The National Federation of Independent businesses on Monday released the survey, which showed small business uncertainty rose last month to the highest level ever recorded by NFIB.

“Small business owners are feeling more uncertain than ever,” NFIB Chief Economist Bill Dunkelberg said in a statement.

Small businesses have been crushed by inflation in recent years, with prices rising more than 20% since President Joe Biden took office. Pandemic-era shutdowns and supply chain issues also put many businesses in debt or drained their savings.

Many larger businesses had more reserves or access to capital to help them survive COVID while smaller businesses went under.

“Twenty-three percent of owners reported that inflation was their single most important problem in operating their business (higher input and labor costs), down one point from August but remaining the top issue,” NFIB said.

Inflation has slowed from its feverish pace earlier in Biden’s term, but prices remain elevated.

“A net negative 17% of all owners (seasonally adjusted) reported higher nominal sales in the past three months, down one point from August and the lowest reading of this year,” NFIB said. “The net percent of owners expecting higher real sales volumes rose nine points to a net negative 9% (seasonally adjusted).”

Small business owners have also reported difficulty with the labor market.

“Uncertainty makes owners hesitant to invest in capital spending and inventory, especially as inflation and financing costs continue to put pressure on their bottom lines,” Dunkelberg continued. “Although some hope lies ahead in the holiday sales season, many Main Street owners are left questioning whether future business conditions will improve.”

Just look at what is happening to our banks.

The FDIC’s most recent report tells us that there are 63 “problem banks” in the United States, and collectively our banks now have 517 billion dollars in unrealized losses…

According to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation’s first quarter report, the US banking system is sitting on a collective $517 billion in unrealized losses and has 63 “problem banks.”

Those losses have been sparked primarily by a surge in interest rates over the past two years, which have driven down the price of fixed-income securities held by banks.

Unrealized losses held by banks increased by $39 billion in the first quarter relative to the fourth quarter of 2023.

“Higher unrealized losses on residential mortgage-backed securities, resulting from higher mortgage rates in the first quarter, drove the overall increase,” the FDIC said.

I would love to know what banks are on that list.

Wouldn’t you?

But the FDIC will not tell us.

As Daisy Luther has accurately noted, the FDIC won’t release that information because they are afraid of bank runs…

We don’t get to know which banks are in trouble.

It could be my bank. It could be yours. Or maybe it’s not.

Are they big banks? Small ones?

The list is confidential to inhibit the likelihood of bank runs finishing off these institutions.

So we just don’t know.

If Americans had the truth, there would be bank runs all over the country tomorrow morning.

That is a rather comforting thought.

And the condition of our banks just continues to deteriorate because mountains of commercial real estate loans are going bad.

At this point, it has become clear that we have never faced a commercial real estate crisis of this magnitude in our entire history…

The CRE sector faces the triple whammy of falling prices, falling demand, and rising interest rates. The post-pandemic rise of telecommuting and work-at-home programs crushed demand for office space. Vacancy rates in commercial buildings have soared.

This has put significant stress on commercial real estate companies. The biggest bankruptcy in 2023 was the failure of the Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust. The company had loaded up with more than $1 billion in liabilities.

The collapse of the commercial real estate market could easily spill over into the financial sector. That’s because a lot of loans are coming due.

According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, around $1.2 trillion of commercial real estate debt in the United States will mature over the next two years.

A lot of financial institutions will fail during the months and years that are ahead of us. Just hope that your money is not in one of them.

Meanwhile, one recent survey discovered that approximately two-thirds of all small businesses in the United States are teetering on the brink of disaster…

A new survey reveals that over two-thirds of small business owners are terrified of the state of the economy under Joe Biden’s watch, fearing that current conditions and ongoing downward trends will lead to them having to close their businesses.

As reported by the Daily Caller, the poll from the Job Creators Network Foundation (JCNF) shows that 67% of small business owners maintain such fears about the economy as it stands today, marking a 10-point increase from sentiments two years ago. In the same poll, participants’ perceptions of economic conditions for their own businesses fell from 70.2 to 68.1. Perception of national conditions fell even more drastically, from 53.2 to 50.4.

Maybe you don’t care about what is happening to our small businesses.

But you should, because close to half of all workers in the United States are employed by small businesses…

Forbes estimates that at least 46% of all employees in the United States, around 61.6 million people in total, are employed by small businesses.

