We are literally in the middle of World War III, but most Americans seem to be under the impression that everything is just fine. Stock prices just set a new record, Taylor Swift just got married, and most of us are partying like it is 1999. Meanwhile, Russian forces are gobbling up more territory in Ukraine, the Chinese are threatening Taiwan and the Iranians are chanting “death to America”. The war in the Middle East has now been going on for more than 1,000 days, and the war in Ukraine is officially longer than World War I was. What is it going to take for most Americans to finally wake up? Will it take nukes going off for them to finally rouse from their slumber?

When our enemies tell us exactly what they intend to do, we should believe them.

During the funeral procession for Ayatollah Khamenei in Tehran, there were endless chants of “Death to America”…

A huge funeral procession for Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was held in Tehran on Monday morning, with a teeming crowd clogging the streets to bid farewell to the ayatollah who ruled the country for 37 years before being killed in an airstrike at age 86.

At an early stage on the procession route, people chanted “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” And some of the mourners demanded retribution.

Ezat Vezvaei, 67, whose son, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in the U.S.-Israeli war, rapped her fingers on a Trump poster that read “wanted dead or alive.”

The radical Shiites that run Iran are never going to forgive us for what we have done.

No matter how long it takes, they fully intend to get their revenge.

For the rest of their lives, U.S. politicians that were involved will be targets…

As they passed under a bridge, mourners hurled stones at a billboard hung from above showing U.S. President Donald Trump with a bullet aimed at his head.

“The U.S. killed our father,” it read. “We won’t let you go!”

As demonstrators set fire to U.S. and British flags, women in black chadors held aloft red placards with the English words “KILL TRUMP” in black letters.

Others held aloft posters with the faces of Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth or Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, each depicted in the crosshairs of a gunsight, with the words “There will be blood”.

Earlier this year, top Iranian clerics declared a holy war against the United States and Israel.

No ceasefire or “memorandum of understanding” can cancel a holy war.

You see, the truth is that in Shiite Islam a holy war is forever.

Most westerners don’t even know what a “hudna” is.

A “hudna” is a tactical pause that allows Muslims to regroup and rearm in anticipation of the next round of fighting.

At this moment the Iranians are feverishly rearming, and there has also been an alarming amount of activity at “Pickaxe Mountain”…

It said, however, that fresh satellite imagery from late last month indicated that the portion of the Natanz complex known as “Pickaxe Mountain,” or Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, has been the site of recent vehicle activity and construction, with workers appearing to be reinforcing tunnel entrances.

The underground site tunneled into a mountain near the main Natanz facility is thought to have been under construction since 2020, according to experts quoted by The New York Times last month.

The exact purpose of the site is not known, and inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency have never been granted access.

There is a reason that IAEA inspectors have never been allowed access to “Pickaxe Mountain”, and it isn’t because the Iranians are knitting doilies in that facility.

But we aren’t supposed to talk about that, are we?

Meanwhile, we have been seeing a lot of very unusual activity from the Chinese.

On Monday, they test-fired a long-range missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead…

The launch of a nuclear-capable long-range missile from a Chinese submarine in the South Pacific with just hours of notice has angered Australia and New Zealand, who labelled the test destabilising and concerning.

The firing of the ballistic missile, fitted with a dummy warhead, came just hours after Australia and Fiji struck a new defence alliance that commits them to come to each other’s aid if they come under attack.

A Chinese tracking ship was stationed alongside Fiji at the time of the missile firing, with a leading maritime surveillance company saying its presence was unlikely to have been coincidental.

The Chinese do not test intercontinental ballistic missiles very often.

In fact, this was only the second test in the Pacific Ocean since 1980…

China last conducted a missile test in the Pacific two years ago, firing an intercontinental ballistic missile with a dummy warhead. That previous launch in international waters was the first in decades, since 1980.

The Chinese are also becoming a lot more aggressive with Taiwan.

