Bankruptcies are “all over the place”, not just specific sectors.
Bankruptcies Explode Across the Economy
Business Insider reports Bankruptcies are exploding across the economy, hitting small businesses and households
- From corporate giants to mom-and-pop shops, bankruptcies are piling up across the US this year.
- Large corporate bankruptcies have hit their highest level in 15 years.
- “Bankruptcies seem to be kind of all over the place,” one veteran bankruptcy attorney said.
“Rising costs, tighter credit conditions, and ongoing geopolitical volatility continue to exert pressure on households and businesses already facing financial strain,” Amy Quackenboss, the executive director at the American Bankruptcy Institute, said earlier this month.
Unlike past downturns, this wave of bankruptcies appears to be hitting nearly every corner of the economy. It’s sweeping across a range of sectors in what one veteran bankruptcy attorney described as a strikingly “unusual” pattern.
A wide cross-section of industries
Typically, corporate failures tend to be “industry sticky,” meaning they cluster within the same sectors, Robert Stark, a partner at the law firm Brown Rudnick and chair of its bankruptcy and corporate restructuring practice group, recently told Business Insider.
“Bankruptcies seem to be kind of all over the place,” added Stark, who represents creditor groups in the 2025 bankruptcies of auto parts company First Brands and fintech startup Linqto, as well as the equity committee in the Chapter 11 case of genetic testing company 23andMe.
Stark said that he can’t pinpoint a clear cause for the “broad smattering of industries” now in bankruptcy, but he called it “unusual” in his 30 years of experience and “shockingly so.”
High-profile bankruptcies
Major corporate bankruptcies this year have included hospitality company Sonder, Spirit Airlines, Del Monte Foods, retailer Claire’s, and CVS Health subsidiary Omnicare. Each, in court filings, listed more than $1 billion in liabilities, placing them among the largest bankruptcies of 2025.
According to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence, which tracks public and private companies of a certain size, bankruptcy filings climbed to 717 through November, topping last year’s tally of 687.
Even without December figures, 2025 has already logged the highest annual count for large corporate bankruptcies since 2010, when filings totaled 828, according to S&P Global.
Small business bankruptcies
The spike in bankruptcies extends well beyond the corporate sphere, with an increasing number of small businesses also filing for bankruptcy, data shows.
Personal bankruptcies
In addition to big and small businesses, individual bankruptcies have also increased amid rising costs. Individual bankruptcy filings saw an 8% jump to 40,973 in November 2025, up from the 37,814 filings in November 2024, the data cited by ABI shows.
Last month, there were 25,329 individual filings for Chapter 7, known as “clean slate” or liquidation bankruptcy, up 11% from the 22,871 filings recorded in November 2024.
Pinpointing the Cause
It’s tariffs and inflation, stupid.
Trump says this is the greatest economy ever. Yeah, right.
Related Posts
December 3, 2025 : Small Businesses Drop 120,000 Jobs in November, ADP Total Down 32,000
It’s another grim month according to ADP.
December 27, 2025: Only a Third of CEOs Plan to Hire Workers in 2026
66% will fire workers or play wait and see with AI.
December 31, 2025: Trump’s Broken Window Economy. Year 2025 in Review
Today’s trade rhetoric, full of ‘historic deals,’ obscures the real question: are these policies making America richer or poorer?
Meanwhile, please note Only 56 Percent of Republicans Say the Economy Is Good
If you don’t understand why, please click on some of the preceding links.
The world has learned from the US. Now it’s about competition and the US can’t
“I fear that some day the people will be homeless and hungry on the land that their forefathers fought and died for”.
What you are really saying is that our owner’s scheme is going as planned.
“As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance”
Trump has made a habit of bankruptcy and taking advantage of the lenders to evade paying off both legitimate debts and later, taxes.
MAGA might be adopting their leaders strategic failure strategy…
😉
it is the all amerikan way. when the assholes in ND started charging usury rates decades ago and allowed all the CC companies to domicle for that, it was the beginning of the end of the amerikan societal contract and nobless oblige mentality of ruling class of amerikan bankers, farmers and industrialists. those heartland farmers and ranchers are as scumbag as the wall street ruling class i was raised among.
Correct, family farmers are massively over leveraged and failing.
I have access to 360 acres of farm/forrest land that is in foreclosure with my local bank. Doing due diligence and cherry picking the best and closest to or bordering my other farms.
Trump has really hurt the small scale farmers that voted for him.
Frosty just curious are most of the farms in your state family owned? or is Big AG coming in ?
In NYS most are family owned. Just very small. And a lot of them are turning to additional streams of revenue.
Whether its an actual farm or apple orchards they are turning to Cider and wine mixed in.
I have been known to have a few beverages of my choice and close a few of these establishments on a Sunday.
You familiar with our Cayuga County? I love it up there, but honestly mostly for reasons out side of farming lol
But grateful for the farmer for sure.
i reside now in upstate NY too. on the hudson R. lived up here 45 years ago, too for college…….. spent my youth in summers working on a small farmhouse with a few pigs and chopping down firewood…………in the 70s, on my siblings small mountain top farm that we could see 3 states, NY / VT and MA…………cross country skiing and hunting varmints……….
