Many in America, including many Christians, are on a high right now with the comprehensive election win by Donald Trump and the Republicans. Christians see Donald Trump’s win as a reprieve. The fact that he miraculously survived two assassination attempts was seen by Trump and many Christians as the hand of God.
However, the consequences of many years of reckless government spending make the following events inevitable for America. A stock market wipeout, a coming home-equity slaughter, a trillion-dollar pension fund wipeout, the collapse of the dollar, and the real threat of war with China.
Dylan Jovine in his book Midnight in America – Five Cracks that Threaten America’s Foundation, says the collapse has already begun. I have listed six cracks.
During the next six months, the stock market will plummet by at least 50 percent, real estate will drop 40 percent, savings accounts will lose 30 percent and unemployment will triple.
It’s already starting to unfold. Let’s take a look at crack one.
Crack #1: The Inevitable Stock Market Wipeout
The stock market is at all-time highs. And it’s been one heck of a rally. But this rally is about to end. And it won’t be pretty when it does. Three warning signs are flashing right now.
A big warning sign is coming from the U.S. government bond market.
This is something almost no stock investors talk about. But if the bond market sneezes, the stock market catches a cold. The U.S. government is borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. Think about that: $1 trillion every 100 days! This is unprecedented. And it’s unsustainable. We’re now spending $2.7 billion per day on interest costs alone!
Historically, Wall Street has had no problem buying as many bonds as the U.S. government was selling. But in October of 2023, the U.S. government finally hit a brick wall. Wall Street told Washington it couldn’t sell all these bonds anymore. Traditional buyers like foreign central banks, sovereign wealth funds, and large institutions started to just say “NO!” After decades of reckless borrowing by both parties, we have FINALLY reached the point where nobody wants to lend us money anymore.
The stock market’s recent highs are being driven by government spending. The more the government spends, the more jobs are created, and the more people buy things. But the government is now being told it cannot borrow anymore, which means it will have to cut spending. And when it finally cuts spending that means millions of jobs will disappear. And when those jobs disappear, spending will disappear along with it. Once that spending dries up, corporate profits are sure to follow. It’s so clear, J.P. Morgan called this coming crisis, “The most predictable crisis in history.”
The second warning sign is coming from the gold market.
For stock investors, the recent rise in gold is the canary in the coal mine. It’s signaling serious danger for investors. Right around the time, word began to leak on Wall Street that the U.S. government was having trouble borrowing money gold was selling at about $1,800 an ounce. The following month, gold hit $2,100 an ounce, a 16% gain in 30 days. That’s a big move for an old-fashioned metal. It almost moved like an AI stock. But then reports kept coming out showing how hard it was becoming for the U.S. to borrow money. And the price of gold began its historic rise, hitting $2,400 an ounce.
Gold has always been a great predictor of a stock market crash. Its price tends to rise in the six months before the market gets hammered.
The third warning sign is the price to earnings ratio.
The price to earnings ratio tells you how many years of earnings it would take to get back what you pay for a stock. In a healthy, normal market, the P/E ratio is about 16. That means, it would take 16 years for a stocks’ earnings to equal the price. But right now, the average stock in the S&P 500 has a p/e of 35. That’s over twice the historical ratio! There have been two other times in history that the p/e ratio has been this high. The first was right before the market crash in 1929…. Right before the market crashed 80% from its highs. The second time this happened was in 1999… Right before the dot com bubble burst and the market crashed 50%.
These are just some of the indicators signaling that a massive collapse that will blindside most investors is coming very soon. A 50% correction in the stock market is a conservative estimate. If the market drops to the lows we hit during Covid we’ll see a 60% decline. What makes this coming crisis so unique, is that there are four more cracks that are just as dangerous. Maybe even more so.
They are breaking apart the foundation of our prosperity each and every day. When one of these cracks gets big enough, it will blast open all the others causing the market to crash 50%, real estate to plummet 40%, bonds to lose 30% of their value, and unemployment triple. It’s already starting to happen.
Crack #2: The Looming Home Equity Slaughter
During Covid the government sent checks to people worth $7 trillion. One of the consequences was soaring house prices. Prices of homes have doubled in the past 10 years. In 2014, the average home in America cost $200,000. In 2024, the average home in America costs $400,000. The problem is average incomes in America haven’t doubled in the past ten years. They’ve only increased by 13.8% since 2014. In the short term, housing prices are based on whatever people will pay for them. But in the longer term, they’re based on income. And the fact that housing prices have doubled in the past ten years, while incomes have stayed about the same… means homes are unaffordable to most buyers in America. Prices will have to come back down to a level where buyers can pay for them. It’s already begun. The only reason housing prices haven’t gone down faster is that the government is still borrowing $1 trillion every 100 days. But when that finally ends, and the hangover hits this country, housing prices will have to drop 40% to get back down to the level folks can afford them.
Crack #3: The Coming Pension Fund Wipeout
As a result of Covid the new “work-from-home culture” is causing a collapse of the commercial real estate market. And the problem is about to get worse. Banks are sitting on a ticking time bomb: almost $3 trillion in commercial real estate debt. What most people don’t know is that pension funds are one of the biggest investors in commercial real estate. The simple fact that the commercial real estate market is causing a $6 trillion meltdown for banks and pension funds is a topic most people don’t grasp.
Crack #4: The Stunning Pace of “De-Dollarization”
China has already convinced Brazil, Argentina, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia to trade in yuan so America is on its way to losing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.
President-elect Trump has said it would be a disaster. “It would be worse than losing any war.”
Crack #5: War With China Over Taiwan
China’s attack on the U.S. dollar is bad for America. But it’s nothing compared to what would happen if they attacked Taiwan.
Taiwan makes 90% of the world’s advanced semiconductors. They’re the tiny operating brains inside just about any modern device, like smartphones, hospital ventilators or fighter jets. And yes, the chips Nvidia sells to power AI all come from Taiwan too. A China attack on Taiwan would immediately stop 90% of the world’s chips from leaving Taiwan.
That would be like cutting off 90% of the global oil supply. The price of smartphones, iPads, computers, washers, televisions, and smartwatches would skyrocket. Firms would be forced to lay off workers as they couldn’t make their products. It gets even worse. Look around your house. How many of those items pass through the South China Sea? Nearly one-third of all global maritime trade. This includes smartphones, computers, furniture, car seats, clothing, hats, heaters, paint, shoes, rubber tires, washers, dryers, bicycles, microwaves, toasters – you name it.
A Chinese attack on Taiwan would instantly freeze one-third of global trade. Firms that sell furniture would have no furniture to sell. Firms that sell car seats would have no car seats to sell, and firms that sell shoes would have no shoes to sell. That would send the stock market crashing, as global firms lost revenue, profits and faced bankruptcy.
Crack #6: The Coming Spike in Unemployment
AI and Robotics is already having a major impact on jobs. Amazon has robots and AI operating its warehouses. They operate seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day with minimum mistakes. Amazon’s bottom line has improved enormously. Wal Mart is following Amazon’s lead and the job losses will be enormous.
AI is being adopted faster than any new technology in history. Faster than automobiles, faster than the internet and faster than the iPhone. And that’s a problem. It’s being adopted faster than the jobs it will replace. Indeed, this technology threatens the jobs of almost every man and woman in America. And it won’t distinguish between blue-collar workers and white-collar workers. Jobs will just vanish.
A new study from MIT estimates that AI will replace as many as two million manufacturing jobs within the next 12-18 months. And a recent report from Goldman Sachs was even worse: the bank predicts that two-thirds of all jobs are at risk from AI.