Precious Metals, Inflation, the National Debt, and Biden: A Recap of Current Events and the Inevitable Outcome

Georgieva said that the problem is recognized by the current United States administration.  However, it doesn’t appear that much, if anything is being done about it.

The U.S. national debt will surge to 140% of GDP within five years, the IMF has warned, urging Washington to cut its fiscal deficit in order to get a handle on its outsized trade and current account gaps.

The IMF’s latest Article IV review projects US public debt will reach 140% of GDP by 2031 under current policies, while rising short‑term debt and a climbing debt‑to‑GDP ratio pose growing risks to both US and global stability. The fund said Washington needs a clear fiscal consolidation plan to put debt on a sustainable downward path.  –RT

The IMF also urged the US to work constructively with its partners “to address concerns over unfair trade practices and agree on a coordinated reduction in trade restrictions and industrial policy distortions that have negative cross-border effects.”

“Where trade and investment measures (including tariffs and export controls) are put in place for national security reasons, such policies should be applied narrowly,” the IMF said.

Possible Budget Deal Will Add $2 Trillion To The National Debt

The IMF is also asking the U.S. ruling class to work constructively with its partners “to address concerns over unfair trade practices and agree on a coordinated reduction in trade restrictions and industrial policy distortions that have negative cross-border effects.”

China Asks The U.S. To Remove ALL Tariffs

U.S. economic growth will remain resilient at 2.4% in 2026, while inflation will not return to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target until early 2027 amid uncertainty over the inflation and growth outlook, data shows.

Article posted with permission from Mac Slavo

The post IMF Warns The U.S. Over It’s National Debt appeared first on The Washington Standard.

What the SCOTUS Tariff Decision Means

The CATO Institute discusses What the SCOTUS Tariff Decision Means for Fiscal Policy in Four Charts

The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) struck down President Donald Trump’s so-called “reciprocal tariffs” enacted under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).

The tariffs modestly increased revenue but did not meaningfully improve the government’s long-term budget outlook. They reduced economic growth, shrank other sources of tax revenue, and offset a substantial share of the administration’s signature tax reforms.

High Tariff Revenues Miss Administration Claims

The federal government collected $264 billion in total tariff revenue in the 2025 calendar year. That amount is more than triple the $85.6 billion collected by the Biden administration over the same period in 2021 and far exceeds the comparable $35.2 billion from Trump’s first term.

Even at over a quarter-trillion dollars, 2025’s tariff revenue falls well short of the administration’s claims. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent projected that tariffs could raise as much as $500 billion per year, implying collections roughly twice those reported in official data. Even those figures overstate the budgetary benefit, because tariffs partially offset themselves: higher input costs reduce business profits and worker pay, shrinking the corporate and individual income tax base, while broader economic effects of slower investment and hiring can further depress other revenue sources.

Deficits Continue to Grow With or Without IEEPA Tariffs

The United States’ budget is on an unsustainable path, driven by automatic spending that’s projected to increase faster than the economy, inflation, and the population. As spending rises and revenues remain flat, the deficit increases. The Treasury estimates that more than 95 percent of the government’s long-term funding shortfall is driven by growth in just two programs: Medicare and Social Security. Additional revenue, from any source, cannot fix these spending-based drivers of the long-term fiscal imbalance.

Historically, Tariffs Have Not Been a Significant Revenue Source

History underscores the difficulty of using tariffs to fix the federal budget. Tariffs have never financed a government remotely as large as today’s. In the 19th century, when tariffs accounted for most federal revenue, the federal government itself spent less than 3 percent of GDP. Today, federal spending is 23 percent of GDP.

Tariffs Offset the Benefits of Trump Tax Cuts

One way to understand the effects of the administration’s trade actions is by comparing them with the tax cuts in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Tariffs raise the domestic price of imported consumer goods and manufacturing inputs, which functions as a tax on US consumers and producers. Estimates from the Tax Policy Center show that this amounts to a roughly $ 2,600-per-household tax increase in 2026 (for all announced tariffs from January 20, 2025, through December 4, 2025).

Those tariff costs offset a majority of the average $3,736 tax cut Americans are projected to receive in 2026 from the OBBBA. Considering both policies together, Figure 4 [Lead Chart] shows that the bottom two income groups face a net tax increase, decreasing their after-tax income by between 1.2 percent and 0.3 percent. Middle- and higher-income Americans see small net tax cuts of between 0.3 and 0.6 percent of after-tax income. Overturning the IEEPA tariffs will allow more Americans to fully benefit from the 2025 tax cuts.

The same tension appears in the macroeconomic effects. The OBBBA is projected to raise long-run GDP by about 1.2 percent, but Trump’s tariffs are expected to reduce GDP by roughly 0.8 percent. Taken together, the net effect is a muted 0.4 percent increase in output, with tariffs significantly eroding the growth benefits of the underlying tax reform.

Conclusion

The Court’s decision will have wide-ranging economic and political implications for trade policy and executive power. But it also brings important fiscal consequences. The administration has repeatedly overstated the budgetary impact of the tariffs, yet the effects are not trivial. Tariffs are, after all, an economically costly, revenue-raising tax on American consumers. Relief from the IEEPA tariffs will benefit American consumers, but risks remain that the administration will pursue similar levies through other statutory authorities.

I disagreed at the time where the benefits of the OBBBA would go. The primary beneficiaries were the very wealthy in high tax states.

They received huge deductions for State and Local Income Taxes (SALT).

Since the OBBBA raised deficits, the rest of the country is effectively subsidizing the wealthy in high tax (Blue) states.