Nice. I think people from the rest of the country think we New Yorkers are all city boys and girls.
And while many of us may have came from a city we migrated to greener pastures
I now live 15 minutes south of Catskill. Not sure if permanent or not yet
i’m close to catskill. half hour drive. i love brooklyn. moved back and lived there the past 5 years since moving back east. where i started 35 years ago……lived around the continent and travelled the world from russia to japan……the business in russia in 90s is top on my list of business life experiences…………moved up the hudson valley 6 months ago near family up here. less than 2 hours on amtrak i’m back in city again near my most cherished loved ones……….it’s best to be content no matter where one is. i love city and country and town and deep south and southwest and bay area the best city in usa. mexico city is the best city in north amerika. for me anyway. town and country i love both. life is good. in spite of the nihilist cunts who inhabit and vote for nazi like warmongering my entire life here. i keep fighting for libertarian peace and prosperity. cannot wait until this empire crumbles. will be much better coast to coast. peace old sport. we can grab some lunch sometime perhaps. i met a bunch of guys from my favorite political site last few years in brooklyn. the betting sites for politics. ciao
Yes the beauty of the hudson valley.Perfect location.
What scares me about the empire crumbling,right now at least is the people that want to crumble it don’t show me they have a solid plan in place to get this country functioning the way its supposed to. I fear total chaos. I might be gone by then but worry about family & loved ones.
I will take you up on that lunch in the near future.
hudson valley reminds me of my years living up in the wine country/redwood forest area of norcal. except the weather blows upstate NY. the redwoods on our property were awesome. most magnificent part of amerika imho. drive through the dense redwoods for an hour and on the greatest coastline in usa. it’s a big world. so many wonderful places.
They are nurturing coastal redwoods in a city in Michigan, apparently it’s working well so far. Who knew?
I appreciate the civility of this discussion. There is so much good in people and we often fail to see it within our polarized nation.
Off to listen to some John Prine classics I have recently discovered.
Enjoy!
I’ll go with some Jimmy Smith, Back in the Chickenshack
The states I farm in have areas that are a blend of corporate and family farms. The areas I have focused on are mostly family farms between 40 and 120 acres.
My success has been in purchasing distressed farms and rebuilding their soils and planting unique (higher value) crops and a growing honey/pollination operation.
Also limited high value forest products and x-mas trees.
Very interesting. Thank you Frosty. Be well.
We are next to nothing without our farmers
awesome and agree on your analysis. always. well that is great. from your posting you seem to improve the soil and thems the breaks. over leverage in any business from farming to zoo ownership and it’s curtains during a draw down. yea, trump really fucked over the racist assholes and hate mongers that voted for him. i think that IS by design. he’s a masochist and loves to hurt people from teen age girls to his entire life from childhood to business dealings fucking over the construction firms and workers who built him and his fathers shit. his father ripped off the us government with Veteran money after ww2 on the buildings in my little village of brooklyn. fucking over the farmers is a delight for him. extra points for his ego. as an aside, the smartest man i ever knew started life as a rancher in SD. still owns tons of that land and land all over the world with gold all over the world and high tech company in AZ where i lived for 13 years. he was incredible too. always handed out silver and copper coins at all our think tank discussion groups monthly meetings of libertarians……….when the debacle was over in 2011 in phoenix, i was picking his brain for what i was going to do in R/E. he took ME to lunch and opened up his business plan he was going to do also and really helped me with sound advice. i already was a 25 year veteran r/e investor. but i never saw a guy so smart and so nice. his sons were doing the bird dogging. my target properties were downtown crafstman bungalows pre state hood of AZ. called territory houses. i like them as beat up as i can find. restored them and long term rentals. 2 and 4 family houses…….the cap rates were in the mid teens to twenties. my rancher pal was targeting exurbs where it was ridiculously cheap. the reason i’m typing this is i never knew a business man that was so open and willing to guide me with his immense knowledge and opened his books and business plan. my next door neighbors growing up in ny were dustbowl and ww2 vet, we called uncle paul and aunt mary. another old farmer who sold insurance in corn fields in NE afer the war and climbed the ladder to the board room of met life. kindest people i ever knew. and whip smart. we were family. went in their house after school for cookies and milk before i went home, next door.
South Dakota.
I mostly blame Windows OS for not supporting proper, easy key international language accents, just look at how your post would shine with them.
Stock market continues to go higher.
i remember a time that having a million dollar portfolio meant you were thurston howell the 3rd on gilligans island. no need to ever work. just play golf. a million us dollars net worth, with house, today is squarely middle class. the dow will go to 100k and buy bupkiss in 3 years. the dow/gold ratio is my favorite chart of all time. also real estate / gold ratio is my 2nd fav. check them out.
These bankruptcies were baked in after covid. The truth is the economy was dying before covid and covid simply extended and pretended. Until we a recession that actually resets the entire economy nothing will change. The great recession reflation was just the Fed buying up dead assets and trying to paper over a dead economy. Low interest cant solve problems anymore.
covid was a dream vacation for most. stay home and do nothing and get free money from uncle sam in trump and biden terms.
