(The Economic Collapse Blog)—I suppose that congratulations are in order. It is no small feat to pile up a debt of $315,000,000,000,000, and we will never see a mountain of debt of this magnitude ever again after it comes crashing down. Even though delinquency rates are rising all over the world, as long as conditions remain at least somewhat relatively stable the game will be able to continue.
Unfortunately, conditions won’t be relatively stable for long. Global events have started to accelerate significantly, and that is really going to shake things up in the months ahead.
According to a report that was just released by the Institute of International Finance, the total amount of debt in the world has reached a grand total of 315 trillion dollars…
The world is mired in $315 trillion of debt, according to a report from the Institute of International Finance.
This global debt wave has been the biggest, fastest and most wide-ranging rise in debt since World War II, coinciding with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“This increase marks the second consecutive quarterly rise and was primarily driven by emerging markets, where debt surged to an unprecedented high of over $105 trillion—$55 trillion more than a decade ago,” the IIF said in its quarterly Global Debt Monitor report released in May.
We are in the midst of the greatest global debt binge in the history of the world.
Household debt is at a level we have never seen before, business debt is at a level we have never seen before, and government debt is at a level we have never seen before…
Of the $315 trillion debt stock, household debt, which includes mortgages, credit cards and student debt, among others, amounted to $59.1 trillion.
Business debt, which corporations use to finance their operations and growth, stood at $164.5 trillion, with the financial sector alone making up $70.4 trillion of that amount. Public debt made up the rest at $91.4 trillion.
For the moment, conditions are at least somewhat relatively stable, and so everything seems fine.
But it won’t take much to push us over the edge.
For example, during a recent interview with Greg Hunter, Chris Martenson suggested that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could trigger a sudden meltdown of the bond market…
In a new market meltdown, Dr. Martenson sees chaos and gives a hypothetical example: “China attacks Taiwan, and there is a 10 sigma move in the bond market. Oh no, all these derivatives have blown up. These people are supposed to be winners, and these people are supposed to be all losers. No, no, they don’t have any money for that stuff. It’s too complicated. I don’t think anybody understands how this works anymore. I could not find anybody who could tell me the whole thing. I could find people who knew bits and pieces, but they knew their slice. . . . I am trying to stitch this thing all together. I get uncomfortable when I can’t answer the most basic questions, and that is how much risk is there in the system and where is it?”
In short, Dr. Martenson is worried about the whole financial system going down. Dr. Martenson says, “Yes, I am worried about the whole system going down, and that leads to all sorts of speculation. . . . Imagine this, we wake up one day, and the markets are not open on Monday. Oh no, glitch. Problem. Then, it’s two days and not open, three days not open. People are getting worried. Friday, and the markets are still not open. Monday comes, and they say it’s a super big problem, and we don’t know how to resolve it. . . . They offer you 100% value today in a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) account or you can wait it out and hope it gets resolved, and it might take a decade.”
The moment that the Chinese invade Taiwan, the U.S. and China will be at war.
This is one of the three major wars that I have been warning about for a long time.
Unfortunately, the Chinese continue to become more aggressive toward Taiwan. In fact, late last week they conducted the biggest practice run that we have seen so far…
China wrapped up a two-day, large-scale military exercise Friday after its forces deployed 111 aircraft and 46 naval vessels to areas around Taiwan.
Taiwan’s National Defense Ministry said 82 Chinese military aircraft crossed the median line of the Taiwan Strait and some got very close to the 24-nautical-mile line that Taiwan uses to define its contiguous zone.
The military drills, branded as a “punishment” for Taiwan’s new president, Lai Ching-te, who China views as separatist, focused on conducting joint sea-air combat-readiness patrol, joint seizure of comprehensive battlefield control and joint precision strikes on key targets involving China’s army, navy, air force and rocket force.
Meanwhile, both sides just continue to escalate matters in Ukraine.
