Well, this certainly doesn’t sound very good.

Back in 2007, there were hints that a financial disaster were coming, it’s just that many of them were simply missed, even though they were obvious in hindsight. As a firefighter, I saw them: Multiple families living in brand new, expensive homes without a stick of furniture. They could barely make the payment on their adjustable rate balloon mortgage, so they certainly couldn’t afford furniture. All it took was an increase in gas prices to set off the entire mortgage collapse.

There are again signs of an impending financial disaster, and they are everywhere. For example:

My in-laws were in Maine for the summer. They returned last week. Just before they returned, my wife went over to their house to prepare it for their arrival. While she was there, she smelled something odd, like rotting garbage. The smell was coming from the refrigerator. Even though the display on the door said it was cold, it was not. All of the food had rotted.

After a rather nasty cleaning session, the in-laws returned home. They went shopping for a new refrigerator, and there were not many to be had. It turns out that there is no supply coming from overseas, where most of them are made. The ones that ARE getting through are not enough to meet demand. There are lengthy backorders.

Yet another sign that the economy is grinding to a halt is coming from the auto industry. GM and Ford have suspended the production of pickup trucks because of the shortage in computer chips. This is a disaster for Ford Motor Company. All Ford makes is trucks, SUVs, and the Mustang. Ford reports that its sales are down 32 percent.

Total Ford Motor Company sales during July 2021 decreased 32 percent from last July, selling only 120,053 units. Sales of cars were hit hardest, with a 78% reduction to 4,365 units. Trucks were down 38 percent to 72,574 units, and SUV sales dropped 35 percent to 43,114 units.

That news was bad enough, but was ever worse for August, as Ford sales dropped 33 percent in August from the same month last year.

If this is a disaster for Ford, it is also a disaster for the US economy. Ford is the 21st largest company in the USA, and GM is the 22nd.

We are seeing shortages in all sorts of things: supplies are hard to find. Chicken, lumber, microchips, gas, steel, metals, chlorine, and ketchup packets are all in short supply. We shut down the world’s economy, and it is not wanting to restart. We can’t even get people to return to work.

“Experts” can argue about it for months, but no matter the cause, the result is the same. This slowdown of the economy is going to continue for months, perhaps several years. How many businesses will fail as a result is anyone’s guess. One thing is for sure, though. The economy is going to get much, much worse. Inflation is going to increase markedly as the law of supply and demand begins to take hold. Once Suzy Soccermom figures out that there is a problem, expect panic buying and even more shortages as she begins to panic shop for things.

Another thing I spent most of last year shrieking about was the mind-bending catastrophe that must follow from the hamhanded attempt to assert control over a national economy far beyond the comprehension of ProPol hacks, whose negligible intelligence and ability are routinely dwarfed by their stupendous arrogance. Again and again, I insisted that the onset of this ruinous interference would likely be delayed at first, allowing time for the damage to slowly spread throughout the most effective prosperity-generation system ever known to man and, eventually, break the machine down completely. Even when Trump seemed to miraculously revivify the economy last fall, I felt the reprieve could only be temporary, kind of like the way terminal patients can rally unexpectedly and against all odds—inexplicably acting, looking, even feeling much better for about three days or so, before their condition drastically worsens and the patient finally succumbs. More from Brandon Smith:

We are at an impasse. With incessant fear mongering over the latest covid variants and the government obsession with 100% vaccination, the pro- and anti-vaccine groups are squaring off .  It is a conflict between those who see their submission to the vaccination as a badge of personal responsibility and civic-mindedness versus those who see it as merely an excuse for authoritarianism. Unless pro-vax people choose to stand down and walk away from the fight, our economic future will grow increasingly unstable.

This is the foreboding backdrop of our economic tale, and it is important to keep in mind that the technocratic exploitation of the covid non-crisis as a push for supremacy is going to color EVERYTHING that happens in our financial system from now on. You cannot talk about our economic condition without including the effects of the pandemic theater.

I believe that the next year in particular is going to be adrenalized and chaotic beyond what we have already seen in 2020-2021. Like I said, there are two sides of America that are now completely opposed in almost every way. Something is going to snap, and I suspect this will happen in 12 months or less.
The U.S. economy is itself an underlying disaster in the making and in many ways the Covid issue is a convenient distraction away from a much larger threat.

The pandemic response has conjured an even greater crisis because the shutdowns of vast parts of the service sector led to trillions more in stimulus just to keep an array of businesses from closing permanently, let alone the trillions of dollars that are STILL being printed to boost unemployment checks.

All of this monetary trickery is going to end, and when it does, there will be a fiscal reckoning beyond anything the world has seen in centuries.

Here are some of the most immediate dangers as I see them in the next 12 months, and what they mean for our future…

Itemized analysis follows, all of it astute enough and also totally depressing, but the closer is what hammers in the proverbial Final Nail.

Vaccine Passports Will Be The Death Rattle Of Small Businesses
Small businesses make up around 50% of the U.S. retail market and are a big part of jobs numbers. I find it less than coincidental that nearly every single action on the part of the government in terms of the Covid response has led to a retail apocalypse that has eclipsed the small business sector while keeping the corporate retail sector alive. The last nail in the coffin for smaller service providers will be vaccine passports, if they are allowed to take root.

Biden’s latest and predictable announcement of a vaccine passport executive order apparently applies only to companies with 100 employees or more, but this represents a large number of small to moderate businesses, and if Biden gets his way ALL businesses will be included eventually.  I will be writing extensively on this in my next article.

Many retailers are already sounding the alarm over the fear of possible vaccine passports for customers because they know that they will lose at least half of their customer base in response. The enforcement of such rules would require extra costs that will grind down their profit margins. And let’s not forget that if a customer sneaks through security measures, that business might be held liable and fined into oblivion. It’s a lose/lose for business owners which means, again, that many thousands more businesses will close down.

America’s economy will be annihilated.

We all know that the government under Biden is not going to give up on vaccinations or the mandates. They will continue to press until they get what they want (or until the public stops them). Don’t get too comfortable in the relative calm that we have enjoyed until recently as far as Covid restrictions are concerned.

And, well, here we all are it comes.

A couple nights ago I said: You do not, MUST NOT EVER willingly lay Principle on the altar of Safety, no matter what cause, what purported emergency, is put forth as justification. Addendum: You do not, MUST NOT EVER allow people who have never run a private-sector business, met a payroll, or done an honest day’s work at a productive, useful job in their entire lives get their ignorant, incompetent mitts on the national ecosystem.

Of course, asking a ProPol to kindly refrain from meddling in affairs which are much too big for him is about as useful as asking a horse to fly; the question presupposes certain requisite traits which are nowhere in evidence among the species. In the case of despecta politicus, the absent trait is humility.