(The Economic Collapse Blog)—In recent weeks there have been numerous high profile bank “glitches”, accounts are being shut down without warning at a staggering rate all over the nation, and more institutions continue to get into very serious financial trouble.
For a while, I was ignoring some of these reports because I thought they were isolated issues. But when you step back and take a bigger picture view of things, it really does appear that we have a major problem with the banks.
According to CNN, on Friday many of our largest banks “were hit by deposit delays”…
Multiple US banks were hit by deposit delays on Friday caused by an error at a payment processing network, according to the Federal Reserve.
The Clearing House, which operates the Automated Clearing House system, which allows banks to send electronic payments to each other, experienced a processing error with a batch of bank transactions. Banks send everything from direct deposit paychecks to customer bill payments for mortgages and utility bills through the ACH system.
This caused a tremendous amount of distress, because paychecks were not showing up in the accounts of a lot of people. And considering the fact that more than 60 percent of the country is currently living paycheck to paycheck, that is a big deal.
Incredibly, some banks are still trying to fix the problem. The following is a message that PNC Bank posted on Twitter on Sunday…
Good morning, Amy. Due to an industry-wide delay with Federal ACH transactions, some ACH credits and debits, including some Direct Deposits, haven’t been processed. We recommend that you contact your employer or ACH originator for more information. Thank you.
There have been so many bank “glitches” this year.
So why is this happening? Could this latest incident have been caused by a cyberattack?
I wish that I had answers to those questions.
Meanwhile, banks all over the U.S. are suddenly shutting down thousands of accounts without any warning whatsoever…
The reasons vary, but the scene that plays out is almost always the same.
Bank customers get a letter in the mail saying their institution is closing all of their checking and savings accounts. Their debit and credit cards are shuttered, too. The explanation, if there is one, usually lacks any useful detail.
Can you imagine how you would feel if your cards suddenly did not work and you did not have access to your money?
Right now, we are seeing a tsunami of “de-risking” by banks that is unlike anything we have ever seen before…
Or maybe the customers don’t see the letter, or never get one at all. Instead, they discover that their accounts no longer work while they’re at the grocery store, rental car counter or A.T.M. When they call their bank, frantic, representatives show concern at first. “Oh, no, so sorry,” they say. “We’ll do whatever we can to fix this.”
But then comes the telltale pause and shift in tone. “Per your account agreement, we can close your account for any reason at any time,” the script often goes.
These situations are what banks refer to as “exiting” or “de-risking.”
To me, this is one of the most alarming financial trends that I have seen in a long time.
On top of everything else, Citizens Bank in Iowa has become the sixth U.S. bank this year to go belly up. The following comes from a press release issued by the FDIC…
Citizens Bank, Sac City, Iowa, was closed today by the Iowa Division of Banking, which appointed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) as receiver. To protect depositors, the FDIC entered into a Purchase and Assumption Agreement with Iowa Trust & Savings Bank, Emmetsburg, Iowa, to assume all of the deposits of Citizens Bank.
The two branches of Citizens Bank will reopen as branches of Iowa Trust & Savings Bank on Monday during normal business hours. This evening and over the weekend, depositors of Citizens Bank can access their money by writing checks or using ATM or debit cards. Checks drawn on the bank will continue to be processed. Loan customers should continue to make their payments as usual.
Depositors of Citizens Bank will become depositors of Iowa Trust & Savings Bank, so customers do not need to change their banking relationship in order to retain their deposit insurance coverage. Customers of Citizens Bank should continue to use their existing branch until they receive notice from Iowa Trust & Savings Bank that it has completed systems changes to allow its branch offices to process their accounts as well.
As of September 30, 2023, Citizens Bank had approximately $66 million in total assets and $59 million in total deposits. In addition to assuming all of the deposits, Iowa Trust & Savings Bank agreed to purchase essentially all of the failed bank’s assets.
U.S. banks are sitting on an absolutely colossal mountain of unrealized losses.
So it is just a matter of time before more fail.
And other types of financial institutions are also on shaky ground.
In fact, the biggest publicly traded brokerage firm in the country has started giving large numbers of workers the axe…
Charles Schwab on Monday began laying off employees across the company.
Schwab, the largest publicly traded US brokerage, didn’t disclose how many employees were affected in an internal message seen by The Wall Street Journal. Some remaining employees will have new jobs or managers, according to the message.
Of course layoffs are starting to pick up speed from coast to coast.
According to Zero Hedge, the number of employed Americans went down by 348,000 last month…
Yes, payrolls may still be positive but the actual change in monthly employment isn’t. In fact, in October the number of employer Americans collapsed by 348K (per the Household Survey). This was the second negative print this year, and the 7th negative employment month since the covid crash. Ironically, since then, we have seen just one negative payrolls months which makes sense, since the nonfarm payrolls number is far less accurate and much more gamed due to its market-moving abilities. The plunge in employment coupled with the jump in unemployed workers (by 146K) is also the reason why the unemployment rate unexpectedly went up.
Economic turmoil is erupting all around us, and much more chaos is on the way.
So I hope that you have prepared for very harsh economic times, because the pace of change is only going to get quicker from here.
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.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
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.