CHEST PAINS BEFORE THE HEART ATTACK! ANOTHER RETAIL GIANT IS IN TROUBLE!

➡ A popular retail store, Lowe’s, is closing many of its stores due to decreased profits. This is largely due to increased shipping costs caused by high fuel prices and inflation reducing people’s buying power. The host, Dave Hodges, suggests that this is a sign of larger economic issues and recommends investing in gold to protect personal assets. He also criticizes the Federal Reserve for profiting from inflation, which he believes is harming the economy.
➡ Many national chain companies are struggling due to a practice called CLO, where investors buy companies for much more than their worth and force them to expand using a variable interest rate loan. When interest rates rise, these companies can’t repay the loan and go bankrupt, allowing the investors to buy them back at a low price. This predatory practice, along with other factors like energy costs, is causing even profitable companies to fail. There’s a need for laws to prevent such practices, but it’s unclear who should be held responsible or if current laws address this issue.

Continue bad news out of the retail sector. A prominent retail. They’re closing massive amounts of stores. We love this store. In fact, my wife and I are going there today. Hopefully it’ll still be open. And this is really, really bad. MSN has done a really good job covering this. We’re going to show you part of their slideshow on this. And then I’m going to comment about what’s all behind this and how pervasive is this going to be with regard to all retail. What it means to you. What it means to inflation. What it means to your ability to get what you need.

We’re going to try to cover as much of that as we can right here on the Common Sense Show where we’re freeing America one enslaved mind at a time. My name is Dave Hodges. I’m the host and we’re really glad to be with you. Please share our work far and wide. Let’s enlighten as much of America as possible in this age of dumbing down. So please do that. Also too, don’t forget we have a really good TV show. The Common Sense Show. And it covers a lot of cool stuff. It has our interviews, of course, and our geopolitics.

But we have this new series we’ve been starting called Hips, hiding in plain sight and hidden history, repressed technology, mysteries of the mind. It’s really cool stuff. People say, Dave is kind of reminiscent of the old Art Bell show. A little bit. Yeah, Art and I had some crossover interests, but I’m more psychology, sociology, historically oriented. And so I have that big flavor in there too. But people love it. The Common Sense Show.tv. Sign up today. And we are brought to you by a great, great sponsor. And you’re going to absolutely love this sponsor because it’s going to keep you out of the depths of poverty.

You won’t have a 1929 moment if you listen to what I’m going to tell you. And this is advice that I give every day, sometimes multiple times a day. First of all, ladies and gentlemen, the banks are in trouble. Let’s make no mistake about it. They are in big trouble. 66 are on the Federal Reserve watch list and friends of mine who study this think it should be closer to about 15 or 1600. Expert economists are saying something similar. And what a lot of people don’t know is the Dodd-Frank law of 2010 says that when you put your money in the bank or you have a retirement account like a 401k IRA associated with the bank, guess what? You’re in second place.

You’re now an unsecured creditor. They can keep it. Now, if we have a cataclysmic economic downturn, 1929 can’t get your money out of the bank. And I was raised hearing about this all the time from my mom’s side of the family where they went from riches to rags almost overnight. And I don’t want that to happen to any of you. It’s all avoidable. Now I bring in noble gold. I trust them because I’ve been an advertiser for them for eight and a half years. They’re completely ethical. They never pressure clients. And I’ve been a customer multiple times over in the seven and a half years, advertiser for eight and a half years.

Let me just share this with you right now. Here’s one big reason besides protecting your assets, which they actually can take your retirement out of the bank and put it under your control. And they’ll teach you all about that if that’s what you want. But I think you ought to also pay attention to the portfolio. Buying gold for them is great because then they’ll buy the gold back from you at the increased price. Gold’s gotten up 46% in the last year. It’s outpacing every other investment. Want to know more? It’s easy.

Go to Dave Hodges gold.com. That’s Dave Hodges gold.com and put in your email address and I’ll send you that information back it. It’ll contain noble gold’s number. And of course here you can see it on the screen. 877-646-5347. This is a really disturbing report economically that we’re speaking of. And this speaks to why you should be worried about money in the bank and the solvency of your bank. You need to be really worried and just good. I’m in Wells Fargo. I’m in B of A. The bigger they are, the harder they fall and no one is immune to this pressure.

Credit unions are probably in the best shape for a lot of reasons. You’re wondering, okay, what’s this retail outlet that Dave’s talking about here? It’s huge. It’s Lowe’s. I love Lowe’s. Lowe’s is great. Lowe’s is great. The prices are competitive. Their people are well trained. The staff, very professional. It’s really a good place to go into. But they’re pulling the plug nationwide. And just to read a little clip here from the slideshow, then you can be listening to this on audio and just understand what I’m saying here. This hardware giant is making big moves.