I think that it is quite an ominous sign that the household survey showed that the U.S. economy lost a whopping 408,000 jobs last month.

Sadly, I think that a lot more months like that are coming.

Retailers are also really struggling right now.

In fact, as Mark B. Spiegel recently discussed, major retailer after major retailer has been reporting disappointing sales numbers…

The U.S. economy seems to finally be cracking. This month a slew of retailers (off the top of my head: Target, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Best Buy and Foot Locker) reported negative year-over-year sales comps, and that’s before adjusting for the inflation that makes them 3% to 4% more negative in “real” terms. Others (Dollar General and Burlington) reported same-store sales comps in the +2% range, but that too was negative when adjusted for inflation, while Walmart and Nordstrom comps managed to roughly keep pace with inflation, but were unable to exceed it.

At one time, Walmart was an unstoppable retail behemoth. But now even Walmart is closing down stores…

WALMARTS are closing across the country – and retail experts say the cuts are signals of a bleak future for shoppers.

The multi-million dollar corporation has closed nine stores so far this year, which could be a warning sign for other retail giants.

Of course the stores that Walmart is shuttering are just a drop in the bucket compared to what other chains are doing. As I detailed in an article that I posted last week, we are on pace to lose 7,800 stores in 2024.

When the Drudge Report used the term “retail apocalypse” in one of their headlines on Monday morning, that was not an exaggeration at all.

We really are in the early stages of a historic meltdown.

And the outlook for the months ahead is extremely bleak.

In fact, Harry Dent just told Fox News that we should brace ourselves for “a bigger crash than we got in 2008 to ’09”…

Speaking in an updated interview with Fox News Digital, Dent cautioned that the “everything” bubble has still yet to burst, and it may be a bigger crash than the Great Recession.

“In 1925 to ‘29, it was a natural bubble. There was no stimulus behind that, artificial stimulus per se. So this is new. This has never happened,” Dent said on Tuesday. “What do you do if you want to cure a hangover? You drink more. And that’s what they’ve been doing.”

“Flooding the economy with extra money forever might actually enhance the overall economy long-term. But we’ll only see when we see this bubble burst,” he added. “And again, this bubble has been going 14 years. Instead of most bubbles [going] five to six, it’s been stretched higher, longer. So you’d have to expect a bigger crash than we got in 2008 to ’09.”

Our leaders were able to keep the game going for years by pumping trillions upon trillions of dollars into the system.

But they didn’t fix anything.

Instead, they just delayed the inevitable.

Our entire system really is crumbling all around us, and as it crumbles we are going to see chaos on a scale that most people don’t even want to imagine.

Already, major cities from coast to coast are being terrorized by theft, violence, drugs, homelessness, gangs and anarchy.

If things are this bad already, what is America going to look like once our leaders completely lose control of the economy?

Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

But as the saying goes, in Washington a crisis is always a terrible thing to waste and so we are seeing a reflexive response for more government intervention. No surprise that Senate Democrats immediately pounced into action calling on federal regulators to add another layer of rules including a complex increase in capital requirements on the U.S. banking system. Reacting quickly, the Federal Reserve, with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the FDIC released a joint proposal for the U.S. implementation of the so-called “Basel III regulatory framework.” These are complex rules, but in a nutshell, these rules would increase the amount of money that banks hold in reserve by 25%.

Sorry, this WON’T stop occasional bank failures of the hundreds of banks in America. What it will do is choke off lending to small businesses, homebuyers, and consumers that need loans.

The theory behind higher capital requirements is that banks will have more money in reserve to offset the losses from loans that go sour. Bank reserve requirements are a good safety precaution for sure. We don’t want banks to take on too much risk and then rush to a taxpayer safety net every time they are in trouble. But many well-respected government and private studies have found that American banks as a group are NOT undercapitalized, nor were the banks that failed.

Those banks simply made a series of bad investment/lending decisions. Ironically, some of the bad decisions, such as holding on to “safe” low-interest-paying Treasury bonds, which then lost market value when the Fed finally began raising interest rates, were a direct result of federal regulations.