Tariffs are a tax on consumers and since the lower income groups spend every penny, they are a very regressive tax.

To encourage more people to work, I would have much rather had a very high limit below which no Federal income taxes were taken.

To pay for my proposals, I would end all of the deductions across the board.

Trump went the other way. We now have no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, deductions for interest on autos, etc.

The tax code should be simple. Instead, Trump took thousands of pages of tax code and added hundreds if not thousands more.

What Should We Do to Get Government Spending Under Control?

For my 12 idea proposal, please see What Should We Do to Get Government Spending Under Control?

That’s the question I was asked today. 12 Ideas.

Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock

The post Tariffs Offset Most of the One Big Beautiful Act Tax Cuts appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Golden Age Hopes

President Trump’s policies in 2025–2026 aim to initiate a “golden age” of U.S. auto production through tariffs on foreign-made vehicles and parts, aiming to boost domestic manufacturing and jobs.

‘They’re All Coming Back’ Trump Says

Yahoo!Finance reports ‘They’re All Coming Back’ Trump Says U.S. ‘Golden Age’ Will Begin Within 6–12 Months

President Trump says the next chapter of American manufacturing could be its boldest yet — and he’s urging the public to get ready for what he calls a “golden age.”

“Our car industry…went to Europe, they went to Mexico, Japan — they went all over. They went to South Korea,” Trump said. “And now it’s just the opposite. They’re all coming back. We have an age that’s coming up, the likes of which this country has never seen.”

Domestic Auto Production Detail

Domestic Auto Production Detail

• The all time high was 588,700 in March of 1995. That’s an annualized rate of 7.064 million units.
• November 2025 production was 98,000. That’s an annualized rate of 1.176 million.

Data is through November 2025, Seasonally Adjusted but not Annualized.

The drop from 588,700 units to 98.000 units is a decline of 83.4 percent.

However, units should rise over time due to population growth. So let’s investigate per capita sales, adjusted by the Civilian Noninstitutional Population (age 16+).

Domestic Auto Production per CNP Detail

CNP Adjusted Auto Production Detail Notes

• At peak production the US produced 588,000 cars monthly for a population of 198 million people age 16 or over. Cars per CNP was 0.297.
• We now produce 98,000 cars monthly for a population of 275 million people. Cars per CNP is 0.036.

Synopsis

Over time, production US production of cars has collapsed. Population-adjusted numbers are even worse.

Improvement in foreign cars and expense of US cars are the two primary reasons.

Trump wants to bring production back to the US. His main tool is tariffs.

While it’s possible to bring production back to the US as a percentage of US auto sales, bringing back overall production is difficult.

Costs

The U.S. is one of the highest-cost producers of cars in the world due to labor costs; tariffs on steel, aluminum, and auto parts; stricter regulations; and US preference for larger cars and trucks.

Raising tariffs on cars, steel, aluminum, and auto parts can do nothing but raise the price of cars.

Raising tariffs on auto parts and cars made in Mexico is particularly stupid because the cars Mexico produces for the US would lose money if made in the US.

But OK, if Trump put 100% tariffs on all car imports, then purchases of imported cars would head to zero and domestic sales would then be 100 percent.

But overall car sales would drop and so would exports and auto-based employment.

Trump never looks at the hidden (in this case obvious, costs of tariffs). And he still does not understand that US consumers and Importers pay the cost of tariffs.

Related Posts

January 3, 2026: What Was the Overall Impact of Trump’s Tariffs in 2025?

Tracking the Economic Impact of the Trump Trade War

January 17, 2026: Canada Breaks With the US, Cuts Tariffs on Some Chinese EVs

Congrats to Trump for moving Canada and China closer together.

January 6, 2026: If the Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Tariffs, What Are His Options?

I count seven options Trump is likely to try. There are serious problems with all of them.

February 13, 2026: Trump to Roll Back Some Steel and Aluminum Tariffs Due to Inflation

The Financial Times discusses tariff rollbacks.

Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock

The post Trump’s ‘Golden Age’ of Auto Production in Pictures appeared first on The Washington Standard.

January Benchmark Revisions

• 2024: -511,000
• 2025: -785,000
• 2026: ???

2025 Analysis

• For the full year in 2025, the economy only added 229,000 jobs
• From July through December, the economy lost 45,000 jobs

Now we are supposed to believe the economy added 130,000 jobs in January of 2026.

January 2026 Nonfarm Payrolls Change by Sector in Thousands

• Nonfarm Payrolls: +130
• Manufacturing: +5
• Construction: +33
• Leisure and Hospitality: +1
• Private Education and Health Care: +137
• Professional and Business Services: +34
• Information: -12
• Financial: -22
• Retail: +3
• Wholesale: 0
• Government: -42

Private education and health (demographic related) is again the strongest sector.

Do You Believe This?

CRUSHING ECONOMISTS' EXPECTATIONS! pic.twitter.com/WqYz8z5qlC

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) February 11, 2026

Even if you believe that (and we will not know until a year from now), a job loss of 45,000 in the second half of 2025 is hardly crushing it.

Tariffs Working as Expected

It was WAY too easy to predict. https://t.co/2lTXZzqmYi

— RealJohnGaltFLA (@RealJohnGaltFla) February 11, 2026

Foreign Born Nonsense

This statement by @MacroEdgeRes is total nonsense because foreign born stats are nonsense.https://t.co/u4fm1bF8Ow https://t.co/0isZlmMiUK

— Mike "Mish" Shedlock (@MishGEA) February 12, 2026

For 2024, the BLS admits that it undercounted employment by 2 million, spread out over a number of years. Instead of parsing that out in the correct months, the BLS plowed the entire adjustment into January of 2025.