China’s Coast Guard is now conducting “law enforcement patrols” in the waters all the way on the eastern side of Taiwan, and this has greatly angered Taiwanese officials…

On Saturday, China said it had launched a coast guard patrol east of Taiwan to replace a coast guard task force whose presence off the island’s coast has angered Taipei and caused alarm in some Western capitals.

The fleet will conduct “law enforcement patrols” in the area, China’s Coast Guard said in a statement, adding it would strengthen such patrols in what it called China’s jurisdictional waters.

In response, Taiwan’s Coast Guard said it had deployed monitoring vessels and would use “all necessary measures to forcefully expel Chinese vessels harassing our waters.”

China is setting the stage for a full blockade of Taiwan.

And a full blockade of Taiwan would mean war with the United States.

We are much closer to a war with China than most people realize.

And if a war with China does erupt, it would be a real challenge for our military…

Imagine a globe-spanning naval battle, with both sides interdicting commerce. Imagine a collapse in Asian trade, far worse than the consequence of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. Imagine a North Korean invasion of the South, backed by the PRC and Russia. Imagine steady military escalation as human and materiel losses mounted. Imagine Beijing’s leadership turning to nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, even Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth acknowledges that the U.S. often loses in official war games. When Washington emerges victorious, its losses are typically still huge — two (and sometimes more) aircraft carriers, one or two dozen ships, hundreds of aircraft, and thousands of personnel. And many exercises simply don’t game the consequences of nuclear strikes. Are Americans prepared to risk their homes and nation so Washington can forever dominate China along its coast, thereby imposing what the U.S. would never accept?

Of course there is also the possibility that we could end up squaring off against Russia and China simultaneously.

The Russians and the Chinese continue to develop deeper ties, and this week they are conducting yet another round of joint exercises…

The Chinese and Russian navies will hold joint exercises in the waters and airspace off China’s eastern coast this coming week.

In a statement on Sunday, the Chinese Ministry of Defence said the annual drills off the major port of Qingdao would be followed by joint maritime patrols in unspecified areas of the Pacific Ocean.

Separately, Russian state media reported that a cruiser, a corvette, a diesel-electric submarine and a rescue vessel from Russia’s Pacific Fleet had arrived in Qingdao for the drills that are set to run from Monday to July 13.

We have been involved in a proxy war against the Russians in Ukraine for more than four years now, and there is no end in sight.

Despite all of the money and resources that we have poured into that war, the Russians just keep moving forward.

In fact, they reportedly just captured the fortress city of Kostyantynivka…

Russia on Friday said it had captured the eastern Ukrainian city of Kostyantynivka, a key post on the road leading to the last major cities in the Donbas region under Kyiv’s control.

The battle for this city, which had around 78,000 inhabitants before the war, has been taking place since late 2025 and now constitutes the main Russian effort on a front more than 1,000 kilometres long.

“Kostyantynivka has been completely taken. The city is now entirely under our control,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters, including those from AFP, announcing that President Vladimir Putin had spoken with the military about it.

This was an enormous loss for the Ukrainians, and the Russians have just made a breakthrough on the northern front as well…

After the key victory in Konstantinovka, opening the way for an assault on the Slaviansk-Kramatorsk fortress belt, news arises that the Russian army liberated 4 settlements in the Kharkov region at once.

Units of the Запад (West) group of forces established control over the settlements Shiykovka, Novy Mir, Cherneshchina, and Druzhelyovka, as well as in Vasilevka in the Donetsk region.

You won’t hear much about this from the mainstream media in the western world.

They would like for us to believe that Ukraine is winning.

But that isn’t the reality on the ground.

On Monday, the Russians fired another massive wave of drones and missiles at Kyiv…

Russia unleashed waves of missiles and drones at Ukraine early Monday, killing at least 22 people in attacks that exposed widening gaps in the country’s air defenses more than four years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion, authorities said.

All of the ballistic missiles launched by Russia struck their targets, underscoring Kyiv’s need for more U.S.-made Patriot interceptor missiles – a point Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will likely reiterate at a NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, this week.

