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Uh Oh: Majority of Millennials Rely on Parents to Pay Bills

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Millennials often define being an adult as being financially independent, but a new survey finds the majority of young people still depend on their parents for money.

A new Merrill Lynch/Age Wave survey given exclusively to USA TODAY found 70 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 received financial support from their parents within the last year, with almost three in five millennials saying they couldn’t afford their lifestyles without the support.

Barron’s Senior Editor Jack Hough believes these numbers are a direct result of what millennials face in terms of the rising cost of college and are making a rational decision by living together in bigger households. . .

Hough also pointed to data suggesting that wages are far lower than they have been historically relative to corporate profit, which he predicts could lead to more wage pressure in our country. . .

Four out of five early-adult households carry debt, usually education loans or credit card balances, according to the Survey of Consumer Finances. The average loan balance for those graduating with student debt is $36,888, or a $371 monthly payment over 10 years, according to Age Wave. (Read more from “Uh Oh: Majority of Millennials Rely on Parents to Pay Bills” HERE)

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Millions of Leaked Files Shine Light on Where the Elite Hide Their Money

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It’s called the Paradise Papers: the latest in a series of leaks made public by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists shedding light on the trillions of dollars that move through offshore tax havens.

The core of the leak, totaling more than 13.4 million documents, focuses on the Bermudan law firm Appleby, a 119-year old company that caters to blue chip corporations and very wealthy people. Appleby helps clients reduce their tax burden; obscure their ownership of assets like companies, private aircraft, real estate and yachts; and set up huge offshore trusts that in some cases hold billions of dollars.

The New York Times is part of the group of more than 380 journalists from over 90 media organizations in 67 countries that have spent months examining the latest set of documents.

As with the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers leak came through a duo of reporters at the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung and was then shared with I.C.I.J., a Washington-based group that won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the millions of records of a Panamanian law firm. The release of that trove of documents led to the resignation of one prime minister last year and to the unmasking of the wealth of people close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. (Read more from “Millions of Leaked Files Shine Light on Where the Elite Hide Their Money” HERE)

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The End of the (Petro)Dollar: What the Federal Reserve Doesn’t Want You to Know

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The United States’ ability to maintain its influence over the rest of the world has been slowly diminishing. Since the petrodollar was established in 1971, U.S. currency has monopolized international trade through oil deals with the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and continuous military interventions. There is, however, growing opposition to the American standard, and it gained more support recently when several Gulf states suddenly blockaded Qatar, which they accused of funding terrorism.

Despite the mainstream narrative, there are several other reasons why Qatar is in the crosshairs. Over the past two years, it conducted over $86 billion worth of transactions in Chinese yuan and has signed other agreements with China that encourage further economic cooperation. Qatar also shares the world’s largest natural gas field with Iran, giving the two countries significant regional influence to expand their own trade deals.

Meanwhile, uncontrollable debt and political divisions in the United States are clear signs of vulnerability. The Chinese and Russians proactively set up alternative financial systems for countries looking to distance themselves from the Federal Reserve. After the IMF accepted the yuan into its basket of reserve currencies in October of last year, investors and economists finally started to pay attention. The economic power held by the Federal Reserve has been key in financing the American empire, but geopolitical changes are happening fast. The United States’ reputation has been tarnished by decades of undeclared wars, mass surveillance, and catastrophic foreign policy.

One of America’s best remaining assets is its military strength, but it’s useless without a strong economy to fund it. Rival coalitions like the BRICS nations aren’t challenging the established order head on and are instead opting to undermine its financial support. Qatar is just the latest country to take steps to bypass the U.S. dollar. Russia made headlines in 2016 when they started accepting payments in yuan and took over as China’s largest oil partner, stealing a huge market share from Saudi Arabia in the process. Iran also dropped the dollar earlier this year in response to President Trump’s travel ban. As the tide continues to turn against the petrodollar, eventually even our allies will start to question what best serves their own interests.