All posts on foreign-born employment suffer this flaw. There are no back adjustments. We did not suddenly add 2.245 million jobs in January of 2025, all US-Born.

Nor did foreign-born employment rise in January of 2026. There is no valid data on foreign born employment.

More Nonsense From Trump

Trump says lower rates would save "at least one trillion dollars per year." The federal government's entire annual net interest bill was $970 billion in fiscal 2025—and much of that is locked in at rates on previously issued debt that wouldn't change even if rates fell tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/dKDVIsH7DX

— Nick Timiraos (@NickTimiraos) February 11, 2026

Related Posts

February 11, 2026: BLS Revises Nonfarm Payrolls for 2025 Lower by 1 Million Jobs

For the second year, the BLS annual benchmark revision was hugely negative.

February 11, 2026: Household Survey Jobs Data Is Garbage Due to Missing Population Adjustments

The BLS did not release the expected household annual population adjustments.

Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock

The post Another Look At The Incredulous January 2026 Jobs Report appeared first on The Washington Standard.

According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, so far in 2026, the number of announced layoffs is the highest that we have seen since 2009…

Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.

The report, from global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, mirrored other data released Feb. 5 that suggested the labor market is cooling. Unemployment benefits claims rose in the most recent week, and job openings slipped in December.

“Generally, we see a high number of job cuts in the first quarter, but this is a high total for January,” Andy Challenger said in a release accompanying his firm’s report.

We didn’t even experience a January this bad during the pandemic.

Large companies are ruthlessly swinging the axe, and white collar workers are being hit particularly hard.

And the fact that new applications for unemployment benefits are rising seems to confirm that the employment market is rapidly moving in the wrong direction…

Applications for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 31 rose by 22,000 to 231,000 from the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That’s significantly more than the 211,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet had forecast.

Applications for unemployment benefits are seen as representative of U.S. layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market.

Those who have been laid off are discovering that it is not easy to find a new job in this very harsh environment.

According to ABC News, the number of available job openings has dropped to the lowest level in over five years…

U.S. job openings fell to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish.

The Labor Department reported Tuesday that vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December — from 6.9 million in November and the fewest since September 2020.

That sounds like a lot of job openings, but one recent study found that about a third of all job postings aren’t actually real.

And most of the jobs that are actually available aren’t good paying jobs.

These days, employers can be flooded with thousands of resumes for a single good paying job.

AI has been replacing white collar workers on a massive scale and that isn’t going to change any time soon.

Could it be possible that many of us will soon end up working for AI?

There is now a website where AI entities can hire humans to perform physical tasks for them…

The machines aren’t just coming for your jobs. Now, they want your bodies as well.

That’s at least the hope of Alexander Liteplo, a software engineer and founder of RentAHuman.ai, a platform for AI agents to “search, book, and pay humans for physical-world tasks.”

When Liteplo launched RentAHuman on Monday, he boasted that he already had over 130 people listed on the platform, including an OnlyFans model and the CEO of an AI startup, a claim which couldn’t be verified. Two days later, the site boasted over 73,000 rentable meatwads, though only 83 profiles were visible to us on its “browse humans” tab, Liteplo included.

That sounds absolutely crazy.

But this is the world that we live in now.

Yesterday, I posted an article entitled “Deep Cuts: We Are Witnessing A Tsunami Of Very Painful Layoffs And Closings In 2026”, and now we have learned that another major chain is planning widespread closures.

Pizza Hut was once the most dominant pizza chain in the entire country, but now it intends to close somewhere around 250 more locations…

Pizza Hut will close about 250 locations in the U.S. through June as its parent company, Yum! Brands, moves to shut underperforming stores and reassess the brand’s long-term strategy, executives said.

Yum! Brands Chief Financial Officer Ranjith Roy said during an earnings call that the closures will primarily target weaker-performing Pizza Hut restaurants as part of a broader effort to modernize the chain.

The closures are tied to the company’s “Hut Forward” initiative aimed at refreshing Pizza Hut’s marketing, updating its restaurant model and improving franchise performance. Yum! said it is also reviewing broader strategic options for Pizza Hut, signaling the changes could be part of a deeper reset for the brand.

My parents would often take me to Pizza Hut when I was a kid, and I really enjoyed their pizza in those days.

So this is very sad news for me.

Of course, it isn’t just the real economy that is crashing.

Cryptocurrencies are crashing too…

Digital assets, including bitcoin, have fallen deeper into the red as investors re-assess the practical utility of a token that has been championed not only as a hedge against inflation and macroeconomic uncertainties but also as an alternative to fiat currencies and traditional safe-havens such as gold.

That hasn’t panned out lately, since bitcoin peaked just north of $126,000 in early October.

On Thursday, bitcoin was last down to $67,675, its lowest since since November 2024. The cryptocurrency broke below $70,000 earlier in the session Thursday and then the selling increased. The cryptocurrency is down 20% this week alone.

We are witnessing a mad dash for the exits.

Overall, Bitcoin is now down more than 40 percent from last October’s peak…

Bitcoin is acting weird.

The world’s most famous cryptocurrency has tumbled 44% from its October peak, falling below $70,000 Thursday for the first time in 15 months.

That decline is actually not unusual at all. Crypto is notoriously volatile, and it’s gone through numerous crashes that are bigger than this one.

What’s strange is this: Bitcoin’s four-month slump has come at a time when, in theory, it had everything going for it.