Fifteen people were killed in the capital of Kyiv, which was Russia’s main target, and 56 were injured, according to administrative head Tymur Tkachenko. Another seven people were killed in the wider Kyiv region and 29 were injured, according to Ukraine’s emergency service.

The Zhulyany Missile Assembly and Components Plant was one of the targets that got hit, and the initial explosion “was followed by hours of secondary explosions as the missiles and missile components kept exploding”…

And finally, the Zhulyany Missile Assembly and Components Plant which manufactures anti-aircraft missile systems, components for aircraft and air defense systems.

And it was at the Zhulyany plant that the most shocking image was captured, where the initial explosion from the strike was followed by hours of secondary explosions as the missiles and missile components kept exploding.

As the war in Ukraine continues to intensify, there is going to be an enormous amount of pressure on western leaders to intervene more directly.

And once we find ourselves in a direct shooting war with the Russians, that will put us just one step away from nuclear war.

We are literally watching World War III unfold right in front of our eyes, but most people that I interact with don’t seem to understand this.

Interestingly, the starting dates for World War I, World War II and World War III all add up to the exact same number. The following is an extended excerpt from one of my previous articles…

———

I asked Google AI to tell me when World War I started, and I was told that it began on 07-28-1914…

World War I officially began on July 28, 1914. This date marks the beginning of Austria-Hungary’s declaration of war on Serbia, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This event triggered a chain reaction of declarations of war across Europe, escalating into the global conflict known as World War I.

7 + 28 + 19 + 14 = 68

Are you with me so far?

Then I asked Google AI to tell me when World War II started, and I was told that it began on 09-01-1939…

World War II officially began on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. This invasion triggered declarations of war by France and the United Kingdom, as they had treaties guaranteeing Poland’s support. However, the war’s roots lie in unresolved tensions from World War I, the rise of fascist and militarist regimes, and aggressive expansionist policies by several nations.

9 + 1 + 19 + 39 = 68

Okay, that is kind of creepy.

Then I asked Google AI to tell me when the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, and I was told that it happened on 02-24-2022…

Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This marked a significant escalation of the conflict between the two countries that began in 2014.

2 + 24 + 20 + 22 = 68

I was blown away when I first learned about this.

What are the odds that the dates when World War I, World War II and World War III all started would add up to the exact same number?

I went back and checked, and on February 24th, 2022 I wrote the following…

Hopefully many of you are starting to grasp the gravity of what we are facing.  For years, I have been relentlessly warning that war with Russia was coming, and now it is here.

I tried to warn everyone about what would happen if we stayed on the path that we were on, but now it is too late.

There is nothing more than can be done, because World War III has already started.

———

When World War I started, nobody called it World War I at first.

And when World War II started, nobody called it World War II at first.

Now World War III is here, and even though it has already been raging for several years most people in the western world still don’t understand what they are watching.

That is because the fighting is taking place on the other side of the planet.

But eventually this war will be felt on our soil too, and that will be extremely unfortunate.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post As Americans Sleep, Iranians Chant “Death To America”, China Threatens Taiwan And Russian Forces Advance In Ukraine appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

Did you know that the number of Americans that are out of work right now is far higher than it was at any point during the Great Recession? I know that sounds crazy, but I will prove it to you in this article. A whopping 111 million Americans do not have a job, and we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year on the social safety net that supports them. Of course we cannot afford to do this, because the national debt has already reached 39 trillion dollars and it is growing at an astounding rate. If we do not fix our economy, disaster is inevitable.

The bureaucrats in Washington keep telling us that the unemployment rate is low even though there are vast numbers of adults all around us that are not working.

The way that they are able to do this is by dumping almost everyone that is not working into a category known as “not in labor force”.

This allows them to keep the official rate of unemployment suppressed even as the labor force participation rate hits an insanely low level…

On the surface, a June drop in the unemployment rate helped provide some upside to what was an otherwise downbeat jobs report — but it was for all the wrong reasons.

That’s because the decline in the jobless level to 4.2%, the lowest in a year, came largely from an exodus of workers from the labor force, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data Thursday.

