Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The Social Security program was instituted to help elderly Americans thrive during their  retirement years.  Unfortunately, millions upon millions of  retired Americans are finding that their monthly Social Security payments are simply not enough as the cost of living spirals out of control. 

One recent survey found that a whopping 85 percent of U.S. adults now consider inflation to be one of the most important political issues that we are facing, and seniors are being hit particularly hard.  In fact, a different survey that was just conducted by the Motley Fool discovered that 44 percent of  retired Americans are thinking of going back to work because they need more money to survive…

A growing number of retired Americans are considering returning to work as they continue to battle chronic inflation, according to a new survey published by the Motley Fool.

About 44% of respondents said they are thinking about looking for work because their Social Security benefits have not adequately kept pace with high inflation.

Needless to say, trying to go back to work in your seventies, eighties or nineties is not an easy thing to do.

But if you have to choose between going back to work or not eating three meals a day, I think that the choice is easy.

Today, the average Social Security payment is less than half of what the average  retired American spends each month…

The average monthly Social Security payment in 2024 is $1,907, according to the Social Security Administration. But that is just a fraction of the $4,818 that Americans age 65 and older reported spending in 2022.

Of course the current economic environment has been very difficult for all of us.

If you can believe it, compared to three years ago the typical household in this country is spending an extra $1,069 per month just to maintain the same standard of living…

The typical U.S. household needed to pay $227 more a month in March to purchase the same goods and services it did one year ago because of still-high inflation. Americans are paying on average $784 more each month compared with the same time two years ago and $1,069 more compared with three years ago.

Sadly, the cost of living is only going to get worse because our leaders just can’t help themselves.

At this point, our politicians in Washington have borrowed so much money that we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt.

In fact, we now spend more on interest on the national debt than we do on national defense.

But instead of slowing down, our politicians just continue to borrow and spend trillions upon trillions of dollars.

So inflation is not going away any time soon.

Meanwhile, the number of home foreclosures was up once again last month…

Home foreclosures rose again in May as Americans continue to grapple with the ongoing cost-of-living crisis.

That is according to a new report published by real estate data provider ATTOM, which found that there were 32,621 properties in May with foreclosure filings, which includes default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions.

That certainly isn’t a good sign.

Needless to say, there have been lots and lots of troubling signs for the economy lately…

In addition to the conflicting rise in unemployment, other signs of deterioration include stagnant retail sales, a slowing of consumer spending, weak industrial production and manufacturing orders, increasing consumer debt, depressed new housing starts, falling annual earnings of full-time employees, and rising commodity prices.

To many of those at the bottom of the economic food chain, it feels like the economy has already collapsed.

Today, 20 percent of the entire population of California is living in poverty, and massive homeless encampments have sprouted all over the state.

Unfortunately, many more Americans will soon be joining the ranks of the poor because the economy is rapidly moving in the wrong direction.

The outlook is so bleak that even Walmart is closing down stores…

Walmart has decided to close three more stores across the US, bringing this year’s total number of failed locations to 11.

The retail giant said these three stores – located in Georgia and Colorado – underperformed financially.

And we just learned that more Pizza Hut locations are being permanently shuttered…

Pizza Hut shuttered 15 locations in Indiana on Friday while more than 120 additional locations are in danger of closing, according to a report from The Times of Northwest Indiana.

The latest closures come after a long-running dispute between the chain and a franchisee. EYM Group, which owns and operates 142 Pizza Hut locations in Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Wisconsin, was accused of defaulting on millions of dollars in payments owed to Pizza Hut by a June deadline.

A new economic crisis has already begun, but it is going to get so much worse during the months and years that are ahead of us.

As we approach the end of this calendar year, we will want to keep a very close eye on the global financial system.

There have been a number of ominous signs lately that should definitely alarm all of us.  Most notably, the fifth largest bank in Japan just announced that it will be selling off approximately 63 billion dollars in government bonds…

But if that was the first, and still distant, sign that something was very wrong at one of Japan’s biggest banks (Norinchukin is Japan’s 5th largest bank with $840 billion in assets) today the proverbial canary stepped on a neutron bomb inside the Japanese coalmine, because according to Nikkei, Norinchukin Bank “will sell more than 10 trillion yen ($63 billion) of its holdings of U.S. and European government bonds during the year ending March 2025 as it aims to stem its losses from bets on low-yield foreign bonds, a main cause of its deteriorating balance sheet, and lower the risks associated with holding foreign government bonds.”

See, what’s happened in Japan is not that different from what is happening in the US, where as the FDIC keeps reminding us quarter after quarter, US banks are still sitting on over half a trillion dollars in unrealized losses, as a result of the huge jump in interest rates which has blown up the banks’ long-duration fixed income holdings, sending them trading far below par and forcing banks (and the Fed, see BTFP) to come up with creative ways of shoving these massive losses under the rug.

Major banks all over the world are sitting on gigantic mountains of unrealized losses.

If things start going wrong, it won’t take much to induce panic.

And once panic starts, it won’t take much to spark a financial avalanche.

We are in far more trouble than most people realize, and the dark clouds on the horizon are getting closer with each passing day.

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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.