As I write this article, the price of Bitcoin is sitting at $65,187.99.

Once it falls to $63,000, that will represent a 50 percent decline from last October.

Other major cryptocurrencies have experienced even larger crashes.

Needless to say, a lot of investors who got into cryptocurrencies recently are being wiped out.

We are also seeing turmoil in the stock market, bond prices are going nuts, and prices for precious metals have been flying all over the place.

In so many ways, what we are witnessing reminds me so much of the Great Recession.

The CFO of General Motors appears to be quite pessimistic as well, because he is saying that a major economic downturn is inevitably coming…

General Motors Co. is strategizing for an inevitable economic downturn by paring down dealer inventory and maintaining a cash safety net, Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said Wednesday.

Jacobson’s comments to a panel of auto insiders at the Chicago Federal Reserve Bank’s Detroit branch provide insight into industry leaders’ expectations for the broader economy, as well as reassurance that the Detroit company is taking steps to remain resilient in tougher times.

We all knew that this was going to happen.

It was just a matter of time.

The party wasn’t going to last forever.

Anyone who thought that was just being delusional.

Now, a time of reckoning is upon us, and the pain that our society is about to experience will be absolutely excruciating.

Article posted with permission from Michael Snyder

The post Layoffs Highest Since 2009, Job Openings Plummet & Bitcoin & Other Major Cryptocurrencies Are Crashing Hard appeared first on The Washington Standard.

The other day, I authored an article entitled “12 Signposts That Indicate That A Monumental Economic Meltdown Is Now Upon Us”, and it received a tremendous amount of attention. That article clearly established that a significant economic slowdown is now upon us. Since I wrote that article, more evidence that the economy is slowing down has emerged.

For example, it is being reported that Las Vegas experienced a “devastating fall of 7.5 percent” in the number of people visiting the city last year…

Las Vegas’s long‑rumored tourism collapse has erupted into full public view, with new data revealing that 2025 was the year the desert empire finally stumbled.

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority (LVCVA) confirmed that the city drew just 38.5 million visitors in 2025, a devastating fall of 7.5 percent from the previous year.

This marked the sharpest annual decline since the post‑pandemic recovery and erasing years of hard‑won momentum.

Las Vegas has always been a leading indicator for U.S. economic performance.

When the number of tourists starts to fall, an economic downturn almost always follows.

The video game industry has also fallen on very hard times.

According to one recent survey, one-third of all video game industry workers were laid off in 2025…

One-third of U.S. video game industry workers say they were laid off last year, according to a new survey conducted by the organizers behind the newly revamped Game Developers Conference (GDC).

Based on responses from more than 2,300 gaming industry professionals, with surveys “customized for each participant group, ensuring that developers, marketers, executives, investors and others answered questions most relevant to them,” the 2026 State of the Game Industry Report found that 33% of respondents in the U.S. were laid off in the past two years.

That is crazy.

I think that AI is having a bigger impact in the video game industry than most of us realized.

But of course, we are seeing mass layoffs in many other industries as well.

On Thursday, Mastercard announced that it will be laying off approximately 4 percent of its entire workforce…

‌Mastercard ​has ‌completed a review ​of its ‍business that will ​impact ​about ⁠4% of its full-time employees, the payment ‌processor’s CFO, Sachin ​Mehra, said ‌on ‍Thursday.

“Based on the ⁠recent strategic review of our business, we ​expect to record a one-time restructuring charge in Q1 of approximately $200 million,” Mehra said on a call ​with analysts.

Another really big name, Home Depot, has just made a decision to give the axe to hundreds of loyal workers…

Atlanta-based Home Depot announced hundreds of layoffs Wednesday in its corporate operations.

Around 800 employees who work for the Atlanta store support center are being laid off, according to the company. Less than 150 of them work in the center and the rest work remotely.

In a statement, a Home Depot spokesperson said the company is “simplifying our corporate operations to better support our stores and our customers.”

Just like in 2008, it seems like we are being hit by one wave of layoffs after another.

Everyone thought that Dow Inc. was doing well, but they just announced that 4,500 employees will be hitting the bricks…

Chemical maker Dow Inc. is the latest company to announce substantial layoffs as it pivots to a stronger reliance on artificial intelligence and automation.

The company, on Thursday, announced it would cut 4,500 jobs as part of a streamlining operation it calls “Transform to Outperform.” The cuts will provide a $2 billion boost in near-term revenue, the company said, but will bring with them between $1.1 billion and $1.5 billion in one-time costs, including severance and other costs.

Some of the employment markets that were once the hottest are now being hit the hardest by layoffs.

In Seattle, we are being told that the “tech boom” has now turned into “tech gloom”…

A cloud hanging over Seattle is usually a good thing, if you’re here for the rain, or if you work in that aspect of the tech industry. But the cloud of economic uncertainty is a less welcome occurrence.

The tech boom is showing more signs of tech gloom this week following layoffs at some of the region’s biggest employers.

Just this month, Amazon and Meta are among the big names that have slashed jobs in the Emerald City…

• Amazon is laying off another 16,000 corporate employees, bringing the total to 30,000 since October. The company is also shuttering all of its Fresh and Go grocery stores.
• Meta is cutting hundreds of workers in its Reality Labs division, with roots in the region.
• Expedia Group is slashing more than 160 jobs at its Seattle HQ.

For those who want even more examples of the mass layoffs that have been happening all over America, I would recommend checking out my previous articles.

As economic conditions continue to deteriorate, chaos is erupting in the financial system.

