The normalization of bad tidings has made many Americans numb to the realities that face us today. One can look at any one of the massive threats we’re facing and come to the conclusion that society is on the brink of collapse. Unfortunately, we’re not looking at one or two major threats. We’re looking at several and they’re all hitting at the same time.
For years, I’ve been the guy who pushed back against the “Chicken Littles” who have been declaring societal collapse on the horizon. I didn’t flip out over Y2K. I didn’t stock up food and ammunition during the 2008 economic downturn. I didn’t say America was going to fall under Barack Obama. I didn’t buy a year’s worth of toilet paper when the lockdowns started. It’s important to understand this because I’m someone who is generally hopeful. I’m no fan of fearmongers, but things have changed in 2022 and it’s looking even worse for 2023. The sky really is falling on multiple fronts and most Americans seem oblivious.
There are two existential threats I won’t be covering on today’s episode of The JD Rucker Show: rigged elections and the Covid jabs. We’ll talk about them later in the week. Today, I want to focus on three of the economic challenges we’re facing. Watch the show here:
Here are the stories I’ll be covering…
NYISO Warns New Yorkers About “Sharp Rise” in Winter Electricity Prices
Readers have been well-informed that the global energy crisis is finally coming to America this winter as energy bills soar. The latest sign of soaring power costs is a warning from New York’s grid operator.
In a press release, New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) wrote that millions of New Yorkers would have enough electricity supplies this winter to meet forecasted peak demand conditions.
While that’s a relief NYISO won’t have to resort to power blackouts this winter, the grid operator warned customers would face “a sharp rise in wholesale electricity prices expected this winter due to several economic and geopolitical factors that continue to impact the cost of natural gas used in the production of electricity.”
Bloomberg pointed out that NYC natural gas prices for January delivery were more than 60% higher than a year ago. Plus, diesel prices are through the roof as fuel supplies in the Northeast are dangerously low. Combine higher inputs to generate power, which means the added costs will be passed onto consumers. [read more]
Homeowners Should Brace for Property Price Drop
Real estate prices have declined over the past several months, but there could be much more to come, data and some experts indicate. The median home price has dropped by about 7 percent since its peak in June. It is still up by about 6 percent since October last year and more than 35 percent up since early 2020, according to data from Zillow, a listing site.
Other market metrics have recently dropped far more precipitously though. Sales volume, for instance, is down more than 24 percent since last year. Construction started on less than 120,000 private housing units in October, down from more than 150,000 in April, according to Census Bureau’s seasonally adjusted data (pdf). Prices of lumber, the most common residential construction material in America, dropped by nearly 70 percent since February and are now roughly at the early 2020 level.
The housing market has been pummeled by the Federal Reserve’s lifting of interest rates this year, which have boosted mortgage rates from less than 3 percent in September last year to more than 7 percent in early November. The rates have since eased to some 6.5 percent. This indicates that the market has yet to reach its bottom.
“We expect a drop of 15-to-20% over the next year, in order to restore the pre-Covid price-to-income ratio,” wrote Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at the Pantheon Macroeconomics in a note last week. [read more]
It Is Beginning: 41 Percent of All Small Business Owners Could Not Pay Rent in November
Many experts are now warning that we could see the housing market and the commercial real estate market simultaneously crash in 2023. If that were to happen, it would put an extreme amount of stress on our financial system. The only way we will avoid such a fate is if the Federal Reserve starts reducing interest rates. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen. In fact, officials at the Federal Reserve keep telling us that interest rates are going to keep going up. This is literally a suicidal course of action, because higher rates are going to absolutely crush the economy.
If you doubt this, just consider what is already happening.
According to a new Alignable survey that was just released, 41 percent of all small business owners in the United States could not pay rent in November…
Due to high inflation, reduced consumer spending, higher rents and other economic pressures, U.S.-based small business owners’ rent problems just escalated to new heights nationally this month, based on Alignable’s November Rent Poll of 6,326 small business owners taken from 11/19/22 to 11/22/22.
Unfortunately, 41% of U.S.-based small business owners report that they could not pay their rent in full and on time in November, a new record for 2022. Making matters worse, this occurred during a quarter when more money should be coming in and rent delinquency rates should be decreasing. But so far this quarter, the opposite has been true.
In September, that same survey found that 30 percent of all small business owners could not pay rent. [read more]
Lobbyists Call on the US Government to Develop Digital ID Infrastructure for “Security” Reasons
A group of 10 advocacy organizations, including the Identity Theft Resource Center and the Better Identity Coalition, have called on Congress to pass the Improving Digital Identity Act of 2022, mandating the government to develop federal digital ID infrastructure. The bill has advanced through committees in both the House and Senate, but it is yet to be put to a vote. In the letter, the organizations noted that in 2021, 293 million people were affected by data breaches, and that there has been a 333% rise in losses from identity fraud since 2017.
The letter further notes that the FTC estimated that there was a 3,000% increase in identity theft for public benefits from 2019 to 2020. And, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) has identified abuse of components of digital identity, like personally identifiable information, as the main cause of cybercrime and fraud in the country. [read more]
Federal Reserve Set to Introduce Privacy-Crushing Digital Currency That Can Be ‘Controlled’ and ‘Programmed’ by Government Bureaucrats
“Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Esther George said in an interview that inflation is at risk of growing entrenched in the economy, making it difficult for the Federal Reserve to fight inflation without a recession. George said that labor is the driver of inflation now, rather than supply chain or production shortages, and the real challenge for policymakers is prematurely ending rate increases,” private intelligence firm Forward Observer reported in a note to subscribers earlier this month.
