Hat tip to Xaris at SA.com for this post:
Lots of different shit weaving together. Just a tip of an iceberg, to say nothing of other rising global fascism, collapsing infrastructure, armed conflicts, and the climate.
Global debt reaches record $226T This does not include future obligations
US wages have fallen in real terms for the last 17 months
Oil prices are going to increase more now that Biden will be stopping the SPR dumping and OPEC+ is reducing production (or more likely, tapping out on best sources and not wanting to blow through them too quickly at too low a price). Shale Oil peaking in 2024 and Energy Return on Investment (EROI) is going down-down-down.
Redfin and Zillow have pulled out of house flipper business. US prices are falling from record highs while mortgage rates skyrocket and many people signed into variable mortages. Better.com laid off 33% of their workforce (3,000 ppl). China real estate is also a mess
Crypto winter is now in full swing with another major collapse and the transaction/fake banks are falling like dominos
Car flipping companies are in free fall. Carvana, etc are done. Used car prices are falling. Leasing is dying. New car sticker prices are falling a little bit. New production is still a mess. Tesla cybertrash where they sold $$$$ pre-orders to rubes is never happening.
Job layoffs and hiring freezes tech is full frost now and lots of layoffs in tech. Twitter, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, Salesforce, GoFundMe, Seagate, Peloton, Zillow, Coinbase, Crypto, Lyft, Shopify, Twilio, Citrix all laid off significant people. Other tech like Apple and Google are in hiring freezes. The age of the Mike Judge unicorn bonanza is dead and isn't coming back. Downstream will also be closing of pinstagram places, fjallraven, escape rooms, gig economy workers, bespoke rum bars, microbrewaries, etc.
Droughts. Global droughts, pests, are wrecking food supplies; some of the worst they've been for a century. Wheat supply is down to 10 weeks or less. China, California, Midwest, India, Germany, you name it is in a drought and been a disaster for yields. Massive pepper, rice, wheat, and tomato failures this year. Not to mention avian flu wiping out turkeys and chicken and that agriculture is dependent on haber-bosch processes from fossil fuels which there is fertilizer shortages. Fortunately we overproduce a lot of food but ?????
Famines are already hitting parts of the world and the affected places will likely grow. Just the beginning
Amazon lost $1T in stock value The first time any company has reached that milestone. A ton of pensions, 401ks, etc are all invested in index funds which are predominately weighted all to tech these days with massive tech exposure.
Inflation rages around the global Possibly the first time there has been such widespread global inflation from global north to global south.
Rents are still rising and people are increasingly unable to pay. Homeless rates are skyrocketing from small town to big cities. More than 1 in 100 are now homeless and actual numbers are quite likely worse than measured. Tennessee made it a felony to be homeless; other states/cities likely to follow.
Alcohol, Drug Overdose, and Suicides skyrocketed in 2021 breaking records and 2022 data is grimmer still; as material conditions decline people will resort to hitting the bottle or fentanyl harder and harder.
COVID-19 continues to cause havoc with 100s dying daily in US alone and further studies showing repeated infections are worse yield lots of impacts on bodies, including weakened immune systems. Bivalent booster adoption rates are like 5% even in 'trust the science' states. US s on the third covid winter without key tools and treatment. New RSV and Flus are rampaging right now and are some of the worst they've been.
Many retail companies are going to go bankrupt as they can't pay the higher rates on debt rolling over. Aka zombie companies that survived lower-rate environments but won't survive; expect big losses for retail and service workers. A sharp downturn is already underway globally
Restaurants, especially smaller family-run, are getting destroyed with rising commercial rates and costs to run. Eating out (without drinks) now cost close to $45/2 people for what would have been <$25 a year or two ago at even a small pho place.
US train system is a disaster waiting to happen. Underfunded, underinvested, and understaffed system and liberals want to crush labor. Even brief outage results in months if not year-long lasting impacts only counteracted by increasing 'demand destruction'