Japanese bond yields have been going nuts, currency rates have been flying all over the place, cryptocurrencies crashed again today, and the price of silver and the price of gold have both been absolutely skyrocketing.

Statistically, the probability of what we have witnessed in the financial markets during the month of January is very close to zero.  To illustrate this, I would like to share an extended excerpt from a social media post that a user known as “NoLimit” recently published on his X account…

The probability of what is happening is near zero.

Three 6-sigma events occurred in one week.

– Bonds
– Silver
– Gold

We are currently living through a statistical impossibility.

Let me explain:

Last Tuesday, Japanese 30-year debt recorded what’s called a “6-sigma” session.

2 days ago, silver did even better: it was at 5-sigma on the rally, then reached 6-sigma on the drop. IN A SINGLE SESSION.

Gold right now? It’s up 23% in less than a month. We’re getting very close to a 6-sigma event.

That’s three 6-sigma events in ONE WEEK.

To explain quickly: in finance, we measure price moves around an average using the standard deviation, which we call sigma.

1-sigma: mundane
2-sigma: common
3-sigma: becomes rare
4-sigma: exceptional
5-sigma: extremely rare
6-sigma: supposed to occur once in 500 million

Here are the 6-sigma-type episodes we saw previously:

– The october 1987 crash, 22% drop in 1 session
– March 2020 covid crash
– The swiss franc’s surge in january 2015
– WTI oil turning negative in april 2020

But we’ve never had 3 events occur in one week.

Do you see the point?

A 6-sigma event is almost NEVER triggered by a simple macro headline.

It almost always comes from the market’s structure: leverage, positions that are too concentrated, margin calls, collateral problems, and forced selling or buying.

That’s important to understand because we’re talking about internal strains in the system’s mechanics.

As you know, the Japanese bond market sits at the heart of the global financial system, and I won’t go back over the whole topic, but a 6-sigma move in a market that enormous doesn’t go unnoticed.

Seeing a 6-sigma move in silver a few days later gives one a lot to think about.

And now gold?? That’s absolutely insane.

Why are we seeing extreme statistical events, only days apart, in such different markets?

When a pillar of global funding becomes unstable, leverage tends to contract, and two things happen at the same time: forced selling in certain assets and forced buying of protection in others.

Historically, precious metals are often among the beneficiaries.

Many of my readers love the fact that gold and silver prices have risen at an exponential rate.

JPMorgan is even suggesting that the price of gold could eventually hit $8,000.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar and other fiat currencies are dying and investors are losing faith in the entire system.

At this stage, Peter Schiff is warning that we are headed for a global nightmare “that will make the 2008 financial crisis look like a Sunday school picnic”…

As gold prices keep rising, American economist Peter Schiff says investors should view the rally as more than a hedge — calling it a warning that inflation is speeding up, the U.S. dollar is losing global trust and a major economic reckoning may be near.

“Gold and silver are warning about a bigger crisis that’s gonna hit either later this year or maybe next year. We are headed for a U.S. dollar crisis and a sovereign debt crisis,” Schiff said Tuesday afternoon on “The Claman Countdown.”

“Central banks are buying gold to back up their currencies. They’re getting rid of dollars. They are getting rid of Treasuries,” he continued. “We are headed for [an] economic crisis, again, that will make the 2008 financial crisis look like a Sunday school picnic.”

The warning signs are all around us.

The last time we were forced to endure a major economic crisis and a major financial crisis at the same time was during the Great Recession.

Now it is happening again, and many prominent voices believe that the pain that we will soon experience will be off the charts.

Article posted with permission from Michael Snyder

The post Economic Activity Slows As Chaos Breaks Out In Financial Markets Just Like During The Great Recession & The Great Depression appeared first on The Washington Standard.

It was expected that the price of gold would smash through the $5,000 barrier on Monday, and that is precisely what occurred.

In fact, at one point it was trading above $5,100 an ounce…

Gold climbed to a fresh all-time high, crossing $5,100 an ounce on Monday and extending its record-breaking run as investors seek the safety of the yellow metal amid rising geopolitical tensions and global fiscal risks.

Spot gold prices gained 2.4%, trading at $5,102 an ounce, before slightly paring gains to last trade at $5,086. Meanwhile, U.S. gold futures for February rose 2.1%, reaching $5,087 an ounce.

This was never supposed to happen.

Just like they had always done, those who pull the strings were supposed to be able to stop the price of gold before it ever got even close to $5,000.

But now it has become apparent that they simply lack the ability to be able to do that.

Of course, the price of silver has been going up far faster than the price of gold, and on Monday it exploded higher…

Silver also rallied Monday, with spot prices jumping 4.9% to $107.9 per ounce, also benefiting from industrial demand.

Analysts at Union Bancaire Privée said Friday that prices have rallied on the back of sustained demand from both institutional and retail buyers.

Over the past year, western financial institutions have lost all control over the price of silver.

Those who are still holding short positions are in for a world of hurt.

Global demand for physical silver has soared, and now that there is nothing holding it back, there is no telling how high it could go.

One of my readers recently alerted me to something that I wrote about the price of silver a number of years ago…

I have always said that I believe that the price of silver will eventually go over $100 an ounce.

When that happens, those that got in today will be exceedingly happy with their returns.

When I wrote those words, the price of silver was $15.81 an ounce.

If you had invested in silver at that time, your investment would be worth 6 times more today.

At this moment, the price of silver has risen to over $108 dollars an ounce.

Those who have been waiting for a “financial reset” can stop, because one is literally happening right in front of our eyes.