Many E.U. member states are clashing with the unelected leadership in Brussels over immigration, terrorism, and austerity measures. If no solutions are found and things deteriorate, other countries could potentially follow the U.K.’s lead and vote to leave, as well. It is starting to become obvious that countries in Eastern Europe will look to the East to get the resources their economies need.

China, Russia, and India are all ahead of the curve and started stockpiling gold years ago. They recognize that hard assets will be the measure of true wealth in the near future — not fiat money. The historic hyperinflation that has occurred in these countries solidified the importance of precious metals in their monetary systems. Unfortunately, most Americans are ignorant of the past and will likely embrace more government bailouts and money printing when faced with the next recession. Even Fed officials have admitted that more quantitative easing is likely the only path going forward.

Several renowned investors have warned about this ongoing shift of economic power from West to East, but bureaucrats and central bankers refuse to admit how serious things could get. The impact on the average person could be devastating if they are not properly educated and prepared for the fallout.

Economist and author James Rickards summarized why China and Russia are so interested in acquiring precious metals:

They are stuck with their dollars. They fear, rightly, that the US will inflate its way out of its $19 trillion mountain of debt. China’s solution is to buy gold. If dollar inflation emerges, China’s Treasury holdings will devalue, but the dollar price of its gold will soar. A large gold reserve is a prudent diversification. Russia’s motives are geopolitical. Gold is the model 21st century weapon for financial wars.The US controls dollar payments systems and, with help from European allies, can eject adversaries from the international payments system called Swift. Gold is immune to such assaults. Physical gold in your custody cannot be hacked, erased, or frozen. Moving gold is a simple way for Russia to settle accounts without US interference.

Mainstream pundits will continue to distract the public with the same optimistic talking points, but taking advantage of this calm before the storm is important. As this transition takes place, central bankers will sacrifice anything and everything to keep their Ponzi scheme going. Only individuals can take the initiative to protect themselves and be able to help others who won’t be as lucky. Those who embrace sound money and cryptocurrencies will thrive in this new competitive global economy, but if America fails to adapt, the same fiat system that gave it power will drag it into poverty. (For more from the author of “The End of the (Petro)Dollar: What the Federal Reserve Doesn’t Want You to Know” please click HERE)

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The Left Spent at Least $32 Million on 4 Special Elections. And They Still Lost All of Them.

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Sometimes, politics boils down to narratives.

This was the case in Tuesday’s special election in Georgia, where Republican Karen Handel defeated Democrat Jon Ossoff to take a House seat previously occupied by Tom Price—now the secretary of health and human services.

The election became a nationalized proxy war between Republicans and Democrats, drawing intense news coverage and wild spending from both parties. Georgia’s 6th Congressional District residents were utterly bombarded by an overload of electioneering and ads.

After nearly 40 years of Republican control, the district seemed to be up for grabs.

But Ossoff was soundly defeated—despite having led by slight margins in a number of polls. Democrats had hoped to pluck off a surprise win and launch a narrative of victory in a referendum on President Donald Trump. Their hopes were dashed.

Democrats are now 0-4 in special elections against Republicans during the Trump presidency. According to Ballotpedia, Democrats spent just over $25 million in those four elections (Montana, Kansas, South Carolina, Georgia), and according to The New York Times, Ossoff received $7.6 million from outside groups for his campaign. So, a total of at least $32 million.

But both parties put a lot of weight into the Georgia election outcome and waged a ferocious battle to pull out a win.

The result of this political arms race was a little bit like the famed World War I Battle of Verdun between France and Germany.

The tactical value of the piece of land being fought over was marginal, but both sides had committed so much blood and treasure that they were fearful of pulling resources from the fight. Retreat became impossible.

This single House seat would have made little impact on the vote margin of the Republican-dominated House, but Democrats were desperate to demonstrate that their political fortunes were turning in an anti-Trump wave in the vein of the tea party’s surge in 2010.

Though Republicans didn’t quite pull out all the stops in the financial tit for tat, they certainly scrambled to match the Democrats.

The sheer amount of money invested in the race rose to staggering levels, seemingly raising the stakes even further.