They’re not shutting down, but they’re closing massive amounts of stores. Now they’re trying to dispel the rumors that the company’s in trouble. I don’t have access to the bottom line. And you don’t either. I just am very suspicious when I see this. Also too, what closures are happening? Well, the sales is the guiding light, the lack of, or the sales cost, profit margin. That’s at risk here for companies that don’t check up. But they are shutting down. They estimate 51 stores, but it could grow. Okay. The closures are being kept quiet. They’re typically what they say are local decisions.

Have a hard time believing that the corporate’s not involved. Okay. But they’re having liquidation sales. And that’s the clue when your Lowe’s near you is closing. And I think there is no question that that is the giveaway. Okay. Continuing. They say the total home strategy is what they’re going after. It’s called a 2025 game plan. It’s also known as total home strategy. And it’s called streamlining store operations. Okay. They can couch this with the flowery terms designed to prevent panic and loss of confidence, particularly in their stock. And I get that.

But what we’re saying is they’re downsizing because the profits are down. Okay. Now we can come to the point of why we’re here. Why are there profits down? Their products aren’t any worse. They don’t have a bad reputation. In fact, quite the opposite. They have a great reputation. So then why are they closing over 50 stores and that could grow? Well, why are the profits down? Well, it’s because the economy is down. Remember that old saying from the nineties, it’s the economy, stupid. Well, that’s true. I’m not calling you stupid, but it is the economy.

And basically this is what happened. Biden in his, uh, I shouldn’t give him credit Biden’s people and their infinite wisdom shut down transportation to such a degree with high prices for fuel because they killed energy production in the country, seeking us to go to foreign markets to pay higher prices. And you know, the effect on your gas tank. So businesses are subject to the same thing. Shipping costs became inordinately high. Exactly. And a lot of these products are shipped internationally and then the ones that are shipped domestically have more than one stop to get different parts for the same thing.

So you kind of have an assembly line of shipping. And with that assembly line of shipping, what you’re now looking at is this, is that the cost goes up at each point of shipping to the next deliver or receiver. And as a consequence, your price goes up at each spot. The higher the price for energy, the higher the price for shipping. And we live in the era of a 3000 mile salad. Almost everything is shipped. And this is why retail across the board, the major reason why they’re taking a big hit. Now let’s go to the buying public.

Not only are the prices going up, but relative wages because of inflation are going down. Inflation is the hidden tax. We covered that a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of people don’t realize this is a tax on you. And there are people that are making money on inflation. They love it. It’s built into our money system at the Federal Reserve. Now, you know, I’m for abolishing the Federal Reserve and doing what the constitution says, which is restoring the power to coin money, which is the phrase used in the constitution to Congress.

Congress gets to determine how much money is printed. Congress should operate printing money at zero cost. Why? Because the Federal Reserve charges what an effect amounts to a usury fee of three to 5%, depending on what’s going on with the economy. And that’s a built-in inflation rate. Inflation is here, no matter if the economy is good or not, because the Federal Reserve is profiting from it. What’s been the net effect? Well, in the 112 years the Federal Reserve has been in effect, a dollar no longer buys a dollar, it buys three cents.

If you go back to the previous 100 years, 113 years, from 1800 to 1913, a dollar was worth a dollar. Yeah, this is why Lowe’s is in trouble, and this is why a lot of the companies in national chains are in trouble, and there’s another factor. And I don’t know if this is low, but there’s something called CLO, where a bunch of money investors approached corporate heads and said, we want to buy your company for six, seven times the value. And we’re going to share that with you, the leaders. Oh yeah, but there’s a catch.

You must expand by using our loan, which is variable interest rate. What happened in the Biden years? Up and up and up, so all of a sudden companies can no longer afford to pay back the loan on the variable interest rate, and they go broke. This is why some retail outlets with the maybe 98% of the stores are profitable, why they’re going broke and going belly up, because they can’t pay the loan. Now what’ll happen is these same investors will turn around and buy these corporations at dirt cheap prices. This practice is predatory, and I believe it should be stopped.

And we’re trying to pin down who’s responsible. And a lot of times the big three, and you know who I’m talking about, they will create shell corporations to handle transactions, so they can be one to two degrees of separation away from being accused of a causative agent. This is a problem. I don’t know if Lowe’s fits into this problem, but Joanne’s did. And that’s why they’re broke today. It’s called CLO. So there’s a multitude of factors. Energy, I guarantee, is affecting Lowe’s. CLO, I’m not sure. This may come out in the wash, but the reality is, folks, is that these problems were preventable.

If we would have kept energy production at the levels that Trump had it, we would have had these problems, and these companies wouldn’t be going under. If we didn’t allow predatory practices like CLO in enriching the corporate heads, so they basically screw their own company, that’s a problem. And that should be outlawed, too, if it’s not outlawed already. I don’t know where the laws fall on this. And I’ve asked a couple of economists, and they said, Dave, that’s a good question. We don’t know the answer to that. And neither do our lawyers.

Well, maybe it’s time Congress got involved in this. Or maybe they’re too afraid to. I’ll let you decide. I’m Dave Hodges. This is the Common Sense Show. We’ll see you back here again next time. [tr:trw].