There are some analysts that are convinced that silver is now extremely overbought and that there is no way that this rally can continue for much longer…

Heraeus analysts noted that the gray metal’s move above $100 per ounce last week was largely driven by strength in the gold market as geopolitical tensions surrounding Greenland drove safe-haven flows.

“From a technical perspective, this rally now looks very extended,” they wrote. “The daily relative strength index (RSI) remains above 70, signalling overbought conditions, although currently there is a divergence as the RSI was much higher at the lower price peak in late December. Speculative net long futures exposure has continued to build through January, increasing from 146 moz to 160 moz week-on-week. That said, positioning remains well below the extremes seen in 2025, when speculative net length peaked close to 300 moz, suggesting that there is still potential for further investor engagement.”

I am sure that we will see some volatility up and down in the short-term, but ultimately what is driving the price of silver is a historic imbalance between the demand for physical silver and the amount of physical silver which is actually available…

Persistent supply deficits in silver over several consecutive years, combined with rapidly rising industrial demand from sectors such as solar energy, electric vehicles, electronics and defense, have created a physical shortage in the last 5 years that paper markets can no longer mask.

At the same time, the volume of outstanding paper contracts in London and New York now vastly exceeds the amount of physical silver available for delivery.

In our high tech society, silver has become an absolutely essential global commodity.

There is nothing that western financial institutions can do to change that.

Meanwhile, the U.S. dollar continues to plummet.

The latest leg down is being driven by speculation that the Federal Reserve is “considering coordinated action” to support the Japanese yen…

The U.S. dollar has been in relative free fall since late Friday after it emerged that the New York Federal Reserve had conducted a rare “rate check” with currency traders on the dollar/Japanese yen exchange rate.

The purpose of the move implies that the U.S. Federal Reserve may be considering coordinated action with the Bank of Japan to support the latter’s currency.

As a result, traders began selling the dollar, which is now down more than 2.26% over the past five days against a standard basket of international currencies—an unusually steep decline given the gargantuan scale of the dollar in the global economy. Over the last day alone it lost 0.46%. The yen is up more than 3% against the dollar over the same time period.

Japan is teetering on the brink of financial collapse.

Europe is in big trouble, too.

And last year was the worst year for the U.S. dollar in a very long time.

Personally, I don’t see how things are going to get any better for the U.S. dollar any time soon.  The rest of the world is steadily losing faith in our currency, we are more than 38 trillion dollars in debt, and economic conditions are rapidly deteriorating.  In fact, we just learned that New York City experienced a net loss of almost 5,000 businesses last year alone…

New York City lost nearly 5,000 businesses early last year as employers closed their doors or left for other low-tax states, according to a new report.

The analysis comes as newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani pushes to hike business taxes to foot the bill for his agenda.

The report, released Thursday by the Economic Development Corporation, showed more than 3,500 new businesses opened their doors in New York City during the second quarter of the fiscal year but that was offset by a loss of about 8,400 employers. That’s the weakest quarter for business formation since the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the report’s authors said.

Needless to say, this isn’t just happening in the United States.

Economic conditions are heading in the wrong direction all over the globe, and at a time like this, it makes perfect sense for investors to flock to gold and silver.

Those who were wise enough to invest when the price of silver was under 20 dollars an ounce are loving life right now.

But we also need to understand that the system that we all depend upon is coming apart at the seams all around us, and that means that there is going to be an enormous amount of chaos in the days ahead.

Article posted with permission from Michael Snyder

The post The Exploding Price Of Silver Shows That We Have Reached A Critical Turning Point In Human History appeared first on The Washington Standard.

For decades, those who pull the financial strings in the western world were able to keep the price of silver and the price of gold within ranges that they considered to be acceptable.

But now everything has changed.

A year ago, nobody was predicting that the price of silver would hit $100 and the price of gold would nearly reach $5,000 in just 12 months.

But that is precisely what has occurred…

Silver prices rose above $100 an ounce ​for the first time ever on Friday, while gold hit another record en route ‌to $5,000/oz as investors pile into safe-haven assets amid geopolitical turmoil and on expectations for U.S. interest rate cuts.

The price of silver is up more than 200 percent over the past year.

When there are swings of this magnitude, there are really big winners and really big losers.

I think that the identities of the really big losers will start to be revealed soon, and this will shock the financial world to the core.

In previous articles, I have gone over many of the reasons why the price of silver has been skyrocketing.

But there is one more theory that I wanted to throw out there today.

Zero Hedge is reporting that demand in China is “off the charts”, and not too long ago, the Chinese implemented severe restrictions on silver exports.

Could it be possible that China is purposely attempting to destabilize the western financial system?

The Chinese know that there are very large institutions that have massive short positions, and if they can force those institutions to fail, that would cause enormous chaos in the U.S. and Europe.

If that really is their motive, that would explain a lot.

It is very interesting that silver has hit $100 at the exact same moment when gold is almost reaching the $5,000 milestone.

Both of those marks are key psychological thresholds, and nobody is quite sure what is going to happen next…

Gold approaching $5,000 and silver approaching $100 represent more than incremental price advances. These levels function as psychological thresholds where attention concentrates, behavior changes, and market structure briefly dominates narrative.

In market terms, these prices act as an event horizon. The concept is borrowed deliberately. In physics, the event horizon marks the point beyond which outcomes are no longer observable in advance. In trading, it marks the price level that forces participation. Opinions polarize, positioning compresses, and conviction gives way to reaction.