Ossoff, who couldn’t vote in the election because he didn’t live in the district, frequently railed on the campaign trail about money in politics and about political action committees in Washington, D.C., dumping money into his opponent’s campaign efforts.

Yet he himself received a massive influx of dollars from the liberal San Francisco Bay Area. In fact, The Mercury News reported that he received three times as many donations from the Bay Area than from Georgia in the two months before the election.

This campaign shattered spending records.

As The Daily Signal’s Rachel del Guidice reported:

The race between Ossoff and Handel is the most expensive House race ever, CBS News reported, with fundraising exceeding $50 million. By the end of May, Handel and Ossoff had spent $3.2 million and $22.5 million, respectively, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, ABC News reported.

To put this in perspective, more money was spent on this single House race than on Jimmy Carter’s 1980 presidential election against Ronald Reagan.

Some outside groups in particular burned through a huge amount of cash to tip the balance in the race, and were in turn burned by the result.

Planned Parenthood, which has tangled with Handel in the past, spent nearly $1 million to boost Ossoff.

Handel had resigned as the vice president of the breast cancer research organization Sarah G. Komen for the Cure over the organization’s ties to Planned Parenthood, and even wrote a book about the experience.

Though Planned Parenthood, as National Review noted, tried to spin the defeat as a moral victory, it wasn’t a good look for an organization that continually pleads for taxpayer funding.

While the stunning levels of spending in the race undoubtedly made it more competitive, the results are a pretty clear example that money isn’t everything in politics, despite Ossoff’s claim that money is such an enormous problem.

Georgia Democrats ultimately couldn’t escape the forces that have caused national Democrats to sputter at the polls in the last few years, and voters clearly weren’t ready to make a dramatic swing just yet.

Many media organizations peddled the narrative that Handel had “avoided a major upset” rather than securing a solid victory, but there is no doubt that the Georgia race’s outcome showed that voters are still not interested in repudiating Trump’s agenda.

Lest Republicans become too jubilant in victory, it is important to note that the party has as yet failed to pass health care and tax reform despite large majorities in Congress. Winning elections amounts to very little without legislative results.

So far, voters have still not punished Republicans at the polls and Democrats apparently can’t even buy victories.

But as elections tighten and Democrats search for a winning message, the GOP would be wise to double down on the promises that gave it such large majorities to begin with. (For more from the author of “The Left Spent at Least $32 Million on 4 Special Elections. And They Still Lost All of Them.” please click HERE)

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Uber Admits Stiffing NYC Drivers by Millions of Dollars

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Uber on Tuesday admitted to underpaying its New York City drivers tens of millions of dollars for the past 2 1/2 years.

“We are committed to paying every driver every penny they are owed — plus interest — as quickly as possible,” Uber executive Rachel Holt said in a statement. “We are working hard to regain driver trust, and that means being transparent, sticking to our word, and making the Uber experience better from end to end.”

The ride-hailing company said each affected driver would get a refund of about $900, which includes interest. Uber did not give an exact figure on how many drivers it has in the city, but said it was in the tens of thousands. (Read more from “Uber Admits Stiffing NYC Drivers by Millions of Dollars” HERE)

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What the Death of the Penny Means for Our Money

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The dollar’s reign as the world reserve currency will come to an end some day. But before that happens, the penny will likely go into the dustbin of monetary history.

U.S. pennies have already been debased – going from 95% copper before 1982 to just 2.5% copper (and 97.5% zinc) since. Now there’s a push afoot in the Senate to junk the penny entirely.

All the sound and fury Republican leaders made about repealing Obamacare signified nothing. They aren’t eager to betray the healthcare lobby, insurance providers, and pharmaceutical companies who worked with Congress to write the law and who paid so handsomely into campaign funds. They would rather betray voters.

Supporters of eliminating the penny note that it no longer makes any economic sense to produce them.

They argue that few people would care if their purchases were rounded to the nearest $0.05, as is now done in Canada.

