Yellowstone ALERT: 200 Earthquakes In 10 Days As Ring Of Fire Awakens

Scientists in Yellowstone have detected over 200 earthquakes at the supervolcano in the last 10 days. With reports coming in that the Ring of Fire could be awakening as well, many are preparing for the worst.

Although scientists are still telling the public there’s no need to be alarmed, reports of immense pressure in the magma chamber under Yellowstone, coupled with this new report claiming 200 earthquakes have been recorded in the last ten days are reigniting fears of a potential supervolcano eruption. According to The Daily Mail, this latest earthquake swarm began on February 8.

Experts with the US Geological Survey say that this latest swarm began in a region roughly eight miles northeast of West Yellowstone, Montana and, it’s increased dramatically in the days since. While the earthquakes are likely caused by a combination of processes beneath the surface, the current activity is said to be “relatively weak,” and the alert level at the supervolcano remains at “normal.” The USGS says the new swarm is occurring in about the same location as the Maple Creek swarm last summer, which brought roughly 2,400 earthquakes in a four-month span.

Experts also say there are likely many more earthquakes in the Yellowstone region that have gone undetected.  “The present swarm started on February 8, with a few events occurring per day,” according to USGS. “On February 15, seismicity rates and magnitudes increased markedly. As of the night of February 18, the largest earthquake in the swarm is M2.9, and none of the events have been felt. All are occurring about 8 km (5 mi) beneath the surface.”

“Swarms reflect changes in stress along small faults beneath the surface, and generally are caused by two processes: large-scale tectonic forces, and pressure changes beneath the surface due to accumulation and/or withdrawal of fluids (magma, water, and/or gas),” USGS explains. “The area of the current swarm is subject to both processes.”

“While it may seem worrisome, the current seismicity is relatively weak and actually represents an opportunity to learn more about Yellowstone,” USGS says. “It is during periods of change when scientists can develop, test, and refine their models of how the Yellowstone volcanic system works.” However, the experts did lace a warning into their statement. “The earthquakes, too, serve as a reminder of an underappreciated hazard at Yellowstone – that of strong earthquakes, which are the most likely event to cause damage in the region on the timescales of human lives.”

 

Collapsing Pensions Are “About to Bring Hell to America”

The toxic dollar is bringing hell in a handbasket.

Along with the student loan debt bubble and other major financial factors, the looming pensions crisis is bound to be the death of us all.

Because it’s based on a future promise to pay, it has long been a benefit dangled to solve strikes and union disputes – because, in the end, it is just more debt, whether private or public.

With tens of trillions in unfunded liabilities, the weight of an avalanche remains dangling over our heads. An aging population is cashing in on needed retirement benefits while the younger generations must support multiples that are unsustainable financially.

Somewhere between the retiree that needs clothing, food and lodging, and the bankruptcy of cities and state governments is the makings of the next economic crisis.

via AgainstCronyCapitalism.org:

This is one of those things that few will pay attention to until it’s a 5 alarm fire. Then the policymakers will run around with their hands in the air saying they didn’t see it coming.

Of course they did. But addressing the problem is hard and will make people unhappy in the short term.

This blog pointed out the sad, and quiet fact that entities like the government of South Carolina are deep in debt over pensions. Everywhere there are failing social systems.

And somewhere, the rubber is going to met the road, and people are going to get hurt.

As SHTF previously reported:

In 2014 a new Federal law made it possible for pension funds to cut benefits for their recipients.

[I]n October of [2015] the canary in the coal mine fell over and died when Illinois announced that the State was posting pension payments because it ran out of money.

Fast forward a few more months and things have been taken to the next level. The Central State pension fund in Kansas became the first such fund to take advantage of the 2014 law as 400,000 Americans who depend on their monthly pension income to pay for such things as their mortgage, groceries and medical expenses saw an average of $1,400 per month sliced of their monthly benefits.

Unfortunately, there may be no avoiding some very painful lapses in checks in the difficult years ahead.

As Market Watch reports:

But take a look South Carolina’s government pension plan, which covers roughly 550,000 people — one out of nine state residents — but is a staggering $24.1 billion in the red.

This is not a distant concern, but a system already in crisis.

Younger workers are being asked to do much more to support the pensions of retirees. An analysis by the The Post and Courier of Charleston noted recently that “Government workers and their employers have seen five hikes in their pension plan contributions since 2012, and there’s no end in sight.” (Most now contribute 8.66% of their pay, vs. 6.5% before the changes.) At the same time, the pension fund has been chasing more stocks and alternative investments instead of relying on stable investments like bonds that may be much less volatile but generate only meager returns.

And if that’s not troubling enough, South Carolina’s pension fund is far from alone.

Yeah.

California’s Calpers public retriree system is notoriously underfunded and doomed to implode. Chicago, Detroit and other urban wastelands are sagging under abysmal debt. Dallas, Texas pensions went insolvent. Puerto Rico is nothing but a propped up holding corp(se).

Something massive has been swept up just under the carpet.

Read more:

Screwed Over Retirees: Dallas Suspends Withdrawals From “Insolvent Pension System”

$8 Trillion Short On Pensions?! “No One Goes To Jail Because Establishment Is Complicit”

The System Is About to Burst Open: TRILLIONS In Unfunded Pensions “Foreshadow A Bleak Future”

Warning: You May Be Next: 400,000 People Just Had Their Pensions Cut By 50%: “Going to Happen To The Rest Of Pensions in the United States”

Click here to subscribe: Join over one million monthly readers and receive breaking news, strategies, ideas and commentary.

Please Spread The Word And Share This Post

Author: Mac Slavo
Views: Read by 909 people
Date: March 15th, 2017
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

Copyright Information: Copyright SHTFplan and Mac Slavo. This content may be freely reproduced in full or in part in digital form with full attribution to the author and a link to www.shtfplan.com. Please contact us for permission to reproduce this content in other media formats.