This to infinity – during Covid the Feds were literally throwing money at everyone which papered over, for a time, the underlying weakness that exists in the broader economy. Unfortunately, recessions (and subsequent BK’s) aren’t necessarily a bad thing (even though they’ve become politically unpopular) because they wash out all of the excessive risk taking even the bottom of the business cycle has become politically unpopular.
very true. Wait till the SBA declares all the fraudulent and then non payable EIDLs
Its over a Billion for sure
USA overall gov debt
2025-01-02,$ 36,169 bln
2025-12-31,$ 38,514 bln
thus., 2025 deficit is +- $2.35 trln
alx
trump will default on foreign owned tbills by end of his term. i’m 90% certain.
VZ’s an opportunity for the oil business
What’s not to like about spending billions bringing on even more oil onto the market
and
have the distribution controlled by the embargo whims of the US president
(distribution of VZ’s oil dependent on US approval of what’s going on in VZ, according to Rubio)
sounds like a real winner
Especially when life is easier with offshore Guiana oil
So let’s get Greenland’s rare earth metals? What’s next after that?
More wars, more debt, more inflation, the only thing Americans will be getting less of is quality of life. Well, the ones that don’t have an exit strategy anyway…
if my quality of life here in pax dumbfuckistan was any better i’d probably have a stroke. i have worked like activity 5 or 6 hours per week for the past 31 years since my mid thirties. lived better than any billionaire. it’s quite simple really if one just thinks and directs one energy in the most tax free pursuits of business…….and one’s energy. more time to be on this fun blog. for example.
Nothing new. Very few people plan beyond the month, usually because they don’t have the money to begin with
Normal, to be expected in this prolonged inflationary depression.
These people should be forced to pay their debts. If they end up getting low paying jobs, garnish their wages. We need to bring back debtor’s prisons. They signed loan agreements and shook hands on deals, and they should not be allowed to weasel their way out. Look at the student loan success story.
I hope you’re joking, but I suspect you aren’t.
Who pays for the prisons? The government? The creditors?
How long should people who can’t repay a debt be in prison in your view?
If someone is in prison for years, how do you reintegrate them back into society after they have literally lost everything?
Debtor’s prisons were done away with because they were counterproductive and, more importantly, cruel.
The system we have works, if someone doesn’t repay a debt they generally can’t get additional credit for a long time.
You shouldn’t be able to file bankruptcy. You signed an agreement to get money and in return you pay it back with interest. You can have your wages garnished for the rest of your life and ALL your assets taken away until you repay your debts. If people had consequences for their actions maybe they would be more responsible.
Neither a borrower nor lender be.
That’s what different interest rates are for. You pay higher rates if you are at risk of default. That’s why you can declare bankruptcy and not have to pay back the debt for the rest of your life.
So there is no need for what you describe.
Yes there is a need. Someone has to pay for the defaulted debt. The people that pay are the ones that are responsible people who pay back their debts. Those people have to pay higher interest rates to make up for those irresponsible people that don’t pay.
That’s just not true.
I pay different interest rates than people who default. So I do not have to make up the difference.
The default rates is included in your rate even though it’s lower. You don’t really think the company pays for it do you? Companies never pay. It’s always passed on to the consumer.
Interest rates are heavily manipulated now, and essentially decoupled from underlying risk. High yield bond spreads to Treasury rates are absurdly low.
Decisions have been decoupled from consequences in this foolish society. Another Bronze Age collapse is just around the corner.
The creditor assumed risk and extended credit KNOWING WHAT THE BANKRUPTCY LAWS ARE. The loan officers who extended shareholders money should be executed for theft!
If CORPORATIONS had consequences for theirs. You’re dead set on making sure people suffer. I guess it’s okay as long as you aren’t the one suffering.
Lenders have just as much responsibility to ensure loans will be repaid.
Not all lenders care, rhe goal of some is debt enslavement.
You are naive. Today’s lenders get the loan off their books almost immediately after origination. They wouldn’t be doing that if the loans they made were profitable, or even viable. Sound lending practices have been compromised.
If this were true, Trump would be in prison instead of the Presidency LOL
You make one non-violent error and you go to debtor’s prison for years? That is a recipe to cut off all taste for risk-taking in the population. Several European countries have high penalties for those who go bankrupt while the US stands out as having relatively lenient bankruptcy laws and those laws are an important factor in our success. You can start over here. Starting over in France or Germany is problematic especially for startups and it shows. I would say that is the principal reason why successful European startups sell themselves to large companies before they reach their full potential. The stigma of bankruptcy is a heavy legacy for an individual to bear in Europe.
the southern Euros of greece and italia are the smartest in EU. highest percentage of small business ownership in rich world. highest amount of people who outright evade paying taxes……..net net net highest savings rates of rich world. the germans and french and amerikans are sort of slow when it comes to civilization and playing the game of life.
Reprobates should not be rewarded for their reckless risk taking. They should endure the same punishment a failed 21-year old college graduate experiences for liking art history at Harvard.
There is another aspect to this, most people easily taken advantage of and there are plenty willing to do so. Who is worse, those making bad decisions or those building a life depending on such?
defaulting on a CC or mortgage or student loan is just a business life decision. the students were fucked as they were about 17 and 18 when bamboozled on student loans by guidance counselors and mommy and loan office at university. of course the smart kids know the ivy league has so much money none of those kids come out drowning in debt. they are cheaper than state U for middle class kids.