That’s pretty much true. You cannot buy anything for one cent anymore. The days of penny arcades are long gone.

The decline of the value of the penny toward functional obsolescence is a sad statement about our monetary system. But rather than address the underlying problem of inflation and exploding national debt, politicians like John McCain want to just eliminate the evidence of the financial establishment’s misdeeds.

According the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ own historical inflation data, a penny in 1913 (the year the Federal Reserve was created) had the same buying power as a quarter does today. But decades of steady currency devaluation through inflation have taken their toll on our once valuable circulating coins.

Even though pennies are no longer made of copper and may soon be on their way out of circulation entirely, copper pennies haven’t disappeared.

There is still a market for them based on their intrinsic copper value.

Money Metals Exchange sells pre-1983 copper pennies by the pound. While far less valuable by weight than silver, copper pennies could come in handy in barter situations. They also provide diversification into an alternative industrial metal that could become scarcer and pricier in the years ahead.

And even though dimes and quarters are no longer made of silver (as of 1965), today there is a thriving retail market for pre-1965 U.S. silver coins. They typically sell based on their silver melt value plus a small bullion-like premium.

Sometimes premiums for these historic coins surge when retail supplies become tight. But today you can obtain 90% silver dimes, quarters, and half-dollars at historically low premiums – making this category of retail silver product the best overall value currently available in our opinion. You get a low-premium entry point plus the potential for a “doubly play” profit if buy-back premiums rise down the road. (For more from the author of “What the Death of the Penny Means for Our Money” please click HERE)

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ATF Caught Red-Handed Stealing Money From Small Farmers to Fund Rogue, Off-Books Operations

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How do 700 tobacco farmers uncover a highly secretive criminal operation generating millions of dollars in fraudulent cigarette sales? By going into business with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), as they sold millions of dollars of cigarettes, the number one cause of preventable death, that’s how. And the operation may be as scandalous and controversial as the famed Fast and Furious gun running program with which the ATF was also involved.

Raleigh-based U.S. Tobacco, a group of farmers who operate small farms from Virginia to Florida, was looking to expand its operations by purchasing a distributor, someone with a warehouse and the means to supply retailers with their cigarette brands Wildhorse, Traffic, and 1839. They negotiated a deal with Big South Wholesale and its owners, Jason Carpenter and Christopher Small. Big South had a network of retailers and held out promise for U.S. Tobacco to be able to distribute their own brands.

Because Big South was able to make purchases on behalf of U.S. Tobacco, the distributors had access to U.S. Tobacco funds. The parent company quickly began to notice irregularities in various business transactions. According to the New York Times, Big South bought tobacco for, “$15 a carton and sold it to U.S. Tobacco at $17.50. The profit, about $519,000, went into what was known as a ‘management account.’ That account, while controlled by Mr. Carpenter and Mr. Small, helped pay for A.T.F. investigations.”

That’s right. According to a lawsuit filed by U.S. Tobacco, who is suing its own distributor, the ATF was running a cigarette purchasing operation disguised as a tobacco distributor, all allegedly in an effort to generate black market currency with which the ATF could then use to fund its other off-books operations.

The arrangement U.S. Tobacco had with Big South created an internal conflict of interest. Not knowing that Big South was actually a cigarette-running ATF operation, the parent company turned in the distributor to the Justice Department for investigation. But apparently, since the ATF is a part of the Justice Department, nothing happened as a result of the case. However, a federal judge, after discovering ATF’s involvement within Big South, added the federal government as a defendant in U.S. Tobacco’s case against Big South.

Since the company filed a complaint with the Justice Department, instead of finding a resolution, U.S. Tobacco said they then became the target of a Treasury Department inquiry. In other words, it appears as though the federal government is punishing the cooperative of small-time farmers, for seeking damages they say they’ve sustained as a result of the federal government’s involvement in their tobacco business. The amount of money lost, the parent company claims, amounts to 24 million dollars.

