months, M2 growth rates have followed a similar course to TMS growth rates, although TMS has fallen faster than M2. In April 2023, the M2 growth rate was –4.6 percent. That’s down from March’s growth rate of –3.8 percent. April 2023’s growth rate was also well down from April 2022’s rate of 7.8 percent. 

Money supply growth can often be a helpful measure of economic activity and an indicator of coming recessions. During periods of economic boom, money supply tends to grow quickly as commercial banks make more loans. Recessions, on the other hand, tend to be preceded by slowing rates of money supply growth. 

Negative money supply growth is not in itself an especially meaningful metric. As shown by Ludwig von Mises, recessions are often preceded by a mere slowing in money supply growth. It is not necessary for the money supply to actually shrink to trigger the bust period of a boom-bust cycle.  But the drop into negative territory we’ve seen in recent months does help illustrate just how far and how rapidly money supply growth has fallen. That is generally a red flag for economic growth and employment.

The fact that the money supply is shrinking at all is so remarkable because the money supply almost never gets smaller. The money supply has now fallen by $2.6 trillion (or 12.0 percent) since the peak in April 2022. Proportionally, the drop in money supply since 2022 is the largest fall we’ve seen since the Depression. (Rothbard estimates that in the lead up to the Great Depression, the money supply fell by 12 percent from its peak of $73 billion in mid-1929 to $64 billion at the end of 1932.)1

In spite of this recent drop in total money supply, the trend in money-supply remains well above what existed during the twenty-year period from 1989 to 2009. To return to this trend, the money supply would have to drop at least another $4 trillion or so—or 22 percent—down to a total below $15 trillion. 

Since 2009, the TMS money supply is now up by nearly 189 percent. (M2 has grown by 143 percent in that period.) Out of the current money supply of $19.2 trillion, $4.8 trillion of that has been created since January 2020—or 25 percent. Since 2009, $12.5 trillion of the current money supply has been created. In other words, nearly two-thirds of the money supply have been created over the past thirteen years. 

With these kinds of totals, a ten-percent drop only puts a small dent in the huge edifice of newly created money.

The US economy still faces a very large monetary overhang from the past several years, and this is partly why after eleven months of slowing money-supply growth, we are not yet seeing a sizable slowdown in the labor market.

Nonetheless, the monetary slowdown has been sufficient to considerably weaken the economy. The Philadelphia Fed’s manufacturing index is in recession territory. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey is, too. The Leading Indicators index keeps looking worse. The yield curve points to recession. Even Federal Reserve staffers, who generally take an implausibly rosy view of the economy, predict recession in 2023. Individual bankruptcy filings were up 23 percent in May. Temp jobs were down, year-over-year, which often indicates approaching recession. 

Money Supply and Rising Interest Rates

An inflationary boom begins to turn to bust once new injections of money subside, and we are seeing this now. Not surprisingly, the current signs of malaise come after the Federal Reserve finally pulled its foot slightly off the money-creation accelerator after more than a decade of quantitative easing, financial repression, and a general devotion to easy money. As of June, the Fed has allowed the federal funds rate to rise to 5.25 percent. This has meant short-term interest rates overall have risen as well. In June, for example, the yield on 3-month Treasurys remains near the highest level measured in more than 20 years. 

Without ongoing access to easy money at near-zero rates, however, banks are less enthusiastic about making loans. This is not uniform across the economy, however, and the credit crunch is most acutely felt among smaller businesses and middle-class households. In the latest Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey from the Federal Reserve, researchers found that bankers believe lowered expectations for economic growth coupled with deposit outflows will lead to banks tightening lending standards. Banks have found that demand for loans has weakened as interest rates have increased and economic activity has slowed. 

San Francisco Mayor London Breed is desperate. She asked investors to “start re-imagining what the downtown can be” and to look past crime-ridden streets, homelessness encampments, open-air drug market, the exodus of businesses, and the commercial real estate meltdown that her administration’s failed progressive policies helped spark. 

“I think we have to start re-imagining what the downtown can be,” Breed said at Thursday’s Bloomberg Technology Summit in San Francisco. 

She continued: “Let’s look at what’s possible rather than dwelling on the stories of another store closing — there are a lot of people who may not even shop in those places” because of the proliferation of online shopping.

Breed said there’s a need to convert dormant office buildings into housing, demolish buildings, and attract new business to the downtown area. And just how many buildings could the mayor convert? Well, as many as 30% of the city’s office space is now vacant — a record high. 

She said the Westfield Mall, the largest mall in the downtown area, could be demolished, and the land used as “something completely different.” Recall weeks ago, Westfield and its partner Brookfield Properties stopped making payments on a $558 million loan tied to the mall, citing “challenging operating conditions” related to out-of-control crime. 

Breed is desperately searching for solutions to stop the exodus of businesses and people from the metro area. She recently made a giant U-turn to fund the police after her defunding campaign backfired. 

The mayor faces a budget deficit of $780 million that could exceed a billion dollars by 2026. The implosion of the city and the worsening CRE apocalypse might indicate no sane investor will want to touch the downtown area unless the progressives at City Hall are voted out. Voters have already booted out the city’s Soros-backed district attorney. We suspect the voters will boot out more progressives who have single-handedly transformed the once thriving metro area into a hellhole.