The solution is to make the colleges co-guarantors, since they failed to offer a useful education. Compare cooperative education with college failure to pay debts. It is an eye opener. Student loans are less. Students graduate with experience. They are more focused. And the faculty tend to be more experienced with real world issues.
Lenders would have to furnish the prison, guards, food, clothing and general care for the debtors. You can’t ask society to do that since they don’t share in profits nor are they taking out the loans.
Furthermore as a lender you’d have to assume all other obligations of your debtors such as their children. As in you’d have to care for them entirely until they are 18 etc (whether thru your own orphanages or some other manner).
Lenders would NOT be able to burden society with this in any manner. I suspect most lenders would go the bankruptcy route rather than prisons.
“Destitute people who were unable to pay a court-ordered judgment would be incarcerated in these prisons until they had worked off their debt via labour or secured outside funds to pay the balance.”
There is no “free lunch” in debtors prison. Your punishment for reckless decisions is servitude.
The cost of imprisonment should be met by the prisoners. A return to the work house is essential.
Now let’s hear your take on the government keeping businesses from going bankrupt
Giving a moratorium encouraged non payment. What would have happened if each dollar paid on a loan was credited as $1.20?
The moratorium was to get votes and backfired. The same could be said for Obama Care
What would happen if colleges were required to be guarantors for loans
Many of these companies were saturated with debt from private equity owners who used the increased debt to withdraw their initial cash investments. Wall Street is not very skilled at running companies only ruining them.
I was going to mention that, too. Interest rates have risen significantly since COVID, many companies may be unable to roll over their maturing debt into something affordable.
I was thinking the same thing. This is especially happening in commercial real estate. Mish should have included it in his list of reasons.
CRE in sunbelt is dead man walking. gonna be so juicy in another few years to buy up at 15% cap rates. licking my chops
Dead man walking in just about every state in this country
The result of life support for too many years.
The 2008 recession never completed thanks to the Fed.
It’s deliberately structured this way. The private equity must remain. Only profits can be withdrawn. Not debt.
You mean to tell me that people can’t afford to pay $3,000+ per month for health, auto and homeowners insurance?
I’m shocked!
You need to make 6k to pay the 3k for insurance.
And what? That leaves $3,000 for everything else?
The rent/mortgage/property tax is probably at least 2/3rds of that.
Car payments today are easily $500+ per month.
That leaves less than $500 per month for food, utilities, clothing and everything else.
In other words, even on after-tax income of $6,000 a month you are still a debt slave.
in most of usa city and burbs it seems like 100k to 140k for family of 4 is break even now. it’s fucking stoooopid. we really screwed the young folks here with the never ending warfare which clocks at a trillion per year and the banker bailouts and the geezer free shit army benefits. what cannot keep on keeping on, will NOT.
I think that is more of the east and west coast. Anyone in the middle flyover states is that true?
But definitely in the Northeast and West coast
Now every family has to have two wage earners and still have a lower standard of living.
I predicted this around 2009-10 in a lecture to 100 grad students, and explained why. Some complained to the dean. It’s hard to hear the truth
Blame the Fed. This is the result of a decade of negative real interest rates. That’s what it took to keep the economy going from 2008 to 2018.
and more of : kids day care, housing, food, heating, etc
3k for those three things. that sounds like fiction. maybe i’m out of it. cost of my three of those things 150 per month all in. r/e taxes are stupid here. 4k per house.
4K per house? Thats down south numbers.
I will pay 10k this year total property taxes on a house that is in Dutchess County NY
There are people in Westchester County,Chappaqua NY and Mount Kisco that pay 30 to 45K on their houses. All over valued at 1.5 million and up
90% of them have a Biden Harris sticker on their car or sign on their front lawn
I won’t say it but it begins with Virt
“It’s tariffs and inflation, stupid.”
Come on Mish, you know it’s not that. It’s companies, especially legacy ones, not being able to roll their debt into lower interest rates. It’s not like we spent the last decade and a half talking about Zombie corps or anything! We all knew it would take several years to play out after Powell starting raising rates. Rolling your debt obligations especially if you got 1% or less debt during Covid to now 3-5% is not fun.
=, especially legacy ones, not being able to roll their debt into lower interest rates.
sure buddy!!
how did bernanke zero rates policy in 2008*9 work out ?
Well, the high interest rates are the result of inflation!
So Mish is correct, and you missed the obvious link.
To say it’s just about inflation and tarifffs is to ignore the health of corporate balance sheets. Again we’ve all been talking about this for well over a decade, this wasn’t going to happen until the FED raised rates, not because of inflation (or at least not as quickly). I’m not saying we shouldn’t have done it though…I don’t believe low interest rates are a good thing.
History says;
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/success/mortgage-rates-fall-january
The average interest rate on a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 2.65%, according to Freddie Mac. That’s the lowest level in the nearly 50 years that the mortgage giant has been publishing the survey. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 2.16%.
…
On Wednesday, the 10-year Treasury moved above 1% for the first time since March,
So the zero interest money went away and the income streams now available won’t support the current still low interest rates.