“Debt Will Start To Go Bad”: Bankruptcies Rising, Spillover Contagion Possible

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at the Economic Collapse blog.

Editor’s Comment: The pressure upon the system is enormous; lots of good people can’t handle it anymore. Squeezing financial obligations are forcing many consumers, and now commercial businesses, to fold with no way to pay back what they owe. A backlog of mounting debt that has accumulated collectively for years and years is now taking its toll. Things can only be shuffled for so long before a new string of failures tests the resilience of the system… which will be severely lacking.

A very bad cycle could begin – the debt super cycle, which the big banks have warned will be fatal to our economy, and trigger something at least on the scale of 2008, but likely much larger, and more destructive. Keep watch of how things unfold from here…

Debt Apocalypse Beckons As U.S. Consumer Bankruptcies Do Something They Haven’t Done In Almost 7 Years

by Michael Snyder

When debt grows much faster than GDP for an extended period of time, it is inevitable that a good portion of that debt will start to go bad at some point.  We witnessed a perfect example of this in 2008, and now it is starting to happen again.  Commercial bankruptcies have been rising on a year-over-year basis since late 2015, and this is something that I have written about previously, but now consumer bankruptcies are also increasing.  In fact, we have just witnessed U.S. consumer bankruptcies do something that they haven’t done in nearly 7 years.  The following comes from Wolf Richter…

US bankruptcy filings by consumers rose 5.4% in January, compared to January last year, to 52,421 according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. In December, they’d already risen 4.5% from a year earlier. This was the first time that consumer bankruptcies increased back-to-back since 2010.

However, business bankruptcies began to surge in November 2015 and continued surging on a year-over-year basis in 2016, to reach a full-year total of 37,823 filings, up 26% from the prior year and the highest since 2014.

Of course consumer bankruptcies are still much lower than they were during the last financial crisis, but what this could mean is that we have reached a turning point.

For years, the Federal Reserve has been encouraging reckless borrowing and spending by pushing interest rates to ultra-low levels.  Unfortunately, this created an absolutely enormous debt bubble, and now that debt bubble is beginning to burst.  Here is more from Wolf Richter…

The dizzying borrowing by consumers and businesses that the Fed with its ultra-low interest rates and in its infinite wisdom has purposefully encouraged to fuel economic growth, if any, and to inflate asset prices, has caused debt to pile up. That debt is now eating up cash flows needed for other things, and this is causing pressures, just when interest rates have begun to rise, which will make refinancing this debt more expensive and, for a rising number of consumers and businesses, impossible. And so, the legacy of this binge will haunt the economy – and creditors – for years to come.

Despite all of the economic optimism that is out there right now, the truth is that U.S. consumers are tapped out.

If the U.S. economy truly was doing great, major retailers would not be closing hundreds of stores.  Sears, Macy’s and a whole host of other big retailers are closing stores because those stores are losing money.  It truly is a “retail apocalypse“, and this trend is not going to turn around until U.S. consumers start to become healthier financially.

We also see signs of trouble in the auto sales numbers.  Compared to 2016, sales were way down in January this year…

Compared to January last year, car sales collapsed for all three US automakers, and the largest Japanese automakers didn’t do much better:

• GM -21.1%


• Ford -17.5%


• Fiat Chrysler -35.8%


• Toyota -19.9%


• Honda -10.7%


• Nissan -9.0%

For all automakers combined, car sales sagged 12.2% from a year ago.

A lot of attention is given to our 20 trillion dollar national debt, and rightly so, but a similar amount of attention should be paid to the fact that U.S. households are collectively more than 12 trillion dollars in debt.

About two-thirds of the nation is essentially living paycheck to paycheck.  Most families really struggle to pay the bills from month to month, and all it would take is a major event such as a job loss or a significant illness to plunge them into financial oblivion.

In America today we are told that the secret to success is a college education, but most young Americans have to go deep into debt to afford such an education.

As a result, most college graduates start out life in the “real world” with a mountain of debt.  And since many of them never find the “good jobs” that they were promised, repayment of that debt becomes a very big issue.  In fact, the Wall Street Journal has discovered that student loan repayment rates are much worse than we were being told…

Last Friday, the Education Department released a memo saying that it had overstated student loan repayment rates at most colleges and trade schools and provided updated numbers.

When The Wall Street Journal analyzed the new numbers, the data revealed that the Department previously had inflated the repayment rates for 99.8% of all colleges and trade schools in the country.

The new analysis shows that at more than 1,000 colleges and trade schools, or about a quarter of the total, at least half the students had defaulted or failed to pay down at least $1 on their debt within seven years.

If you do find yourself deep in debt, a lot of families have found success by following a plan that was pioneered by author Dave Ramsey.  His “Debt Snowball Plan” really works, but you have to be committed to it.

Getting out of debt can be tremendously freeing.  So many people spend so many sleepless nights consumed by financial stress, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

Most of us have had to go into debt for some reason or another, and not all debt is bad debt.  For example, very few of us would be able to own a home without getting a mortgage, and usually mortgages come with very low interest rates these days.

But other forms of debt (such as credit card debt or payday loans) can be financially crippling.  When it comes to eliminating debt, it is often a really good idea to start with the most toxic forms of debt first.

It has been said that the borrower is the servant of the lender, and you don’t want to spend the best years of your life making somebody else rich.

Whether economic conditions turn out to be good or bad in 2017, the truth is that each one of us should be trying to do what we can to get out of debt.

Unfortunately, a lot of people never seem to learn from the past, and I have a feeling that both consumer and commercial bankruptcies will continue to rise throughout the rest of this year.

This article was written by Michael Snyder and originally published at the Economic Collapse blog.