These numbers draw in new participants on both sides of the market. Buyers include momentum participants who believe higher prices are inevitable, as well as short positions forced to cover under pressure. Sellers include long holders who have never experienced these prices and view the opportunity to monetize as both rational and psychologically satisfying. Selling silver at $100 or gold at $5,000 carries narrative weight regardless of future direction.

Some are convinced that these key psychological thresholds will propel gold and silver to new heights.

Others are convinced that these thresholds will act as “ceilings” and gold and silver will start bouncing in the other direction.

We shall see what happens.

As I write this, the price of silver has just hit $102.

I am looking at that number and I can see that it is real, but I am still having a hard time believing it.

It is truly difficult to comprehend the pace at which things are now changing.

As precious metals soar, home prices all over the United States are starting to fall precipitously…

Florida, Texas and California are now firmly at the center of America’s housing crash – accounting for 12 of the 14 major metro areas where home prices are falling.

The sharpest drop was recorded in Dallas, TX, where median sale prices slid 7.6 percent from a year earlier.

Florida’s once-red-hot housing market is also cracking, with prices falling in Miami, Jacksonville, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale.

California has four declining metros as well, including Oakland, with the second-biggest drop of 5.6 percent, San Jose, Sacramento and Los Angeles.

On the one hand, this is good news because home prices had become wildly unaffordable.

But on the other hand, if home prices fall too rapidly, that will be a very bad thing.

Let’s not forget what happened during 2008 and 2009.

When housing prices crashed, millions of mortgages were suddenly underwater and foreclosures went through the roof.

In previous articles, I have talked about the fact that the number of foreclosures was way up last year.

If we are on the leading edge of another giant tsunami of foreclosures, that will be absolutely disastrous for our banking system.

Meanwhile, pending home sales just dropped “to the lowest level for any December on record”…

Pending home sales, which track the number of contracts signed in December, plunged by 9.3% seasonally adjusted from November, to the lowest level for any December on record in the data by the National Association of Realtors, which goes back to 2010. Compared to December 2010, during the Housing Bust, pending sales were down by 21.5%.

The market is now well into its fourth year of the collapse in transactions, and there has simply been no improvement.

That is a really bad sign.

Unfortunately, demand is likely to continue to be weak for quite some time because we continue to see mass layoffs all over the nation.

For example, Amazon is gearing up for another round of layoffs, which could end up being the largest in the entire history of the company…

Amazon is planning to cut thousands of jobs as part of a broader push to eliminate nearly 10% of its corporate workforce, according to Reuters.

After initially cutting roughly 14,000 white-collar jobs in October, Amazon is expected to launch a second round of layoffs impacting a similar number of employees, with an overall target of about 30,000 jobs, although the scope may change, according to two sources cited by Reuters.

If fully realized, the cuts would amount to the largest layoffs in Amazon’s history, surpassing the roughly 27,000 jobs the company cut in 2022.

So many good, paying jobs are being lost.

And this is the worst time since the Great Recession to find a new, good, paying job.

In so many ways, it is starting to feel like 2008 all over again.

Earlier today, I heard from a reader who explained that my articles really resonate with him because of what he has been going through.

That meant a lot to me.

I know that so many of you are really struggling right now.

I want you to know that it isn’t your fault.

Decades of incredibly bad decisions by our leaders have brought us to this point, and now the entire system is starting to fail.

We should have fundamentally transformed the system after the Great Recession, but we didn’t.

Instead, our leaders chose to inflate all of the old bubbles even larger than before, and now we have a colossal mess on our hands.

Article posted with permission from Michael Snyder

The post The System Is Starting To Crack – Home Prices Plummet As Silver Hits $100 & Gold Closes In On $5,000 appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Last week, the U.S. Mint suspended sales of silver coins temporarily so that it could update the prices.

Everyone knew that sizable price hikes were coming, but nobody was prepared for the colossal price increases that were ultimately unveiled…

The Mint temporarily suspended silver sales earlier this week to implement the price changes. Products started coming back online yesterday with the new pricing. The 2024 Uncirculated Silver Eagle that retailed for $91 is now $169. The 2023 version also jumped to $169 from its previous $91 price point.

They are free to charge whatever they want.

And even at these exceedingly elevated prices, many people will gobble these coins up.

But it is still difficult for me to believe what just happened.  The following image comes directly from the official website of the U.S. Mint…

I recently described the relentless rise of the price of silver as being “unstoppable”, and on Monday, gold and silver both surged to brand new record highs…

Gold and silver prices climbed fresh peaks on Monday, as investors flocked to safe-haven assets on intensifying tensions, after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to impose extra tariffs on European countries over the control of Greenland.

As I write this, the price of silver is sitting at $93.52 an ounce.

In Asia, it is selling for even more.

Supplies of physical silver have gotten very tight, and it is used in thousands upon thousands of important high-tech products.

In fact, CNBC is telling us that at this point, over half of all global silver demand “comes from manufacturing”…

Unlike gold, which is held largely as a store of value or for jewelry, silver is more closely tied to industrial activity. More than half of global silver demand comes from manufacturing, driven by its use in electronics, solar panels and electrification, according to data from the Silver Institute.

Without sufficient supplies of silver, our high-tech economy would crash.

So last summer the U.S. officially designated silver to be a “strategic metal”, and that started the wild scramble that we are experiencing now…

Last summer, the U.S. officially declared silver a strategic metal. Since then, silver prices have surged, confirming suspicions that both China and the U.S. are stockpiling heavily. Silver is indispensable for building AI data center infrastructure and electric motors.