The FDIC and the Federal Reserve are authorized to maintain the health and safety of America’s banks. Their job is to avoid 1930s-style bank runs that could do great damage to our financial system. Here’s the problem: these new rules would punish banks that are financially sound and shrink the available pool of loans available to homebuyers, small businesses, and lower income families. Less lending to qualified borrowers would mean less economic growth and less financial stability.

A forthcoming Committee to Unleash Prosperity study finds several negative – unintended – consequences of these rules based on the best research findings:

First, they will reduce the available pool of capital by an estimated $100 to $150 billion a year.

Second, the reduction in lending will reduce economic activity and thus shrink annual GDP by as much as 0.6%.

Third, because foreign banks are not subject to these regulations, American banks will lose competitiveness to foreign banks.

Fourth, and most importantly, it’s the little guy that gets squeezed out of the lending market. Small businesses and lower-income families are most likely to be the ones whose loans are rejected as a result of these new rules.

It’s simple: Lending is the oxygen supply that keeps our economy vibrant and competitive. Cutting it off, as the Basel rules are proposing, won’t make our economy safer, but will put it at greater risk.

Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. His latest book is Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy.

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.

All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact [email protected].

If you doubt this, just consider what is already happening.

According to a new Alignable survey that was just released, 41 percent of all small business owners in the United States could not pay rent in November…

Due to high inflation, reduced consumer spending, higher rents and other economic pressures, U.S.-based small business owners’ rent problems just escalated to new heights nationally this month, based on Alignable’s November Rent Poll of 6,326 small business owners taken from 11/19/22 to 11/22/22.

Unfortunately, 41% of U.S.-based small business owners report that they could not pay their rent in full and on time in November, a new record for 2022. Making matters worse, this occurred during a quarter when more money should be coming in and rent delinquency rates should be decreasing. But so far this quarter, the opposite has been true.

In September, that same survey found that 30 percent of all small business owners could not pay rent.

Many were deeply alarmed by that figure, and then it jumped up to 37 percent in October. Now we are at 41 percent, and if there is any time when small business owners should be able to pay rent it is during the holiday season. When commercial real estate tenants cannot pay rent, it inevitably has a domino effect.

It appears that we will soon have millions of empty commercial spaces all over the nation, and many owners will soon be unable to make loan payments because sufficient rent money is not coming in. If the Federal Reserve insists on raising rates even higher, I anticipate that we will eventually be facing a commercial real estate crash of unprecedented size and scope.

Meanwhile, the implosion of the housing market continues to pick up speed. Existing home sales have now declined for nine months in a row, and the median price of a home in the U.S. has now fallen by about 7 percent. Sadly, many experts are now warning that things will only get worse in the months ahead.  Here is one example…

“In one line: Collapse in prices is coming,” wrote Kieran Clancy, senior U.S. economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics.

I told my readers that this would happen if the Federal Reserve aggressively hiked interest rates.

Of course home prices could soon fall a lot more.  In fact, Pantheon is projecting that they could ultimately fall by a total of 20 percent from the peak…

Pantheon estimates that existing home prices will keep falling, ultimately dropping by about 20% from their June peak of around $414,000.

If you are planning to sell a home, I would try to do it as quickly as possible before prices go way down.

Meanwhile, another troubled cryptocurrency firm has just filed for bankruptcy…

Distressed crypto firm BlockFi has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey following the implosion of putative acquirer FTX.

So why is BlockFi in so much trouble?

Well, the truth is that there are a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest is the fact that they loaned 275 million dollars to FTX that will never be repaid…

In the filing, the company listed an outstanding $275 million loan to FTX US, the American arm of Sam Bankman-Fried’s now-bankrupt empire.

I warned my readers that FTX would not be the last domino to fall. And now another one has tumbled over.

Needless to say, there will be many more, because FTX “has more than 1 million creditors”…

In a matter of days, FTX went from a $32 billion valuation to bankruptcy as liquidity dried up, customers demanded withdrawals and rival exchange Binance ripped up its nonbinding agreement to buy the company. Gross negligence has since been exposed. Ray added that a “substantial portion” of assets held with FTX may be “missing or stolen.”

FTX has more than 1 million creditors, according to updated bankruptcy filings, hinting at the huge impact of its collapse on crypto traders and other counterparties with ties to Bankman-Fried’s empire.

FTX was just one giant Ponzi scheme, but of course the entire system is just one giant Ponzi scheme.