If the average commercial loan is five years we should expect to see what we are seeing. Mish is just rage bating things lately.
I own a commercial Contracting business. We are still very busy, we have customers that still want to spend like drunken sailors if they can pencil it out. If the FED lowers rates over the next year to 3% a lot of people will still want to do business. HOWEVER I’ve had more payment issues over the last year than ever, I’ve had to lien 3 customers. One of my customers had large, $500 mill plus portfolio get seized by their primary lender for not meeting their obligations. Then that lender tried to screw me out of my money and I had to take legal action. I’m having to vet my projects like a bank, with asking customers to see their accounts now before I start. Everyone finds that extremely insulting when I ask.
Not sure why that got downvoted by someone. I’m an ex-banker, 30 years experience in banking and commercial finance. Nothing here seems wrong to me.
There is noticeably far less contracting being done in my neighborhood. In 2024 the neighborhood was a beehive of activity. Contractor vehicles all over the place. Oil patch is laying off workers, and bankruptcies are way up. I used to be the only white man in my all-white neighborhood who operated a lawnmower. Now there are several.
I don’t know your business but in mine when a client is surprised when asked to see proof of solvency you are not the first person to have asked him that question.
I own a commercial Contracting business. We are still very busy, we have customers that still want to spend like drunken
=====
it is all BS!! same bs as roads are filled w/ cars!!!
and yet, new car sales are 25 years low, if you calc per capita!
same for housing
Building permits are down 10% in a year, which is a lot, but only 1% below baseline.
You talking about car sales…which have been astronomical, know one believes they are even in the ballpark of being affordable.
https://www.econpi.com/
my thought exactly. so many bullshit artists in the real world and online world.
Believe what you will, I get the sentiment. I was giving a nice anecdote to support the sentiment of the post. Which is that I’ve had major financial problems with my customers for the first time since I started construction 15 years ago. If I hadn’t worked through those problems myself ima successful manner it could have shuttered my business.
It’s a different giant sucking sound this time, and it comes from above, as all the infrastructure and assets get sucked up by the oligarchy.
Anybody with less than a billion dollars is simply food for the mega rich.
That’s what happens when you’re not to big to fail and jail in a broken widows economy adding to GNP where crime pays for the VA and making hay—until a reversion to the mean, say by egalitarian Dr. Guillotine. .
well said my boy. bully bully
The Fed is reacting to something as its balance sheet has shot up by $102 billion in only three weeks:
https://www.federalreserve.gov/monetarypolicy/bst_recenttrends.htm
I have posted this link before in the context of asking for theories as to why the Fed has reversed course so quickly from its policy of QT to QE.
The chart offers options on the date range and a glance at the one year gives a decent perspective on the size of the sudden reversal of liquidity.
My suspected possibilities are:
A significant bank or banks are in trouble.
Liquidity as a cover for the Venezuelan invasion fallout.
Serious job losses starting in the US.
Impending credit downgrade of US debt.
Chinas ban on the export of strategic metals from Rare Earths to Silver, Platinum and Palladium. +++
Appeasement of Trump and his sycophants.
Potential retaliatory attacks on US infrastructure.
End of year squaring of the books.
Obviously there are other possible reasons and this audience is likely to have decent opinions…
Thanks for thoughtful replies.
😉
I’d guess it’s a little of all those things.
Which bank has been shorting silver?
I have seen a fair amount of speculation that a systemically important bank hit the Repo window hard because of being short silver. I have also seen reports that JP Morgan is long silver to the tune of 750 million ounces (in a huge reversal of their position).
Is 102 billion all that extraordinary toward year end? There were some issues with bank overnight liquidity, so I’m not sure that’s super unusual. When I was on the liquidity desk, we would see as much as 200 basis point spikes in year end rates fairly commonly. The Fed has become more involved to mitigate those.
Its a bit high, but I also listed it as a possibility. All good!
As much as these daily ‘money’ fluctuations interest you, I assumed you follow Wolfstreet as well. He gave a detailed analysis of this two days ago.
Yes, the Fed assets were slightly up on 12/31 (a specific date within a long investing timeframe), but $75B of that was within the standing repo facility (at month-end, quarter-end, and year-end reckonings). Those SRF balances dropped by $52B on the next business day, halving your $102B concern.
Wolf also acknowledged the liability side of the Fed balance sheet – which you are not referencing. On 12/31, it increased – thru overnight reverse repos – by $106B and then dropped to almost $0 by the next business day as institutions moved money around at year-end. The ‘money’ action within those two opposite balance-sheet accounts both rose and basically offset each other for the specific 12/31 day.
Wolf’s analysis shows the monthly increases of overnight RRPs on the last day of the month. December’s is not much different (especially being at year-end). And they go down to zero afterwards. Of course, he might not be seeing/looking for some major dislocation you’re referencing, but to me those specific Fed numbers for 12/31 reflect normal EOY money movements.
PS – in that same post (and others), Wolf gives a great explanation for why QE has not started back up, no matter what the screaming CNBC heads say
Wolf is an obstinate “know it all” and considers his opinions as facts. I took the time to read his lame explanation of why “Reserve Management Purchases” are not QE.