It is being reported that French forces will soon be heading to Ukraine to help “train” Ukrainian troops, and that is a very ominous development…
Ukraine’s military says it is ‘welcoming’ French trainers in Ukraine, in new remarks which strongly suggest that for the first time France is deploying its troops to Ukraine soil. This marks the beginning of major ‘boots on the ground’ escalation in a formal, public capacity by a NATO state.
“Ukraine’s top commander said on Monday he had signed paperwork allowing French military instructors to visit Ukrainian training centers soon,” Reuters reported Monday, referencing head of the armed forces Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.
“I am pleased to welcome France’s initiative to send instructors to Ukraine to train Ukrainian servicemen,” Syrskyi said following video link talks with French defense minister Sebastien Lecornu.
We are getting closer and closer to the day when western forces will be in direct conflict with Russian forces, and this is something that I have been warning about for many years.
The third major war that will greatly shake the entire planet is the war that has erupted in the Middle East. Israeli forces keep going even deeper into Rafah, and the IDF and Hezbollah continue to exchange fire along the northern front.
Eventually this war is going to escalate to an extremely dangerous level, and we could potentially see that happen by the end of this calendar year. In addition to military conflict, major pestilences are also a factor that could turn the global financial system upside down.
Earlier today, we learned that over 4 million chickens at just one farm in Iowa will have to be destroyed because of a bird flu outbreak there…
More than 4 million chickens in Iowa will have to be killed after a case of the highly pathogenic bird flu was detected at a large egg farm, the state announced Tuesday.
Crews are in the process of killing 4.2 million chickens after the disease was found at a farm in Sioux County, Iowa, making it the latest in a yearslong outbreak that now is affecting dairy cattle as well. Last week, the virus was confirmed at an egg farm west of Minneapolis, Minnesota, leading to the slaughter of nearly 1.4 million chickens.
Overall, 92.34 million birds have been killed since the outbreak began in 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Please keep in mind that the figure that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is quoting is just for the United States.
Overall, hundreds of millions of birds have been killed around the globe since the beginning of this pandemic.
Let’s just hope that H5N1 does not mutate into a form that can spread easily from human to human, because if that happens our planet will be paralyzed by fear on a much higher level than we experienced during the last pandemic.
It is also being reported that a hemorrhagic fever that can cause “Ebola-like bleeding” is rapidly spreading among rodents in northern Europe…
A potentially deadly virus that can jump from animals to humans is already sweeping through northern Europe, putting the UK highly at risk.
The horrifying virus can be transmitted from rodents to humans and cause Ebola-like bleeding, according to new research.
Bank voles in Sweden carrying the pathogen have already infected two people, causing them to come down with a Viral Hemorrhagic Fever (VHF) – the same type of illness as Ebola.
I will be closely watching for any human cases of that disease, because any type of hemorrhagic fever that starts spreading widely among humans would cause a tremendous amount of panic.
On top of everything else, I believe that we should brace ourselves for unexpected natural disasters in the months ahead.
For example, our sun has been exceedingly active lately, and we are being warned that more coronal mass ejections may soon be heading our way…
Earth could be hit by another powerful solar storm this week that is predicted to trigger radio blackouts and incredible northern light displays.
Earlier this month, the sun unleashed the most powerful streams of plasma, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), in 20 years, causing communication disruptions worldwide.
The sunspot that caused the chaos has swung back around and released a powerful flare toward Earth’s region on Monday.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) a 60 percent chance of radio blackouts on Tuesday and throughout the rest of the week.
Before this current solar cycle is over, I believe that solar activity will make a lot more headlines.
So much is happening right now, but what we have experienced so far is just the tip of the iceberg compared to what is coming.
It won’t be too long before we are being hit by one catastrophic event after another, and that is going to cause tremendous chaos for the global financial system.
So take advantage of this period of relative stability while you still can, because we are moving into a time when everything that can be shaken will be shaken.
Sound off about this article on the Economic Collapse Substack.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
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.