The entire thing is eventually coming down, and a lot of prominent voices are trying to sound the alarm about this.

For instance, author Robert Kiyosaki tweeted the following just a few days ago…

Many of you know I do not invest in equities, bonds, ETS or MFs. Please DO NOT listen to what I’m going to say next: “I would get out of paper assets.” The world economy is not a “Market.” I believe economy is the biggest bubble in world history.

Of course he is quite correct.

We have been living in the largest bubble in all of human history.

And once it finally shatters into billions of pieces nobody is going to be able to put it back together again.

So get ready for a massive adjustment in your standard of living.

With very hard times looming, the Washington Post is encouraging their readers to reduce food costs by eating bugs…

The Washington Post advised Americans Sunday that instead of a traditional season dinner, which now is unaffordable for a quarter of families, they should instead look to eating bugs.

Yes really.

In an article headlined Salted ants. Ground crickets. Why you should try edible insects, the Post stated “Consumers can already find foods like salted ants on Amazon and cricket powder protein bars in Swiss grocery stores.”

I don’t know about you, but I don’t plan on ever eating bugs.

No matter how bad things get, I just couldn’t eat ants or crickets or beetles.

Unfortunately, most people are completely and utterly unprepared for the times that we will soon be facing. A tremendous amount of economic chaos is on the way.

The Federal Reserve could help matters a great deal if they would just stop raising interest rates.

But that isn’t going to happen, and so it appears that 2023 will be a year of severe economic pain all over the nation.

***It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael and my brand new book entitled “End Times” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to my new book I have written six other books that are available on Amazon.com including “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”. (#CommissionsEarned)  When you purchase any of these books you help to support the work that I am doing, and one way that you can really help is by sending copies as gifts to family and friends.  Time is short, and I need help getting these warnings into the hands of as many people as possible.

I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.  I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article.  The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions.

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Article cross-posted from The Economic Collapse Blog.

They decided to do it on social media, which is about as ludicrous as it sounds. People can respond, and their responses have been some of the most brutal this failed regime has seen. Here’s the Tweet:

“My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril. Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.”

My message to the companies running gas stations and setting prices at the pump is simple: this is a time of war and global peril.

Bring down the price you are charging at the pump to reflect the cost you’re paying for the product. And do it now.

— President Biden (@POTUS) July 2, 2022

Gas station owners across the country have struggled through the Biden economy as much if not more than most small businesses. They are conscious of the rising costs of fuel and have cut the minuscule profits they used to get to non-existent levels. Some stations have gone in the red with their gas prices in hopes of making it back on other purchases. THESE are the people the Biden regime has decided to target.

Responses were ugly:

Shay Patrick Cormac: “They are charging a price that reflects what they are paying for gas. The US government makes more on each gallon of gas sold than the oil companies do.”

https://twitter.com/ShayCormac_1/status/1543292505298436099

Catturd: “OMG … this idiot is unreal.”

OMG … this idiot is unreal. https://t.co/3bORx5DMwU

— Catturd (@catturd2) July 2, 2022

Greg: “Thank you for this tweet mr president. My local gas stations all dropped their prices $2 instantly because they had your tweet notifications on”

Thank you for this tweet mr president. My local gas stations all dropped their prices $2 instantly because they had your tweet notifications on

— greg (@greg16676935420) July 2, 2022

David Giglio: “My message to the @POTUS running the country who cancelled domestic pipelines, drilling, and oil leases on Day 1 is simple: Stop gaslighting the American people with lies & stop putting America Last. And do it now.”

My message to the @POTUS running the country who cancelled domestic pipelines, drilling, and oil leases on Day 1 is simple: Stop gaslighting the American people with lies & stop putting America Last. And do it now. https://t.co/4FcKKqknNa

— David Giglio (@DavidGiglioCA) July 2, 2022

Me (I had to get in on the action): “Somebody in the regime thought it was a good idea to play tough guy against small business owners in a collapsing economy that the regime created. BRILLIANT!”

Somebody in the regime thought it was a good idea to play tough guy against small business owners in a collapsing economy that the regime created.

BRILLIANT!