What he in fact is arguing in that article is that QE at a low level is not QE! I respectfully disagree. QE at any level is QE. I’m with the CNBC heads. It’s alarming the Fed is back to buying Treasuries again.
To each their own; I appreciate you don’t like Wolf’s analyses.
But it sounds like you may need a monetary policy primer; just Google it.
Way before the Great Recession and COVID, when everyone and their brother initially learned about the concept of QE, the Fed had been implementing the same monetary policy for decades. If it wants/needs to reduce short-term market interest rates (which is what the federal funds rate is), it must buy/increase the demand for short-term T-bills to reduce their effective yield/interest rate.
The Fed has actively targeted a lower federal funds rate since September, thus it has had to add short-term T-bills to its asset sheet since then.
I understand if you don’t want the Fed to lower interest rates right now. But that is not QE. It’s ‘standard’ monetary policy, and there is a significant difference
Thank you again, QE comes in three forms from the Fed:
Their bully pulpit and policy statements.
Lowering interest rates.
Injecting liquidity into the markets by increasing their balance sheet.
That said, con~gress and the president’s spending habits have a profound influence…
Yes, these are monetary policies used by the Fed for decades. But…
QE = monetary policy
Monetary policy X=X QE
It’s a one-way relationship. Not everything the Fed does is QE
when the panic of summer of 2007 occurred with bear stearns funds, the fed started lending money and paying borrowers to borrow. that was a profound change. by 2008 and 2009 it was over the top. the FED bailed out everyone close to wall street. even foreign banks and hedge funds. WOLF is smart. and cunning. but he’s blinded by an ideology, and his knowledge is very limited. kiddy pool depth.
they lent the banks OUR currency and debt and payed them to borrow in 2007 through at least 2009. imagine if the FED had loaned money out to my neighbors in phoenix at the time, and payed them to borrow. 1/3 of my block would not have lost their homes and the prices probably would NOT have plunged 70% from 2006 to 2011
Not sure of your point, if you even have one.
My post above specifically said the Fed engaged in QE during the Great Recession and COVID. All of us can have different opinions on whether the Fed should have used such policies as “lender of last resort” in 2007-09.
But it’s not engaged in QE now.
I was rebutting a very specific point you made when you said ”Wolf gives a great explanation for why QE has not started back up, no matter what the screaming CNBC heads say”
Google’s definition of QE: Quantitative easing is a monetary policy action where a central bank purchases predetermined amounts of government bonds, company shares, or other financial assets in order to artificially stimulate economic activity
Wolf’s article I read is here: https://wolfstreet.com/2025/12/11/why-the-feds-reserve-management-purchases-are-not-qe/
You and Wolf are not in charge of defining terms. You appear to be one of Wolf’s disciples and like him you are always infallible and treat all your beliefs as facts and not the opinions they actually are.
I don’t care if your retrace your arguments after the fact.
But I am not defining QE. Let’s look at how the Fed (which is in charge of QE) defines it: https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2017/november/quantitative-easing-how-used
Look inside macroeconomic textbooks, or Google, or AI (try “what is the difference between open market operations and quantitative easing?”). They all define QE as massive unconventional or non-traditional purchases of longer-term assets.
Not the intermittent purchase of short-term T-bills, which is decades-long standard monetary policy, and what the Fed is currently doing – i.e. how this discussion started.
If you’re still unsure, look at the graph within the Fed article I linked. Mortgage-back securities were not purchased by the Fed before 2008. The Fed is currently reducing its MBS holdings, not increasing them.
The “Know it all” aspect to wolf is pretty profound and he removes comments that are not in sync with his biases. I have mostly stopped reading his site.
likewise.
i agree with you sir. about wolf and his analysis on QE. he’s what we technically call a boot licker and has no historical idea. he’s also like many folks who come from the iron curtain. reactionary. did business in russia for years. lots of those guys cannot see straight and blinded by a very bad multi generational experience under jackboots
Thanks for the response. If Wolf is correct, we should see the Fed balance sheet fall when it is released next Thursday. I do not see the same correlation that Wolf describes, but the reporting dates may be out of sync,
Hmmmmmm, Did Venezuela have large silver reserves?
I did a quick google search and could not determine if they did with any reliability.
I did find a bunch of speculative YouTube videos that claim 800 + tons were stolen by China, Russia and/or the US in December. Oddly the US had declared Venezuela a no-fly zone before the alleged theft.
As part of my reading I found out that 60% of global silver refining capacity is located in China and they are restricting its export after being refined.
The have a reasonable amount of gold reserves and rumors of bitcoin reserves but I’ve not heard about silver reserves.
the chinese have most of the gold and silver that the spanish empire extracted from the amerikas. bought on the cheap on the docks in Cadiz…..and other spanish ports. from spanish ships to chinese ships. the spanish were going bust at end of their empire. i’m pretty certain from my chinese professor pals and chinese wall street pals, and my reading on this subject for decades that the mandarin class in china always kept the gold to themselves, and let the people use silver as the standard of trading for goods in country and elsewhere. the mandarin class is still alive there. mao zedong did lots of damage, but not enough to plunder the gold. if memory serves the world for centuries had a gold standard in western hemisphere and silver standard in eastern hemisphere. i know enough about india to be dangerous. i think the indians hoard their gold and use their silver for trading……too. the shops in the indian hoods in queens NYC are my favorites. more gold than anywhere i have ever seen except the basement of FEDRESNY or the hermitage museum in st. petersburg. more than the vatican.