Big South, the Times writes, isn’t your typical distributorship. “Its assets included more than two dozen vehicles, including expensive S.U.V.s and a fleet of Mercedes, BMW, Audi, Lexus and Jaguar sports cars,” the Times describes. Carpenter and Small, Big South’s owners, weren’t hapless participants in the ATF’s scheme. According to heavily redacted documents related to the case, writes the Times, they’ve been serving within the government across various agencies, for years, yet their true employer remains an enigma.

Stuart Thompson, U.S. Tobacco’s CEO, began to question the financial movements at Big South in 2012 when he took over the company. That’s when he met Brandon Moore, Big South’s warehouse manager, who was ready to tell Mr. Thompson all he knew. According to the Times:

The arrangement began to break down in late 2012, when Mr. Thompson joined U.S. Tobacco as the chief financial officer. He was curious why his warehouse was placing so many orders for a brand of cigarette that competes against U.S. Tobacco. He could not get a straight answer, the company said in court documents.

In March 2013, Mr. Moore picked up the phone, called Mr. Thompson and explained what was happening. “I did what I did because of the ethics of it,” Mr. Moore said recently. “What was happening there was wrong.”

Once U.S. Tobacco discovered the bookkeeping irregularities, it reported them to the Justice Department, which investigates white-collar crime and government misconduct. Records show that the Justice Department, which includes the A.T.F., investigated some aspects of the case but no charges were filed.

“We voted unanimously to give everything we had to the government,” said Charlie Batten, a U.S. Tobacco board member whose family has worked the same North Carolina soil for generations. “We thought they would take it and run with it. What happened was, they’ve fought us tooth and nail.”

Because of the sealing order, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Batten and others are prohibited from discussing what happened to the money — even with their own farmers.

Even with the revelations the ATF was running an illegal operation inside of their company, and with the Justice Department being aware, U.S. Tobacco has been unable to divorce itself from Big South. That’s because the federal government now wants its tax revenue from all of the secret tobacco transactions the ATF initiated at Big South. “Those secret tobacco sales, it turns out, should have been taxed. And the government wants its money,” writes the Times. (For more from the author of “ATF Caught Red-Handed Stealing Money From Small Farmers to Fund Rogue, Off-Books Operations” please click HERE)

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U.S. Drops to Lowest Point Ever in Index of Economic Freedom. Can Trump Improve It?

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The U.S. has reached its lowest ranking ever in the Index of Economic Freedom, produced annually by the Heritage Foundation. The U.S. spent years in the top 10, but has been declining for years, and is now at number 17.

Hong Kong maintains the top spot, although the city-state is officially part of the Peoples’ Republic of China. Other countries that beat the U.S. include New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada (no. 7), and Chile. Last place (no. 180) goes, as usual, to North Korea. If you want to know how economic freedom and prosperity are related, just remember: booming, bustling Hong Kong is at the top, and unlit, starving North Korea is at the bottom.

The Index measures such things as the rule of law, size of government, regulatory efficiency, and openness of markets. It should be no surprise that these traits got worse during President Obama’s two terms in office.

Consider regulation. Since 2008, our economy has been burdened with more than 20,000 new regulations. This added some 572,000 pages to the Federal Register. You’ve probably read more about sluggish job growth, than about how regulations have contributed to it. Obama-era rules cost our economy almost a trillion dollars.

According to one study, there was a net increase of 421,000 new businesses from 1992 to 1996, and 405,000 from 2002-2006. In contrast, 2009, 2010, and 2011 “saw a net loss of new companies year-over-year — the first time in a generation.” Apparently if the government makes it harder to start new businesses and to hire new employees, there will fewer new companies and fewer new employees. Who’d have thunk it?

But many of the biggest regulatory burdens under Obama were added before Republicans took control of Congress in November 2010. Why has the U.S. dropped below six other countries since just last year, when it came in 11th? Probably because the Index now includes government debts and deficits:

Large budget deficits and a high level of public debt, both now reflected in the Index methodology, have contributed to the continuing decline in America’s economic freedom. Having registered its lowest economic freedom score ever, the United States is no longer among the world’s 15 freest economies.