— JD Rucker (@JDRucker) July 2, 2022

Helaine Olen: “I’m sorry, but this is just sad.”

https://twitter.com/helaineolen/status/1543291698557554688

Libertarian Party: “You know as well as everyone that the Federal Reserve actually sets the prices – through rampant inflation. When 40% of the dollars in the world was printed in one year, inflation sets in and prices skyrocket. Just yesterday you were blaming Putin. We see through your scam.”

You know as well as everyone that the Federal Reserve actually sets the prices – through rampant inflation. When 40% of the dollars in the world was printed in one year, inflation sets in and prices skyrocket.

Just yesterday you were blaming Putin.

We see through your scam.

— Libertarian Party (@LPNational) July 2, 2022

Dan Lyman: “Spoken like a communist dictator”

Spoken like a communist dictator https://t.co/Kmwk3xkJIT

— Dan Lyman (@realdanlyman) July 2, 2022

Jon Root: “Gas prices rose the moment you signed this executive order on day 1, Mr. President… The problem isn’t Russia, Russia, Russia. It’s you, you, you.”

Gas prices rose the moment you signed this executive order on day 1, Mr. President… The problem isn’t Russia, Russia, Russia. It’s you, you, you. pic.twitter.com/KIubGUVBHQ

— Jon Root (@JonnyRoot_) July 2, 2022

The Last Refuge: “You do know the E15 mandate made gas more expensive right? The EPA enforces the biofuel standard by requiring refineries to submit purchase credits (known as Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs) to the EPA proving the purchases. The price of those RINs is in the gas.”

You do know the E15 mandate made gas more expensive right? The EPA enforces the biofuel standard by requiring refineries to submit purchase credits (known as Renewable Identification Numbers, or RINs) to the EPA proving the purchases. The price of those RINs is in the gas.

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) July 2, 2022

Tom Fitton at Judicial Watch may have nailed the most important aspect of this Tweet, posting: “Fact check: This person has no lawful authority to threaten or order a gas station to set a price. This tweet is an abuse of power.”

Fact check: This person has no lawful authority to threaten or order a gas station to set a price. This tweet is an abuse of power. https://t.co/IrToTxnszO

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) July 2, 2022

This regime will try anything and everything at this point. They will NEVER admit they made a single mistake. They will NEVER do what it takes to solve the problems they created. This is the worst administration in modern history, and it isn’t even close.

The small business network Alignable released new survey results that found that 35 percent of U.S. small business owners “could not pay their rent in full or on time in June.”

“Most small business owners attribute this worsening situation to record-breaking inflation, which includes escalating gas, labor, and supply costs,” Alignable said. “Simply put, there’s less money available to pay the rent.”

According to the survey, rent increased for 48 percent of small businesses this month. Meanwhile, rent delinquencies have continued to increase all year.

“This is the highest rate of U.S. rent delinquency among SMBs this year,” the group said.

Another key factor hurting small businesses are gas prices, which hit record highs last month, averaging more than $5 per gallon for regular gas, before dipping down slightly. Diesel gas prices also hit record highs in June.

“Even more alarming, 63 percent of transportation SMBs couldn’t afford June rent, up 41 percent from May,” Alignable said. “It’s no shock to learn that 76 percent of this group said gas prices have had a ‘very significant’ negative effect on their businesses.”

Illinois and Texas lead the nation in rent delinquencies.

“States with the highest rent delinquency rates include: Illinois (44 percent), Texas (44 percent), [and] New Jersey (39 percent),” Alignable said. “While they’re still high, rates dropped in Massachusetts, New York, Florida, and California.”

The report comes as other survey data show that soaring inflation is a top concern for small businesses.

As The Center Square previously reported, the survey found 51 percent of small businesses fear that rising prices could “force them to close their businesses within the next six months.” In particular, restaurant owners are concerned with 72 percent saying they are worried.

That concern is not new. An April poll from NEXT Insurance reported that many small businesses have considering shutting down because of inflation.

“According to a new survey by NEXT Insurance, small business owners across the United States are frustrated and stressed about inflation and the state of the economy,” the group said. “More than one-third have considered shutting down in the last 12 months. As prices continue to rise and supply chains continue to falter, many small business owners have been forced to work longer hours, raise prices, and even cut their own salaries just to stay afloat, our survey found. And a majority of small business owners believe the pain isn’t over.”

Image by muntazar mansory from Pixabay. Article cross-posted from The Center Square.