The Economy Is Starting to Roll Over
Even since the financial crisis of 2009, the U.S. economy has been is said to be in a period of “positive growth.” We are regularly reminded of our good fortune by the Dow Jones hitting a fresh new all-time high. In February, the Dow recorded its longest “winning streak” since 1987. It closed 2,000 points above its 200-day moving average for the first time ever.
The boom in financial assets on Wall Street is not a true reflection of what is happening on Main Street. The price of stocks and bonds has gone up because the Federal Reserve has promised Wall Street bankers an endless supply of money.
Record low rates have allowed Washington to ignore the consequences of deficit spending. Over the past eight years, our national debt has gone from $10 trillion to $20 trillion, and we have nothing to show for our indebtedness.
A credit driven boom has always ended in a crash. The Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises said it best:
There is no means of avoiding the final collapse of a boom brought about by credit expansion. The alternative is only whether the crisis should come sooner as the result of voluntary abandonment of further credit expansion, or later as a final and total catastrophe of the currency system involved.
There is no way to tell when the cycle will come to an end. What makes this current boom particularly difficult to forecast—is the government’s willingness to do anything to avoid the bust. Since it’s not possible to live on credit forever, the day of reckoning will eventually come when the government can no longer hold back the flood waters. Here are six possible warning signs that the economy is starting to buckle:
Sears, once the monolith of American retail, said in a recent report that there is “substantial doubt” that it will be able to keep its doors open. Sears is selling off the last of its brand names to raise cash.
Payless Shoes is set to file for bankruptcy. The chain announced it will close 500 stores.
The huge electrical and nuclear energy giant Westinghouse has filed for Chapter 11 protection from creditors. The firm’s Japanese parent company Toshiba will issue a loss of $9.8 billion in relation to the bankruptcy.
The number of loans being created by banks has started to decline. Year over year loan growth by the 25 largest U.S. banks fell to around 3.35% in early March, down from 7.18% a year earlier. In New York city, commercial real estate lending was down 17% last year.
The default rate for auto loans has soared back to “Great Recession” levels. In 2009, they peaked out at 14.6% for the subprime market. That rate is now at 11.9%.
Global Art Sales Fall 11% to Lowest Point Since Recession. Sales of art and antiques dropped 11 percent to $56.6 billion, according to a report released by UBS Group AG and Art Basel.
We also have long-term problems that are about to overtake us. The biggest of these is the cost of health care. After it became clear that Congress would not be able to come up with a replacement for Obamacare, President Trump warned that the current system would soon implode. The nation’s health care tab is around $11,000 per person, and it’s growing at 9% per year. With the government on the hook for a large portion of this expense, there is simply no permanent fix that will not bankrupt the country.
Along with these unintended pressures on the economy, we now have planned efforts to hamper growth. Despite the GDP numbers declining with every new revision, the Federal Reserve has moved twice to raise interest rates. The only logical explanation for this move is that the Fed realizes the economy is headed for a recession, and they are raising rates to give themselves room to lower them once the economy starts to contract.
I can only point to divine intervention for how the U.S. economy has managed to avoid a crash. We currently have the third longest period of positive growth in American history. Because Jesus said he would come at a time of “peace and safety,” I think the Rapture is the explanation for why we have a Goldilocks economy. Since there is no room for a soft landing, the next few months may prove to be very interesting.
“For when they shall say, ‘Peace and safety; then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child; and they shall not escape’” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).
–Todd
New World Order Throwing Fit
Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) was quick to get behind mainstream media microphones and cameras. He did so immediately following President Trump pulling the bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Healthcare Act (Obamacare) from consideration of the House of Representatives.
The former presidential candidate, acknowledged as a severe critic and opponent of the new president, presumed to instruct Mr. Trump on how he might approach Democrats in order to improve the soon-to-implode health system President Obama ramrodded through Congress.
McCain then launched into his thoughts on how Trump and himself are totally on the opposite ends of the ideological spectrum with regard to America’s rightful place so far as world leadership is concerned.