The anemic economic recovery since the great recession has been characterized by a lack of labor market dynamism and depressed levels of investment. The substantial expansion of government’s size and scope, increased regulatory and tax burdens, and the loss of confidence that has accompanied a growing perception of cronyism, elite privilege, and corruption have severely undermined America’s global competitiveness.

Much of the blame for this debt can be laid at the feet of President Obama. Total debt nearly doubled during his years in office, from $10.6 trillion in January 2009, to $19.7 trillion when he left. But the same could be said of President Bush, who also doubled the previous debt during his two terms. We seem to have a bipartisan trend on our hands.

At the current pace, we double our total debt every eight years. You don’t have to be a deficit hawk to know that this can’t go on forever. Eventually, the interest on the debt alone would consume all tax revenue. At that point, the government would have to start printing money to service the debt, which would destroy our currency’s value — as happened in Weimar Germany.

Will Trump Make the US Economy More or Less Free?

But will our economic freedom improve or decline under President Trump? The jury is still out on that one.

Trump’s early executive orders reducing environmental regulations, and his call for the abolition of two old regulations for each new one, are good news for economic freedom and growth. His appointment of Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA also shows that he takes seriously the drag that many regulations have on the economy.

Trump’s pledge to repeal and replace Obamacare was the centerpiece of his campaign. If Congress can give him a replacement that introduces real competition and market discipline into the health care market, this would not only improve health care but would free up a full 16 percent of the American economy.

The president decries government debt, and his pledge to freeze government hiring could make a small dent in that. If his other policies grow the economy overall, that would bring in more revenues, which could reduce deficits — as long as it doesn’t simply encourage Congress to spend more money. On the other hand, the president doesn’t seem keen on tackling entitlements — which is where much of the debt will come from in future years.

Trump’s threats to raise trade tariffs and abandon free trade are most worrisome of all. If he pursues policies that “save” a handful of jobs in one state or industry, but cause a net loss of jobs and productivity elsewhere to the economy, we could see the U.S. slip even farther down the Index of Economic Freedom.

Let’s hope President Trump’s protectionist rhetoric is just the opening gambit of a skilled negotiator, and not the hardened convictions of a president who thinks that, when it comes to trade, America can only win if someone else loses. (For more from the author of “U.S. Drops to Lowest Point Ever in Index of Economic Freedom. Can Trump Improve It?” please click HERE)

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The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Perilously Close to Bursting

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Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown from the last financial crisis? Well, this time around we are facing a subprime auto loan meltdown. In recent years, auto lenders have become more and more aggressive, and they have been increasingly willing to lend money to people that should not be borrowing money to buy a new vehicle under any circumstances. Just like with subprime mortgages, this strategy seemed to pay off at first, but now economic reality is beginning to be felt in a major way. Delinquency rates are up by double digit percentages, and major auto lenders are bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars of losses. We are a nation that is absolutely drowning in debt, and we are most definitely going to reap what we have sown.

The size of this market is larger than you may imagine. Earlier this year, the auto loan bubble surpassed the one trillion dollar mark for the first time ever…

Americans are borrowing more than ever for new and used vehicles, and 30- and 60-day delinquency rates rose in the second quarter, according to the automotive arm of one of the nation’s largest credit bureaus.

The total balance of all outstanding auto loans reached $1.027 trillion between April 1 and June 30, the second consecutive quarter that it surpassed the $1-trillion mark, reports Experian Automotive.

The average size of an auto loan is also at a record high. At $29,880, it is now just a shade under $30,000.

In order to try to help people afford the payments, auto lenders are now stretching loans out for six or even seven years. At this point it is almost like getting a mortgage.
But even with those stretched out loans, the average monthly auto loan payment is now up to a record 499 dollars.

That is the average loan size. To me, this is absolutely infuriating, because only a very small percentage of wealthy Americans are able to afford a $499 monthly payment on a single vehicle.

Many middle class American families are only bringing in three or four thousand dollars a month (before taxes). How in the world do they think that they can afford a five hundred dollar monthly auto loan payment on just one vehicle?

