(The Economic Collapse Blog)—Are the financial markets headed for trouble? There was quite a bit of panic on Wall Street on Thursday after more bad economic numbers were released. But honestly I simply do not understand why the financial markets responded with such surprise. By now it should be apparent to everyone that we have a “Weekend at Bernie’s economy” that is being propped up by unprecedented levels of government spending. If we actually tried to live within our means, we would immediately plunge into a depression. Our politicians definitely do not want that, and so about every one hundred days they are adding another trillion dollars to the national debt, and the vast majority of that borrowed money goes directly into the veins of the corpse that we call the U.S. economy.
But even though we are absolutely flooding the system with cash stolen from future generations of Americans, economic performance has been extremely anemic.
On Thursday, the government reported that the U.S. economy grew at a 1.6 percent annualized rate during the first quarter of this year…
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced across the economy, grew by 1.6% on an annualized basis in the three-month period from January through March, the Commerce Department said in its first reading of the data on Thursday.
That is much lower than the 2.4% increase forecast by LSEG economists and marks a sharp slowdown from the 3.4% pace seen during the fourth quarter. It is the slowest pace of growth in two years.
“This was a worst of both worlds report — slower than expected growth, higher than expected inflation,” said David Donabedian, chief investment officer of CIBC Private Wealth US. “The biggest setback is the acceleration in core inflation, and in particular, the services sector rising above a 5% annual rate.”
Even if the GDP numbers were accurate, and I don’t believe that they are, that would still be absolutely terrible.
At this point, some pundits are using the term “slowdown” to describe what is happening to the economy…
Some analysts believe Thursday’s weaker-than-expected report signals the start of a broader slowdown in the economy.
Personally, I am entirely convinced that if honest numbers were being used they would indicate that GDP growth is negative.
But in any event, pretty much everyone agrees that we are heading in the wrong direction.
In response to this bad economic news, stock prices plummeted.
At one point on Thursday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down more than 600 points, and it closed the day down 375 points…
Stocks tumbled Thursday after the latest U.S. economic data showed a sharp slowdown in growth and pointed to persistent inflation.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average slid 375.12 points, or 0.98%, to close at 38,085.80, weighed down by steep declines in Caterpillar and IBM. The S&P 500 dropped 0.46% to finish the session at 5,048.42, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.64% to 15,611.76.
Not too long ago, the Dow was flirting with 40,000.
Since that time, it has lost nearly 2,000 points.
Will this “slide” eventually turn into an avalanche? What is happening in the bond market is of even greater concern.
The release of the GDP numbers caused U.S. Treasury yields to go completely nuts…
U.S. Treasury yields rose on Thursday after the first-quarter GDP report showed slowing growth and rising consumer prices.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield climbed 4.8 basis points to 4.702%, while the rate on the 2-year Treasury gained 6.1 basis points to 4.998%. At their session highs, the yields on both notes hit their highest levels since November.
Let’s keep a close eye on this.
If Treasury yields start swinging too wildly, that is going to have enormous implications for those that trade derivatives.
Shifting gears, we have also just learned that the median price of a home in the U.S. has just hit another brand new record high…
It is more expensive than ever to buy a home in the U.S., according to a new report from the real estate company Redfin.
The median home price hit a record $383,725 during the four-week period ending April 21. That’s up 5.2 percent from a year ago, Redfin found, one of the largest leaps in home prices since October 2022.
Sadly, home ownership is now out of reach for a very large chunk of the population. If you can believe it, Redfin says that the median monthly housing payment has risen “to a record $2,843”…
The median monthly housing payment also jumped to a record $2,843, up 13 percent from the same period last year.
Chen Zhao, the economic research lead at Redfin, said prospective buyers should “accept that this year is probably not the time to find a dream deal.”
Who can afford a mortgage payment of $2,843 a month? That is insane.
Home ownership has never been more unaffordable than it is right now, and young adults that are just starting out are being hit the hardest. Earlier today, I just had to laugh when I came across an article entitled “So you may never own a home. Here’s why maybe that’s … a good thing?”
To me, that sounds eerily similar to “you will own nothing and be happy”. That particular article is directed at young adults in Canada, but millions of young adults in the U.S. are also wondering if they will be renting for life.
Yes, there are some advantages to renting, but you aren’t building any equity. And I think that is what the wizards on Wall Street would like to see.
I think that they envision a future in which they own almost all of the homes and the vast majority of us are renters. The good news, if you want to call it that, is that I don’t think that things will ever get that far.
Our entire system has started to come apart at the seams, and it won’t be too long before it completely crashes. A lot of the “wealth” that we see on Wall Street is just a mirage.
For the moment, stock prices are absurdly high because there are people out there that are willing to pay those prices. But when conditions take a dramatic turn for the worse, the buyers will all disappear and so will the absurdly high stock prices.
So enjoy the last days of the bubble while you still can, because the clock is ticking…
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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.