By Michael Snyder

The mainstream media continues to tell us that the economy is in fine shape, and you can believe that if you want. But evidence continues to mount that indicates that we are headed for very serious trouble. Inflation is out of control, home sales have fallen for 12 months in a row, large corporations all over America are conducting mass layoffs, and hunger is spreading like wildfire as economic conditions rapidly deteriorate. If this is “fine”, I would hate to see what “bad” would look like. Virtually everything that normally occurs during the early stages of a major economic downturn is happening right now, and that includes an inversion of Treasury yields…

On Tuesday, the difference in the yield on 2-year and 10-year Treasury notes further inverted, with the yield on the 10-year falling 103 basis points, or 1.03 percentage points, below the yield on the 2-year yield. This dynamic has preceded each of the last eight U.S. recessions.

Please read that last sentence again.

This has happened for eight recessions in a row.

Do you think that by some miracle we won’t have a recession this time?

At this point, we are actually witnessing the deepest inversion that we have seen “since September 1981”…

The spread between the monetary policy-sensitive two-year U.S. Treasury yield (US2Y) and the 10-year (US10Y) UST yield reached the deepest inversion since September 1981, as bond-market investors priced in higher-for-longer interest rates following Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s Senate testimony earlier in the session.

Wow.

1981 was more than 40 years ago.

As one analyst told his clients, this is “a big psychological level” that has just been breached…

“We are not sure that -100bps means anything different than -80bps or -90bps did, but it is likely a big psychological level that many will notice,” BTIG analyst Jonathan Krinsky wrote in a note to clients.

But don’t worry.

CNN says that everything will be just fine.

You believe them, don’t you?

Needless to say, a lot of Americans don’t believe them.

In fact, at this point the amount of confidence that Americans have that their finances will improve in the next year has dropped to a depressingly low level…

Americans’ confidence in their finances is at its lowest level in at last 13 years, as inflation and fears of a recession cast a pall of uncertainty over the economy.

In February, just 31% of Americans believed their personal financial situation would improve in the next year, the lowest figure on records dating back to 2010, according to Fannie Mae’s monthly survey released on Tuesday.

The bureaucrats in Washington can radically “adjust” the economic numbers that they are giving us in a desperate attempt to make us feel better, but they can’t hide the fact that mass layoffs are happening all around us.

For example, a historic paper mill in North Carolina that has been in business for more than a century is now shutting down and laying off all of their employees…

Union representatives with Smokey Mountain Local 507 were reportedly called to a meeting with Pactiv Evergreen officials Monday and told about the plans to close the paper mill.

It employs 1,100 people and is considered a keystone of the local economy.

The words are simply not enough,” Canton Mayor Zeb Smathers said, according to local outlet ABC15. “When I was downtown and I saw grown men with tears in their eyes, there are not words, and no one was prepared on this dark Monday to deal with that.”

What can you possibly say to those men to convince them that everything is going to be okay?

That town will never be the same again after this.

A massive economic implosion is already happening all around us, but as long as stock prices remain elevated many people will be fooled into thinking that conditions are normal.

But the financial markets are starting to show cracks too.

In fact, one expert just told Fox News that the indicators that he closely watches are pointing to “one of the highest probabilities of a crash in the stock market looking out 60 days”…

After Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated the bank isn’t finished raising rates, one market expert has warned a crash could come in a matter of days.

“They’re playing catch up, and while they were doing quantitative easing in 2021, inflation started to rage and now they’re trying to catch up,” The Bear Traps Report founder Larry McDonald said Wednesday on “Mornings with Maria.”

“Our 21 Lehman systemic risk indicators that look at equity and credit point to one of the highest probabilities of a crash in the stock market looking out 60 days,” McDonald, who is also known for writing a best-selling book on the Lehman Brothers collapse, cautioned.