In fact, the measure of the working-age population either employed or looking for a job slid to 61.5%, the lowest since March 2021. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest labor force participation rate in exactly 50 years.

Today, there are just over 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed.

That doesn’t sound bad at all.

But they rarely mention those that are considered to be not in the labor force. This is how the Federal Reserve defines that category…

Persons who are neither employed nor unemployed are not in the labor force. This category includes retired persons, students, those taking care of children or other family members, and others who are neither working nor seeking work.

As you can see from the chart below, the number of people that they have been dumping into that category has grown dramatically since 1990.

Right now, there are 104 million Americans that do not have a job that are considered to be not in the labor force…

When you add the 7 million Americans that are officially unemployed to the 104 million Americans that are considered to be not in the labor force, you get a grand total of 111 million Americans that do not have a job right now.

At no point during the Great Recession did that combined figure ever reach 100 million.

That is how bad things are in the U.S. at this moment.

Of course the 111 million Americans that are not working need to be supported somehow.

Some of them are supported by other family members that have incomes coming in.

But most of them are either partially or totally supported by our social safety net.

According to the House Ways and Means Committee, we spend more than a trillion dollars a year on more than 80 different social safety net programs…

Buying Americans out of poverty is undermining incentives to work, with families living in poverty relying more on taxpayer-funded welfare checks than income from work, according to a newly released report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Costing well over $1 trillion, America’s social safety net encompasses more than 80 federal programs, and is discouraging beneficiaries from seeking income from work.

The report, which was requested by Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (MO-08), shows low-income families are becoming increasingly dependent on government transfers. In 1979, families living below the poverty line earned about 60 percent of their income from work. In 2021, that number dropped to an all-time low of around 25 percent. The report also shows how the dramatic increase in dependency on government transfers for low-income families was accelerated by COVID-era benefits.

Read that first paragraph again.

I had no idea that it was this bad.

For over a decade I have been writing about America’s ongoing economic collapse, and now we have reached a very advanced stage.

If the federal government was not supporting them, tens of millions more Americans would be living in poverty right now.

So what would our society look like if we stopped borrowing gigantic mountains of money to fuel this system?

And each day, even more Americans are losing their places in the middle class because they are getting laid off.

In fact, it is being reported that Microsoft is preparing for yet another round of massive layoffs…

Microsoft is reportedly planning another round of layoffs, expected to be announced as early as next week.

The cuts will impact thousands of roles across sales, consulting, and the Xbox gaming division. Total layoffs will amount to less than 2.5%% of the company’s workforce.

Microsoft employs roughly 220,000 people across the globe. The company eliminated approximately 15,000 positions just last year — 6,000 layoffs in May 2025 and another 9,000 layoffs in July 2025.

But if we just throw the entire country into the “not in labor force” category, we can pretend that the unemployment rate is at 0.0 percent and that everything is just fine, right?

What a joke.

Of course most Americans that are actually working are really struggling these days.

Home prices in the U.S. have risen by about 60 percent since the beginning of the last pandemic, and at this stage housing in the U.S. is more unaffordable than it has ever been before…

Home prices have grown by roughly 60 percent since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to JP Morgan data. Mortgage rates are historically high, and have been so since 2022. And the U.S. homeownership rate hit its lowest level since 2019 last year, at 65 percent, according to Census data.

“I think right now the housing market is pretty unprecedented,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin, told Newsweek. “We have the highest home prices that have ever been on record, along with pretty high mortgage rates. The mortgage rates aren’t the highest we’ve seen on record—they exceeded 18 percent in 1981—but they are higher than they have been for the last 10 years or so.

“And so housing affordability has gotten really bad, especially for young people who don’t already own homes. Breaking into the housing market is incredibly tough.”

How are young adults supposed to purchase homes in this environment?

Home prices have risen far faster than incomes have, and this has “put homeownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans”…

Back in 1975, a typical home cost about 2.4 times as much as the average under-40 household earned in a year, a standard measure of housing affordability, according to a new report from Pew Research Center.