20 and 30 year bonds approaching 5% again, that’s not going to be good.
https://www.cnbc.com/bonds/
THAT’S A GREAT THING.
my guess is the usual suspects. r/e plunging in places is a fact. no volume, too. and some wall street banks or their kissing cousin hedge funds are upside down. thousands of times in my life i have LOL as i pass the NYFED and touch it’s prison like exterior walls and tip my hat to the greatest scam in the empire. a privately owned entity. the only job of the fed is to keep the NY bankers in high cotton. the rest is eyewash. too bad the sub basement 8 floors below on bedrock is not open. all that gold was an amazing sight to behold. one of the guards joked with me one time that he was a sharp shooter and showed me that badge and said he’d have to kill me and bury me if i touched a thing. and my wife and kids would have to deal with not knowing what happened to me. i’m just glad he was LOL and joking as i chatted him up for a few moments.
Just the seasonal’s. But it is also probable that the GDP figures are suspect.
unemployment is just around 5%.
there are about 260*270 mil of working ager people in USA!
about 100 mil do no work! it is official numbers from bls
they just dont count them as unemployed!
======
half of population do not pay any federal income tax!
BLS. total rubbish. it’s always been. like taking PEDOTUS Donaldo the conqueror at his word. like believing in WMD and other bullshit the us gov pumps out.
Bankruptcies will continue in 2026. AI and cost of insurance (health,auto,home) aren’t sustainable for a lot of households. Unfortunately the average household doesn’t save for unexpected expenses in the future.
the avg household is NOT able to save for future expenses. They were before this hit but didn’t. Now it’s impossible for most.
That’s my point. People spend instead of saving. College students are graduating and don’t know how to balance a checkbook. Parents need to teach kids financial responsibility at an early age.
we are circling the drain. i suspect it will be like what i saw in Russia in 90s. most will be pennyless, or rubleless. the reset will be fine for 20 and30 somethings as they have time to adjust to the new currency and have the energy and skills to adapt. most will be fucked as they destroy the currency by debt and war and outright kleptocracy. many will cheer on their own financial and professional suicide. the human primate is quite complex. many are fucked up. that’s a technical medical term.
Very hard to save with all that absolutely necessary private Christian school tuition to pay.
Weird personal attack.
“Bankruptcies seem to be kind of all over the place,”
“…2025 has already logged the highest annual count for large corporate bankruptcies since 2010..”
These kinds of statements usually come near the end of a recession, not before. There are probably many more companies at the margin of filing for bankruptcy.
Add in rising unemployment, no job gains, Schiller CAPE near all-time highs, AI bubble, crypto-bubble, and you’ve got the makings of Great Depression 2.
Forbes article has Bank of America CEO stating that they hired 2,000 people from a pool of 200,000 applicants. That has to be the canary in the coal-mine as far as job opportunities. AI taking over? I certainly don’t know.
Bank of America CEO says he hired 2,000 recent Gen Z grads from 200,000 applications, and many are scared about the future
Upvoted, thanks for link.
“scared about the future”
Isn’t there an app for that? /s
Where is that idiot CEO recruiting from? Doesn’t matter, BOA will always be near the top when any bailouts are doled out.
Thanks
=ired 2,000 people from a pool of 200,000 applicants. T
i say it is BS!
lets say you spend $100 per each resume to really understand about person!
read resume, contact references, internal discussions, etc
so it is $20 mil money spent to hire 2000!
Yes. Trump’s “greatest ever economy” number 2 may end up with a similar result to his “greatest ever economy” number 1. With another loss of 2.9 million jobs over 4 years.
And MAGA will cheer. Gotta love it.
Greatest economy in the history of mankind, lol
we are the hottest country everyone is saying. thank you for your attention to this matter.
I wonder if they’ll keep cheering when their sons are going into the meat grinder.
Or, their backyards are on fire because Trump turns the entire globe against him and we ordinary Americans pay the price.
when peoples kids are killed in war, they become more patriotic usually. stalin understood this the best. and explained the reasons too.
DEPRESSION in jobs, real estate etc. INFLATION of food prices, utilities and energy and medical care……..plus a big nice cherry of WAR WAR WAR. don’t be surprised at the next blowback attack, like 9.11.01. long live pax dumfuckistan.
Why Donald Trump is toasting the fall of the dollar
https://www.thetimes.com/business/economics/article/why-donald-trump-is-toasting-the-fall-of-the-dollar-qrc29p38r?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqcaWVNaPehuGRlQ2LPFbemUzNTurCOk6Rj7oTNHQQuuQCzFTvfNycAN&gaa_ts=69597ce3&gaa_sig=fXN5aPbOOsCE0Gh68xNrEYh9Wh96YUG4G6Og_z_XHlPs4MussaHamqcCSVBCCUPfOJBGPYJJPleQ5Yf6s9y5ag%3D%3D
The article is laughable! Almost none of what he says is true with the exception of the fact that Trump is destroying the value of the dollar and oil prices are lower.
