Survival Plans

The pace at which Americans are losing their jobs is absolutely breathtaking.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the largest number of new claims for unemployment benefits ever recorded in a single week prior to this year was 695,000 during the week that ended October 2nd, 1982.  So that means that what we are now witnessing is completely unprecedented.  About...

The biggest public health crisis of our time just continues to get worse.  The global death toll is rapidly approaching 20,000, and approximately a third of the world is currently under some sort of a lockdown order.  Needless to say, this is going to be absolutely devastating for the entire global economy.  Here in the United States, the spread of this virus...

Everyone that tried to tell us that this pandemic would fade away quickly has been proven dead wrong.  Right now, approximately 187 million Americans are under “shelter-in-place” orders as COVID-19 sweeps across the nation like wildfire.  There are now more than 43,000 confirmed cases in the U.S., but by the time many of you read this article that number is likely to...

How would you feel if you received a bill for more than $34,000 after being tested and treated for the coronavirus?  This pandemic is showing the entire world that the U.S. healthcare system is deeply, deeply broken, and there is no way that we can continue to go on like this.  If coronavirus testing is quick, inexpensive and widely available...

Just a few weeks ago everything seemed completely normal to most people, but now fear of the coronavirus has caused U.S. stock prices to absolutely implode.  The stock market crash of 2020 will forever be mentioned alongside the crashes of 1929, 1987 and 2008, and by the time it is over it could potentially end up being the largest of...

As America slowly but surely shuts down from coast to coast, everyone is acknowledging the fact that we are heading into a very serious economic downturn.  Originally, many experts were warning that this coronavirus pandemic could spark a recession, but now some are actually starting to use the “d” word.  Yesterday, I wrote about the government planning document that envisions...

Are you prepared for the nationwide shutdown that is happening now to last for the next 18 months?  You may not believe that such a thing will happen, but the federal government apparently does.  A 100 page government plan marked “For Official Use Only // Not For Public Distribution or Release” was obtained by the New York Times, and it paints...

We are literally witnessing history in the making.  For the third time in the last six trading sessions, we have witnessed the largest single day point crash in stock market history.  Let that sink in for a moment.  On March 9th, the Dow set a new record by falling 2,013 points.  Then on March 12th, the Dow set a new...

Fear of the coronavirus is causing shutdowns on a global scale like we have never seen before.  Just about every major sporting event that you can think of has been either canceled or postponed, schools and universities are keeping students away, global tourism is absolutely collapsing, churches are being shuttered, conferences and festivals are being taken off the calendar, businesses...

It has happened again.  On Thursday the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,352 points, which was the largest single day stock market point crash in history.  Of course the old record only lasted for three days, because on Monday the Dow dropped 2,013 points.  And on Wednesday, we actually witnessed the third largest single day stock market point crash in...

In all of U.S. history, we have never seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average go from an all-time high to a bear market as quickly as we just did.  As I keep reminding my readers, the stock market is all about how investors view the future.  Early this year, extremely irrational optimism about the future pushed stock prices to the...

What recourse do we have when our public health officials completely and utterly fail us?  I don’t know if we could have prevented COVID-19 from spreading widely in the United States even if everything had been done perfectly, but the truth is that we will never know.  When this outbreak first started, visitors from the affected areas were allowed to...

We haven’t seen anything like this since the last financial crisis erupted in 2008.  Wall Street has been gripped by a tremendous amount of fear, and the volatility that we are witnessing would have been unimaginable just a couple of months ago.  On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,013 points.  To put that in perspective, the largest single...

If you thought that we had more time before this coronavirus pandemic exploded out of control in the United States, I am sorry to say that you are out of luck.  In all of the major nations in the western world, the number of confirmed cases escalated dramatically over the past few days.  Here in the U.S., COVID-19 has now...

The term “black swan event” is increasingly being used to describe this coronavirus outbreak, and many are concerned that what we are headed for will be much worse than what we experienced in 2008 and 2009.  Already, we have witnessed a staggering drop in global demand, Wall Street has had to deal with the wildest week in eight years, and people...

We haven’t seen anything cause this much worldwide fear in a really long time.  But even though there is so much fear, we still don’t know if this is going to evolve into the next great global pandemic that kills millions of people or not.  I wish that I had a definitive answer for you.  At this point we do...

Has the Federal Reserve finally met an opponent that it won’t be able to defeat?  Ever since the last financial crisis, unprecedented intervention by the Fed at key moments has kept the economy and the financial system relatively stable.  No matter what has come along, it has seemed like the Federal Reserve has always had an answer, and this has...

This is already the most frightening virus outbreak that we have seen in the past several decades, and it appears that it is just getting started.  A week ago, there were about 3,000 confirmed cases outside of China and now there are more than 10,000.  4,812 cases have been confirmed in South Korea, 2,036 cases have been confirmed in Italy,...

I can’t remember a time when we have seen such widespread “panic buying” all over the nation.  Today I spoke with someone that just visited the closest Wal-Mart in this area, and I was told that there are empty shelves all over the store.  There are very few canned goods left, some of the most essential medications have been cleaned...

Stock prices are falling faster and harder than they ever have before.  If the financial markets are in this much chaos even though not a single American has died from the coronavirus yet, what are things going to look like if this outbreak starts sweeping across America like wildfire?  The number of confirmed cases continues to explode all over the...