By 2019, that price-to-income ratio had risen to 2.9. In 2024, it reached 3.5.

Over the past decade, home prices have risen much faster than wages. The rising ratio of price to income, coupled with elevated interest rates, has put homeownership out of reach for millions of millennial and Gen Z Americans.

This is one of the biggest reasons why young adults are so angry.

They simply can’t afford to live normal lives.

Last year, the percentage of first-time homebuyers dropped to the lowest level ever recorded…

First-time buyers represented only 21% of all home purchasers in 2025, a record low, according to the National Association of Realtors. The typical age of a first-time buyer climbed to 40, an all-time high.

Meanwhile, virtually everything else is becoming more expensive too.

For example, the price of ground beef is up 13 percent over the past year, and that price of steak is up 16 percent over the past year…

The average price of ground beef was $6.75 per pound in May, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, up nearly 13% from a year ago and just below April’s record high of $6.90. Beef steak prices averaged $12.80 per pound, up 16% from a year earlier and the second-highest level on record.

Tens of millions of Americans are deeply hurting right now, and what we have experienced so far is just the beginning.

This is why I rant about the economy so much.

I hear from so many people out there that are in very real pain.

Decades of very foolish decisions have resulted in decades of economic decline, and now we really have reached a breaking point.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post 111 Million U.S. Adults Do Not Have A Job And America Spends More Than A Trillion Dollars Per Year On A Social Safety Net For Them appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz is not even close to being resolved, and global oil supplies continue to get tighter and tighter. The world has been running an “oil deficit” for months, and we have been able to do that by running down commercial oil inventories and strategic national reserves. There was hope that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would return to pre-war levels before things got really hairy, but that isn’t happening. In fact, in recent days only about 30 to 40 commercial vessels have been traveling through the Strait each day. Before the war, the average was about 120 to 130 commercial vessels per day. The vast majority of the commercial vessels that have been getting through the Strait have been heading away from the Persian Gulf. Very few are headed into the Persian Gulf for understandable reasons. So once the backlog of commercial vessels that have been trapped in the Persian Gulf is finally eliminated, the level of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will likely drop to depressingly low levels.

So we should be thankful that the price of oil has dropped a bit lower for now, but it won’t stay that way.

And that will especially be true if war with Iran fully erupts again.

We have seen fighting flare up multiple times in recent weeks, and it certainly wouldn’t take much to push things over the edge.

On Wednesday, it was being reported that President Trump has been briefed on options for “a return to all-out war with Iran”…

President Trump has weighed a return to all-out war with Iran, holding multiple conversations in recent days with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine on more strikes, but has decided to stick with diplomatic talks for now, according to U.S. officials familiar with the discussion.

The conversations have centered on whether the U.S. should abandon negotiations and resume full-scale attacks on Iran, the officials said, a move some of them describe as “finishing the job.” While not making a final decision, Trump has told aides he believes another round of full-scale attacks could derail diplomacy and hurt Washington’s chances of ultimately dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

I was quite surprised when I read that.

I didn’t think that Trump and his team had an appetite for more conflict right now.

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi just used some very strong language in an extremely inflammatory social media post…

The terms of the Islamabad MoU are crystal clear and public for all to see.

POTUS has committed the U.S. to muzzling its pets in Tel Aviv. If they ignore their master, Iran will school them.

Any threat against our People and Leadership will receive Immediate Powerful Response.

This is a threat to attack Israel.

The Iranians are demanding that the Israelis must withdraw from Lebanon, but the Israelis continue to tell us that this will simply not happen…

Israel’s defense minister said Wednesday that forces would remain “indefinitely” in so-called security zones established in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.

“The IDF will not withdraw and will remain in the security zones in Lebanon, Syria, and Gaza – indefinitely – to protect our residents and communities from jihadist elements,” Israel Katz said.

“We are fighting to change reality and bring security to the residents of the north,” he added, referring to communities along Israel’s border with Lebanon from which thousands of people have been evacuated due to the threat posed by Iranian-backed Hezbollah.