The economy is not booming and deficits are way up. Inflation is stubbornly high, and with the looming healthcare insurance cost disaster is about to head higher again. Tourism is down massively because of the total distrust in America caused by Trumps insanely aggressive treatment of foreign visitors. Canadians are no longer coming here and are selling their vacation homes in the US by the hundreds of thousands.
At least I now know to approach this author with a healthy skepticism.
1) how much is due to malinvestment from The Fed’s easy money and misgauging of risk through artificially set interest rates?
2) how much is due to a tapped out consumer from years of inflation exceeding wage growth?
3) Quackenboss is an amazing surname.
The business plans that depended on rolling over zero interest loans met reality.
Housing is a Fed issue. Bubbles are a Fed issue.
This is basically a Congressional issue that the Fed monetizes
Finally, neither the BLS nor the Fed nor the BEA understand inflation.
A good day to curl up with an oldie but goodie, Barbarians At The Gate.
There is a job opening for dictator of Venezuela. The job of dictator is a growth industry according to a study by the department of war.
CAN ZUCKERSTEIN CREAT AN AI DICTATOR?
Unforntuately it looks like this trend is going to continue and even worsen in 2026.
The Consolidation is underway . . .
Emerging research suggests that frequent doomscrolling is associated with deeper worries about meaning, mortality, and whether your life is on the right track.
Higher levels of doomscrolling were associated with significantly higher existential anxiety. In other words, the more you consume negative news, the more likely you are to feel uncertain about life’s meaning and your place in the world.
We can’t say doomscrolling causes anxiety. It may be that anxious individuals are drawn to negative content. Either way, the relationship is strong enough to warrant attention.
If you find yourself worried or stressed more often than you’d like, taking a one-week break isn’t just a challenge; it’s a protective measure for the good of your mental health. A pause can disrupt a cycle where anxious thinking leads to more scrolling, which leads to more anxiety.
A short break from the feed could help restore your baseline sense of safety and remind you the world isn’t as dark as your phone suggests.
And you’re going to tell me to smoke weed and chill right? That’s exactly what the TPTB want you to do: stay ignorant about what’s happening around you and stay stoned. There is a way to enjoy life yet pay attention and prepare the best you can for what’s around the corner. Those in charge of this world, including Trump, want you stupid. This way they can crush you while stealing everything you own. No thanks to your perspective. Now go smoke your joint and fade out. Me, I’ll go for a nice walk in nature and think about surviving another day.
BINGO WE HAVE A WINNER. THE DUMBFUCKS AND NIHILISTS CANNOT FACE REALITY. WHY THEY HIDE IN BOOZE DRUGS SHOPPING AND SPORTS…………
Who said anything about weed, except you?
Smoke weed and doomscroll.
naked on porn hub with your boyfriends and girlfriends posing as epstein and trump with wigs………
Make that 30 days and you won’t recognize yourself. Almost like in the good old days..
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/i-tried-living-without-a-smartphone-for-30-days-heres-what-happened-5949036?
Bankruptcy..
Bringing VZ’s oil production up will break the US producers
Drill, baby, drill??
I think you are correct. Below $50 a Barrell would make it tough on fracking.
Not the same number of C-H in the chains, otherwise known as light and heavy.
Oil below $50 might make it challenging to expand Venezuelan production.
DEAR CHINA AND RUSSIA. COULD YOU PLEASE KIDNAP TRUMP AND MELANIA AND THE ENTIRE CABINET AND CONGRESS. PRETTY PLEASE.
Better yet, have Norway invite him for a special Peace Prize and just keep him there in a pen
It came from Queens, correct?
my parents were normal and from brooklyn. trump’s parents were queens.
They certainly won’t kidnap the Democrats, who are working aggressively across blue states to hide outright fraud.
caught up in the red v blue pom pom kick line are we. that’s precious. bet on pro wrestling too, i bet. special needs or public school ?
Well, since it is all Democrats who are sponsoring bills to cover-up “handout fraud” right now, i think I can blame Democrats for this one.
love it. i can’t wait for cap rates to make sense again on r/e. help the younger generation and investors like me. good post mish.
per the last post, regarding pax dumbfuckistan actions. Every decade that passes in my long life, I’m flabbergasted at how stupid most men really are. Imagine the morons who thought 9.11.01 was a surprise attack. Imagine the morons who believed in WMD and iraq invasion. Imagine the morons who endorsed Libya and Ukraine involvement by US CIA paratroopers and imagine the morons who think what happened 2 days ago is a good thing. I’m both amused and horrified I live around such dumb nihilists. It’s like living in a house of retards.
None of that is important. Today, we have wings and NFL, who cares about any of that nonsense.
Don’t forget the Kardashians!
and fentanyl to overdose and next weeks prep for a school massacre……..and more humans to bomb and kidnap from gaza to VZ to ukraine and nigeria……….
Nope, TACO promised no more Fentanyl. /s
stomping my feet, AND Screaming “mommy i want my fentanyl, NOW “
I guess your community college doesn’t teach sarcasm.
not sure what that means mel. but i am assuming it’s funny. i love to throw around abuse. fyi i have attended many CC and many ivy league schools and state universities, over past 47 years of college. my favorites are the yoga classes with the young ladies………
No beer?