Sadly, this is just a small preview of what is coming to major cities all over America.Protests and, in some cases, violence, continued Thursday in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, a black man who died in police custody after a white officer pinned him to the ground under his knee.
Hundreds of protesters flooded Minneapolis streets Thursday evening for a march through downtown. Traffic was halted as a crowd of people stretched for up to four blocks. Protesters shouted "I can't breathe" and "no justice, no peace; prosecute the police" as volunteer marshals in highlighter-colored vests directed traffic.
If you think that these riots about police brutality are intense, just wait until the economic riots start.
We are moving into a time when millions upon millions of Americans will become increasingly desperate as we plunge even deeper into a new economic depression. On Thursday, we learned that another 2.1 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits last week...
This was the 10th week in a row when the number of new claims for unemployment benefits has been above 2 million.First-time claims for unemployment benefits totaled 2.1 million last week, the lowest total since the coronavirus crisis began though indicative that a historically high number of Americans remain separated from their jobs.
Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for 2.05 million. The total represented a decrease of 323,000 from the previous week's upwardly revised 2.438 million.
As I keep reminding my readers, prior to this year the highest that number had ever been for a single week was 695,000 in 1982.
So even after so many catastrophic weeks in a row, we are still at a level that is approximately three times higher than that old record.
Overall, 40.8 million Americans have filed new claims for unemployment benefits over the past 10 weeks. That is the greatest spike in unemployment in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin, and it means that more than one-fourth of all the jobs in the United States have already been wiped out.
But for now, the impact of those job losses has been cushioned by the extremely generous $600 a week unemployment bonuses that the federal government has been handing out, but those benefits are set to expire at the end of July...
If those benefits are not extended we will see a massive national temper tantrum, and right now President Trump and Republican leaders in the Senate do not plan to extend them.Right now, many are able to take advantage of an additional $600 a week in unemployment benefits provided by the federal government on top of each state's standard jobless benefit. But that benefit is set to expire at the end of July if Congress does not pass another stimulus bill to extend benefits.
We shall see what happens, but we may soon have tens of millions of very angry unemployed Americans that are unable to pay their bills anymore.
And with each passing day, more bad economic news just keeps rolling in. We just learned that orders for durable goods were down 19.4 percent on a year over year basis last month, and we also just learned that pending home sales were down 34.6 percent in April compared to the same month a year ago.
As I discussed yesterday, we are watching a full-blown economic collapse begin to unfold, and the fact that many U.S. states are starting to "reopen for business" is not going to stop the momentum that has now been created.
During the first few weeks of the pandemic, there was just a trickle of major bankruptcies, but now that trickle has become a flood...
And we are watching store closings occur at a rate that we have never seen before in our entire history.In the first few weeks of the pandemic, it was just a trickle: companies like Alaskan airline Ravn Air pushed into bankruptcy as travel came to a halt and markets collapsed. But the financial distress wrought by the shutdowns only deepened, producing what is now a wave of insolvencies washing through America's corporations.
In May alone, some 27 companies reporting at least $50 million in liabilities sought court protection from creditors โ the highest number since the Great Recession. They range from well-known U.S. mainstays such as J.C. Penney Co. and J. Crew Group Inc. to air carriers Latam Airlines Group SA and Avianca Holdings, their business decimated as travelers stayed put.
At this point, Coresight Research is projecting that about 25,000 stores will permanently close by the end of this calendar year...
So much anger was building up all over America during the "good years", and now this new economic depression is going to make things much, much worse.Coresight Research, which tracks retail openings and closings, has upped its projected store closures for 2020 from 8,000 at the beginning of the year to 15,000 at the beginning of March to about 25,000 now.
"That's unlike anything the industry has ever seen," Coresight CEO and founder Deborah Weinswig said. "It's the speed with which it's all happening which has been a little surprising."
When there are no jobs available and people can't even provide the basics for their families, we are going to see frustration on a scale that is unlike anything we have ever witnessed before.
So please take careful note of what is happening in the streets of Minneapolis right now, because that is what the future is going to look like in all of our major cities.
About The Author:
I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of 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 have written four books that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters.
Comment: Though the events in Minneapolis look like they were, in part - paid for, agitated and provoked - the author's analysis pretty much still holds. Unemployment was already bad (and under-reported) prior to the virus, the economy was set to destruct prior to the virus. And keeping millions under the hysterical lockdown has already proven incredibly detrimental to the mental health of many. When the Big Crash does finally occur, and the checks have run out, and the dollar has one tenth of its current value - we may see wide-spread civil unrest the likes of which the US has never seen.