An accompanying analyst comment noted: “Fed officials have previously waved off the risk of recession, so this admission is significant. George is now saying the proverbial quiet part out loud, as [Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome] Powell has been engineering a deliberate recession since last year.”
Now, as an engineered recession is upon us, the same Fed will be introducing a digital currency that it can manipulate on behalf of the wishes of the deep state permanent government.
The N.Y. Fed said in a statement: “This U.S. proof-of-concept project is experimenting with the concept of a regulated liability network. It will test the technical feasibility, legal viability, and business applicability of distributed ledger technology to settle the liabilities of regulated financial institutions through the transfer of central bank liabilities.” [read more]
1.8M Chickens Slaughtered in Nebraska as Bird Flu Pecks Away at Food Supply
Another 1.8 million chickens were ordered to be culled in Nebraska after agriculture officials analyzed yet another bird flu outbreak on a farm. The latest culling comes after 50 million birds have been slaughtered nationwide to try and contain the ongoing outbreak according to AP, so who knows if it’s actually true.
Fortunately the Nebraska Department of Agriculture (NDA) issued a report, which adds that this is the 13th farm in the state to suffer an outbreak this year. According to the report, 6.8 million birds have been killed in Nebraska – the second-most behind Iowa, which has killed 15.5 million. After the affected flock is culled, the NDA will establish a 6.2-mile control zone around the affected premises. [read more]
100 Million Dead Birds Are Just the Beginning, Because This Pestilence Is Far From Over
Did you know that an extremely vicious virus that is currently sweeping across the globe has already killed more than 100 million birds? If you haven’t heard about this yet, don’t feel bad, because most people in the general population don’t know about this either. Like so many of the other nightmares that we are facing right now, the mainstream media continues to downplay the bird flu crisis and continues to insist that authorities have everything under control. But of course the truth is that they don’t have this outbreak under control. Flocks are being steadily wiped out all over the planet, and prices for turkey, chicken and eggs just keep going higher and higher. If the bird flu spreads even faster in 2023 than it did in 2022, it won’t be too long before we have some pretty serious shortages on our hands.
Over the long Thanksgiving weekend, it was being reported that the official death toll in the U.S. has now reached 50.54 million. That makes this “the worst animal-health disaster in U.S. history”…
More than 50.54 million U.S. birds have died in what is the worst Avian flu outbreak in U.S. history, according to data from the Department of Agriculture, Reuters reports. It also marks the worst animal-health disaster in U.S. history.
But it is perfectly “normal” for tens of millions of our turkeys and chickens to be wiped out, right?
Unfortunately, this pestilence is not just limited to the United States. In fact, the UK and the European Union “are also suffering their worst avian-flu crises”…
Losses of poultry flocks sent prices for eggs and turkey meat to record highs, worsening economic pain for consumers facing red-hot inflation and making Thursday’s Thanksgiving celebrations more expensive in the United States. Europe and Britain are also suffering their worst avian-flu crises, and some British supermarkets rationed customers’ egg purchases after the outbreak disrupted supplies.
We have never seen anything like this before.
According to CNBC, the number of dead birds in the EU alone has reached “nearly 50 million”…
Governments across Europe have culled bird populations to limit the spread of avian flu. Almost six million birds have been killed in the Netherlands since October 2021, while Spain, Bulgaria, Denmark and France have also been badly affected.
Nearly 50 million birds have been killed in Europe this year as countries try to contain the disease, according to the EU’s Food Safety Agency.
Actually, that figure is a bit old, but I was not able to find an updated one.
But if you take that number and add 50 million from the United States, that gives us a grand total of approximately 100 million dead birds, and that doesn’t even account for the remainder of the globe. [read more]
Pray, Prepare, and Hope
It’s easy for Americans who are awake to what’s happening around us to do two things. First, we can become extremely concerned about the future. This concern manifests in different ways for different people. Some get angry. Others experience anxiety or depression. Many sit back and hope for the best. Others run for the hills. No matter how it manifests, the faithful who have read their Bibles know that this temporary life is just a stepping stone to something infinitely greater. Hard times were prophesied, so whether things get worse or if we’re given a reprieve and judgment has not yet come, we should pray and remain hopeful.
The second thing that happens is we look around and wonder why so many around us seem completely oblivious. It’s not just Democrats, leftists, or atheists. Even many if not most patriotic and faith-driven people seem to be underestimating the abysmal state of affairs in this nation. They know it’s bad, but they seem to believe it’s not THAT bad. This is why it’s imperative that the faithful and the patriotic spread the word. Don’t just drop a link on Twitter or Gab, though that would be nice. Email it. Talk about it in person. Please do what you can to help people wake up and do what they must to prepare.
Some may say it’s not their problem. I would argue that the more people who are aware and taking actions to improve their own situations, the harder it will be for the powers-that-be to achieve their evil goals. We need allies. But remember one thing above all else. Whether it manifests for us today or after we’re gone, our greatest ally is our Creator. Do all things for Him.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