Just like with subprime mortgages, people are being taken advantage of severely, and the end result is going to be catastrophic for the U.S. financial system.

Already, auto loan delinquencies are rising to very frightening levels. In July, 60 day subprime loan delinquencies were up 13 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 17 percent compared to the same month last year.

Prime delinquencies were up 12 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 21 percent compared to the same month last year.

We have a huge crisis on our hands, and major auto lenders are setting aside massive amounts of cash in order to try to cover these losses. The following comes from USA Today…

In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ford reported in the first half of this year it allowed $449 million for credit losses, a 34% increase from the first half of 2015.

General Motors reported in a similar filing that it set aside $864 million for credit losses in that same period of 2016, up 14% from a year earlier.

Meanwhile, other big corporations are also alarmed about the economic health of average U.S. consumers. Just check out what Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos had to say about this just the other day…

I know that when we look at globally the overall U.S. population, it seems like things are getting better. But when you really start breaking it down and you look at that core consumer that we serve on the lower economic scale that’s out there, that demographic, things have not gotten any better for her, and arguably, they’re worse. And they’re worse, because rents are accelerating, healthcare is accelerating on her at a very, very rapid clip.

The stock market may seem to be saying that everything is fine (for the moment), but the hard economic numbers are telling a completely different story. What we are experiencing right now looks so similar to 2008, and this includes big institutions just dropping dead seemingly out of the blue. On Tuesday, we learned that ITT Technical Institute is immediately shutting down and permanently closing all locations. This is from a Los Angeles Times report…

The company that operates the for-profit chain, one of the country’s largest, announced that it was permanently closing all its campuses nationwide. It blamed the shutdown on the recent move by the U.S. Education Department to ban ITT from enrolling new students who use federal financial aid.

“Two quarters ago there were rumors about the school having problems, but they told us that anyone who was already a student would be allowed to finish,” said Wiggins, who works as the assistant manager for a family-run auto parts business and went to ITT to open new opportunities.

“Am I angry?” he said. “I’m like angry times 10 million.”

As a result of this shutdown, 35,000 students are suddenly left out in the cold and approximately 8,000 employees have lost their jobs.

This is what happens during a major economic downturn. Large institutions that may have been struggling under the surface for quite a while suddenly give up and drop a bomb on those that were depending on them. In the months ahead, there will be a lot more examples of this.

Already, some of the biggest corporate names in America have been laying off thousands of workers in 2016. Mass layoffs are usually an early warning sign that big trouble is ahead, so keep a close eye on those companies.

The pace of the economic decline has been a bit slower than many (including myself) originally anticipated, but without a doubt it has continued.

And it is undeniable that the stage is set for a crisis that will absolutely dwarf 2008. Our national debt has nearly doubled since the beginning of the last crisis, corporate debt has doubled, student loan debt has crossed the trillion dollar mark, auto loan debt has crossed the trillion dollar mark, and total household debt has crossed the 12 trillion dollar mark.

We are living in the greatest debt bubble in world history, and there are signs that this giant bubble is now starting to burst. And when it does, the pain is going to be greater than most people would dare to imagine. (For more from the author of “The One Trillion Dollar Consumer Auto Loan Bubble Is Perilously Close to Bursting” please click HERE)

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Girl Is Multi-Millionaire at Age 9

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Self-made millionaire Isabella Barrett enjoys splashing the cash on designer shoes and expensive labels – despite being just nine years old . . .

Isabella became a millionaire at just six years old after launching her own clothing and jewellery line . . .

Isabella’s mum, Susanna, said: “As far as what she’s worth tangible you know, it would probably be equal to several million dollars . . .
“So she is the major stakeholder in ‘Glitzy Girl’, which was our first company that came out. The second company was ‘Bound By the Crown Couture'” . . .

Now the The fashion-obsessed young socialite has over 1.6 million online followers and considers herself a successful businesswoman in her own right. (Read more from “Girl Is Multi-Millionaire at Age 9” HERE)

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