And when China decided to implement very strict restrictions on the export of silver, that raised the stakes to an entirely different level…

Earlier this month, China released a list of 44 companies approved to export silver under the new measures in 2026 and 2027. The new rules in 2026 also restrict exports of tungsten and antimony, materials dominated by China’s supply chain and widely used in defense and advanced technologies.

While China hasn’t explicitly announced a blanket ban on silver exports, the state-run Securities Times on Tuesday cited an unnamed industry insider, who said the new policy formally elevates the metal from an ordinary commodity to a strategic material, placing its export controls on the same regulatory footing as rare earths.

The U.S., China and everyone else are trying to ensure that they will have sufficient supplies of physical silver in 2026 and beyond.

Those whot have been attempting to artificially manipulate the price of silver have no control over that.

No matter what paper games they play, nothing is going to stop the global scramble for physical silver that is currently playing out.

That is wonderful news for silver investors, but those who are holding shorts are in for a world of hurt.

On another note, we are now experiencing the most powerful solar radiation storm to hit the Earth in more than 20 years…

Powerful solar activity released by the sun is heading for Earth and it’s likely to create dazzling auroral displays in unexpected areas Monday evening and early Tuesday morning. It could also disrupt satellite-based communications and GPS accuracy.

A solar radiation storm, ranked at a level four out of five on a severity scale, is being tracked by the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center, or SWPC.

“An S4 severe solar radiation storm is now in progress – this is the largest solar radiation storm in over 20 years,” SWPC shared on X, formerly known as Twitter. “The last time S4 levels were observed was in October, 2003. Potential effects are mainly limited to space launch, aviation, and satellite operations.”

Originally, there was not too much concern about this storm, but it appears that it is quite a bit stronger than they were initially projecting…

Hopefully, this storm will not cause too much damage.

But I think that the fact that the giant ball of fire that our planet revolves around has been acting so strangely in recent months should deeply concern all of us.

The behavior of the Sun has been a major topic of mine, and a large enough solar storm would have the potential to absolutely fry our power grids.

Of course, most of the population is not interested in such talk.

They just want to hear that everything is okay so that they can go back to enjoying the party.

But signs that the party is ending are all around us, and I believe that the months ahead are going to be filled with all sorts of nasty surprises.

Article posted with permission from Michael Snyder

The post What Are They Not Telling Us? Why Has The U.S. Mint Suddenly Raised The Price Of One Ounce Silver Coins To $169? appeared first on The Washington Standard.

Americans Pay Almost Entirely for Trump’s Tariffs

Please consider Americans Pay Almost Entirely for Trump’s Tariffs

Although the US government intended the tariffs to target foreign businesses, the policy actually harms the domestic economy. “The tariffs are an own goal,” says Julian Hinz, Research Director at the Kiel Institute and one of the authors of the study. “The claim that foreign countries pay these tariffs is a myth. The data show the opposite: Americans are footing the bill.” The tariffs act like a consumption tax on imported goods.

The research team analysed more than 25 million shipment records covering a total value of almost four trillion US dollars in US imports. The findings are clear:

• US customs revenue increased by approximately 200 billion US dollars in 2025.
• Foreign exporters absorbed only about four percent of the tariff burden, 96 percent passed through to US buyers.
• Trade volumes collapsed, but export prices did not fall.

Falling Import Volumes

2025: tariffs on Brazilian imports were suddenly raised to 50 percent, and for India, from 25 to 50 percent. Again, the data show that foreign exporters did not lower their prices to offset the additional tariffs. Had exporters absorbed the tariffs, their US prices would have fallen relative to other markets—but this was not the case.

“We compared Indian exports to the US with shipments to Europe and Canada and identified a clear pattern,” Hinz explains. “Both export value and volume to the US dropped sharply, by up to 24 percent. But unit prices—the prices Indian exporters charged—remained unchanged. They shipped less, not cheaper.”

Kiel Policy Brief

• The 2025 US tariffs are an own goal: American importers and consumers bear nearly the entire cost. Foreign exporters absorb only about 4% of the tariff burden—the remaining 96% is passed through to US buyers.
• Using shipment-level data covering over 25 million transactions valued at nearly $4 trillion, we find near-complete pass-through of tariffs to US import prices.
• US customs revenue surged by approximately $200 billion in 2025—a tax paid almost entirely by Americans.
• Event studies around discrete tariff shocks on Brazil (50%) and India (25–50%) confirm: export prices did not decline. Trade volumes collapsed instead.
• Indian export customs data validates our findings: when facing US tariffs, Indian exporters maintained their prices and reduced shipments. They did not “eat” the tariff.

We did not need a study to confirm the obvious. But there you go.

Related Posts

January 3, 2026: What Was the Overall Impact of Trump’s Tariffs in 2025?

Tracking the Economic Impact of the Trump Trade War

January 6, 2026: If the Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Tariffs, What Are His Options?

I count seven options Trump is likely to try. There are serious problems with all of them.

January 13, 2026: If the Supreme Court Rejects Trump’s Tariffs, How Big Might Refunds Be?

US customs trade data, compared to Trump’s Truth Social claim. Possible decision January 14.

January 17, 2026: Canada Breaks With the US, Cuts Tariffs on Some Chinese EVs

Congrats to Trump for moving Canada and China closer together.

January 17, 2026: Trump Hits European Nations With Tariffs Until Deal Reached to Buy Greenland

If you need another reason IEEPA tariffs are idiocy, you have one.

Article posted with permission from Mish Shedlock

The post New Research Shows Americans Bear 96% Of US Tariff Costs appeared first on The Washington Standard.