It can be absolutely soul crushing to work as hard as you possibly can but still find yourself falling farther and farther behind.

And when people come to the conclusion that they simply cannot take care of themselves no matter what they do, many of them will start to go completely nuts. Without a doubt, economic desperation is one of the factors that is fueling the massive crime wave that I have been documenting in my articles in recent months.

Theft is going to cost U.S. retailers over 100 billion dollars in 2023, and stores are being permanently shut down in our core urban areas at a staggering pace.

In fact, so many grocery stores have been shut down in Chicago that Mayor Brandon Johnson wants to create his own socialist grocery stores to replace them…

Chicago’s Democrat mayor wants to create city-run grocery stores to promote ‘equitable’ access to food after half of the city’s Walmart and Whole Foods stores closed.

Mayor Brandon Johnson announced a partnership with the Economic Security Project to open municipally-owned grocery stores in Chicago in a bid to tackle many of the city’s so-called ‘food deserts.’

That is crazy.

But that is how far the city of Chicago has fallen.

Sadly, crime is about to go to a whole new level in Chicago, because a new law that eliminates cash bail in the state of Illinois is about to go into effect…

An Illinois law eliminating cash bail state wide is set to go into effect on Monday, officials have revealed.

According to NBC 5 Chicago, this comes two months after the state’s Supreme Court ruled that the “Pretrial Fairness Act,” which is part of the larger “SAFE-T Act,” was constitutional.

If you currently live in the state of Illinois, you may want to start considering other options.

But it isn’t just Illinois that is out of control.

All over the country, millions of our young people have come to the conclusion that the system is rigged against them.

So they figure that if the system is fundamentally unfair, why should they try to abide by the rules?

Many of our young people are now openly lawless, and in such an environment literally no one is safe…

A female gas station cashier in Washington state had no time to react amid an onslaught of punches and kicks to the face and head during a violent robbery.

Leah Johnston was attacked by six suspects, some thought to be just teenagers, while working at Friendly Normandy Market in Normandy Park on September 15.

The gang piled cigarettes and candy into their arms and stripped the register of cash before escaping.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning.

The cost of living is going to continue to rise faster than our paychecks, and that means that the level of desperation will continue to increase.

In Canada, food prices have already become so crazy that the government is actually threatening to take legal action against grocery stores…

The Canadian government is taking aim at grocery stores, warning them of “big consequences” if they fail to provide “relief for Canadians” by stabilizing food prices by October 9. This comes amid rising inflation in the country and as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party trails badly in the polls.

Speaking at the Liberals’ national caucus retreat in London, Ontario on Thursday, Trudeau said he expects “to hear from them [the largest grocery chains] by Thanksgiving on what their plan is to stabilize prices,” adding that “if their plan doesn’t provide real relief for the middle class and people working hard to join it, then we will take further action, and we are not ruling anything out, including tax measures.”

But the truth is that the grocery stores are not being particularly greedy.

It is our leaders that have created this inflation crisis, and it is not going to go away any time soon.

In fact, it is about to get even worse because the price of oil is starting to spike…

After languishing a multi-year lows until the end of June in the low/mid-70s range after Biden drained over 270 million barrels from the SPR to a near record low in hopes of pushing the price of gasoline lower and achieving short-term political goals…

… oil has since surged by more than $20, or 32% since the low of $71.57 on June 28, its fastest ascent since the start of 2022, a rally that was sparked by Saudi Arabia’s decision to voluntarily cut an additional 1 million bpd of production in addition to the reductions agreed by the OPEC+ group…

…  thereby intentionally creating a production deficit of over 3 million barrels per day.

As such the price is likely to keep rising well into the 100s, as we first predicted two weeks ago, and as Chevron CEO Mike Wirth said today on BBG TV.

Virtually everything we buy has to be transported in some way, and so the price of oil factors into just about everything.

So it should deeply alarm all of us that the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the Los Angeles area has almost reached six dollars…

Southern California drivers are feeling the squeeze of high gas prices yet again.

On Monday morning, the price of a regular gallon of gas averaged about $5.92 in the Los Angeles area, according to AAA.

That’s a 5-cent increase from the day before and nearly 40 cents more than a week ago.

What we are witnessing now are things that we have been anticipating for a very long time.

We really are in the very early stages of a major economic meltdown.

As the U.S. economy crumbles all around us, millions of people are going to become very desperate, and very desperate people do very desperate things.

Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can check out his new Substack newsletter right here.