The senator talked about how he believes the United States should come closer to the European Union (EU) and totally embrace NATO as part of a new world order. He implied that Trump foolishly rejects this approach, wanting America more or less to be isolationist in its approach to dealings with the world around our nation.
McCain said “The new world order is under tremendous strain.” While speaking at the Brussels Forum, he went on to say that the world “cries out for American and European leadership” through the EU and NATO, and said that the EU and the US needed to develop “more cooperation, more connectivity.”
McCain, chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, said, “I trust the EU.” He said further that the EU was “one of the most important alliances” for the U.S. and that the EU and NATO were the ” [most effective organizations] in history”–in maintaining the peace for the last seventy years.
McCain’s strong implication was that Trump’s idea of moving away from the so-called new world order was opposite of the direction America should move. The nation must, he implied, embrace this alliance in order to save the world in keeping peace and security in view.
I am reminded of Psalms chapter 2 about the end-times powers that be that will have no deity to rule over them, but declare that humanist effort will prevail. I believe the tremendous upheaval we have seen, particularly since Trump’s election, is minion-driven enragement. The insane statements and movements are centered in the fact that God has intervened, for whatever reason, into Satan’s plans to install world government.
It is just a postponement–a temporary setback–for the new world order builders, but it has driven them into manifesting the insanity that reprobate minds come to, as indicated in Romans chapter 1.
All of this involves two of the end-times characteristics the apostle Paul prophesied in his 2 Timothy chapter 3 foretelling.
I wrote about this in-depth in my latest book Rapture Ready…Or Not: 15 Reasons Why This Is the Generation That Will Be Left Behind. I include a portion of that presentation here.
Heady/High-Minded
The powerful and elite, would-be new world order builders fit well within this perilous times category. They sell out their nations and even their families for the sake of building the new world they desire —apart from any governance by God. Psalms, chapter 2, calls out these earth-dwellers as the KJV of the Bible defines them. They are driven by the powers and principalities outlined in Ephesians, chapter 6.
This self-uplifting, while ascending on the misfortune of others, is symptomatic of headiness or high-mindedness. Satan was and is the highest-minded of all. He sought and still has the audacity to believe he can lift himself to a position above the one, true, eternal God. Those who reject the truth of Jesus Christ are, through omission, heirs to the fallen ones – Lucifer’s great high-mindedness.
All who seek, through their great intellect, their desire, or their superiority in the realm of power-brokerage, to put themselves upon the pinnacle of god-likeness in the world they have chosen to conquer are inheritors of Satan’s pridefulness. They are exhilarated by the cut-throat struggle to vanquish all obstacles, all foes.
The high-minded intellectuals of academia, of the sciences, or of the liberal clergy seek more than at any time in history to erase all mention of God the Almighty, even at the temporary expedient of tolerating many religions and allowing those religions their many various ways to godhood.
With the intellectual exercise of plotting the planet’s physical and social salvation, they are sacrificing their eternal souls on the altar of “Evolutional Theory.” God’s Word tells that the last generation will be as was the generation that perished in the flood of Noah’s day. Of that people God says:
Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things (Rom. 1:21-23).
What is this, if not a description of modern intellectual man and his attempts to rationalize away all vestiges of the true God? It perfectly describes the writings of Charles Darwin and those who have reworked, reformulated and totally fallen for, in one form or another, the evolution lie These, like the antediluvians, “changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.” (Rom. 1:25). These foolish, soul-darkened “intellects” join forces with those they would once have termed superstitious idiots, the occultists, and New Age adherents, to deify Mother Earth for the sake of ecological purity.
Headiness and high-mindedness are encapsulated within the climate change, radical environmentalism that is being used to destroy national sovereignty and autonomy, thus to bring all within one-world rule. The Antichrist regime will be the penultimate outgrowth of that drive toward global order.
The headiness and high-mindedness of the new world order builders–and the rage we are witnessing, I believe, are prime reasons why believers in Christ should be more than ever looking up–as we are exhorted in Luke 21: 28.
–Terry