The Israelis are absolutely determined to stop the bombardment of their northern communities.

Since early March, Hezbollah has fired “more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones” into Israeli territory…

Israeli officials say Hezbollah has launched more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones into Israel since early March while embedding military infrastructure inside civilian areas and Christian villages in southern Lebanon.

The claims were made by Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar during MUNI EXPO in Tel Aviv as Israel, Lebanon and the United States continue negotiations aimed at securing Hezbollah’s disarmament and a lasting peace agreement.

“Since March alone, Hezbollah has launched more than 7,000 rockets, missiles and drones from Lebanese territory into Israel,” Sa’ar said. “What country can accept this and not act to restore security to its citizens?”

It is inevitable that Hezbollah will fire more rockets, missiles and drones into northern Israel.

In response, Israel will bomb southern Beirut again.

The Iranians have already told us that if Israel does that again they will fire ballistic missiles at Israel.

And once that occurs, the IDF will strike back extremely hard.

I don’t know what those that are convinced that there will be peace in the Middle East are smoking, but it must be really strong.

When more fighting erupts in the Middle East, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz will drop lower than it is now.

And that is very bad news, because even though the “Memorandum of Understanding” was signed a couple of weeks ago, traffic through the Strait of Hormuz continues to remain at very low levels…

Shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz began to rebound Monday following weekend tit-for-tat strikes between the U.S. and Iran.

Reports from the maritime tracking firm Kpler said 40 vessels passed through the critical waterway on Monday, while 24 ships transited the strait on Sunday in addition to 39 ships on Saturday.

Almost all of the commercial vessels that are passing through the Strait are headed out.

Very few are headed in.

And many of the ships that are actually headed in are Iranian.

For now, most shipping companies continue to treat the Strait of Hormuz “as a war zone”…

Unions and shipping employers said in a statement Wednesday they will continue to designate the Strait of Hormuz as a war zone until at least July 9, maintaining double pay for seafarers in the area despite a fragile truce between the U.S. and Iran.

The status only covers ships whose companies are signatories of the International Bargaining Forum’s labor agreements — around 15,000 vessels worldwide, according to the IBF.

Seafarers covered by the agreement working on ships in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters get paid double, and have the right to refuse to sail into the area and request repatriation at the company’s expense, increasing costs for shipping companies.

This is really bad news for the global economy.

On top of everything else, Ukraine’s endless bombardment of Russian oil facilities has caused gasoline shortages all over Russia…

Fuel shortages across Russia have triggered a new political challenge for President Vladimir Putin, as a relentless Ukrainian drone campaign aimed at the country’s oil refineries has brought the war home for most ordinary Russians.

While Ukraine has targeted Russian energy facilities for years, the quantity and firepower of Ukrainian drones and missiles have risen. This has allowed Kyiv to hit refineries as far as Tyumen, 1,200 miles away in Siberia, and permitted the spectacular raid that broke through thick layers of air defenses and destroyed Moscow’s main refinery on June 18, the turning point of the current crisis.

Some 28% of Russia’s refining capacity was offline as of June 20, estimated Sergey Vakulenko, former head of strategy at Gazprom Neft, a large Russian oil company, and now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin.

Russia is one of the largest oil producers on the entire planet.

But now the Russians are being forced to actually import fuel thanks to Ukraine.

Everything that I have shared in this article means that global supplies of oil are going to continue to become tighter and tighter in the weeks and months ahead.

In other words, the stage is being set for a severe global energy crisis and a mammoth global economic meltdown.

For the moment, many investors are still feeling very optimistic about things, but it won’t be too long before they are brutally blindsided by reality.

Michael’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.

About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “10 Prophetic Events That Are Coming Next” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.  He has also written nine other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today.

The post Traffic Through The Strait Of Hormuz Is Way Below Pre-War Levels As Trump Is Briefed On Options For “All-Out War” appeared first on The Economic Collapse.