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NBA star LeBron James and his business partner Maverick Carter have raised $100 million for their newly created entertainment firm, The SpringHill Company.

Bloomberg reported James and Carter received a cash infusion from global investment and financial services firm Guggenheim Partners LLC, UC Investments, News Corp. heir Elisabeth Murdoch, and SC.Holdings, the investment fund managed by entrepreneur Jason Stein. 

The firm’s board consists of Carter, Serena Williams, Murdoch, Marc Rowan, co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, Live Nation Entertainment CEO Michael Rapino, Minerd, Paul Wachter, who is James’ wealth manager, and Tom Werner, chairman of the Boston Red Sox and English soccer club Liverpool. 

The SpringHill Company is a consolidation of James’ marketing firm Robot Co. and several entertainment companies, including SpringHill Entertainment and Uninterrupted LLC. SpringHill Entertainment is the company behind the production of the upcoming sequel to “Space Jam.”

The company is described “as a media company with an unapologetic agenda: a maker and distributor of all kinds of content that will give a voice to creators and consumers who’ve been pandered to, ignored, or underserved,” Bloomberg noted.

“Big news‼️ Announcing the next chapter as THE SPRINGHILL COMPANY: a media company with an unapologetic agenda – a maker and distributor of all kinds of content that will give a voice to creators and consumers who’ve been pandered to, ignored, or underserved,” The SpringHill Company’s Instagram wrote.  

Bloomberg didn’t elaborate on the deal structure or the sizes of each investors’ stake, but it was mentioned James and Carter formed the company at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March.

“When we talk about storytelling, we want to be able to hit home, to hit a lot of homes where they feel like they can be a part of that story. And they feel like, Oh, you know what? I can relate to that. It’s very organic to our upbringing,” James told Bloomberg.

“When you grow up in a place like where we were, no matter how talented you are, if you don’t even know that other things exist, there’s no way for you to ever feel empowered because you’re like, I’m confined to this small world. That’s our duty. A lot of exposure,” Carter added.

The pair recently signed a TV production deal with Walt Disney Co and is working with Netflix on a basketball-themed movie. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

Fear of COVID-19 absolutely crippled the U.S. economy during the first half of this year, and now it appears that there are some people that are pushing for that to happen again during the second half of 2020. 

Earlier this evening, I came across a headline that boldly declared that there will be “180,000 U.S. deaths of COVID-19 by October”, and right now just about every mainstream news outlet is running stories about how the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. is surging.  And it is definitely true that we are seeing an alarming rise in the number of confirmed cases.  In fact, the number of new cases in the U.S. on Wednesday set a new record…

The U.S. broke its record for the highest coronavirus cases recorded in a single day, with 36,358 new positives reported on Wednesday, according to a tally by NBC News.

Wednesday’s cases top the previous highest day count from April 26 — the first peak of the pandemic in the U.S. — by 73 cases, according to NBC News tracking data. The World Health Organization saw its single-day record on Sunday with more 183,000 cases worldwide.

The mainstream media is treating this as some sort of a big shock, but of course the truth is that this shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.

[ZH: we do note that while cases are surging, deaths are falling as the median age of positive infections falls dramatically and people recover]

For months, I have been telling my readers that the lockdowns would “flatten the curve” for a while and that the number of cases would start to spike again once the lockdowns ended.  That is exactly what has happened, but anyone with even a little bit of common sense could have anticipated this.

Earlier this year, states in the northeastern portion of the nation were the epicenter for the outbreak in this country, but now it is states in the southern and western sections of the nation that have become the most prominent hotspots…

Arizona, California, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and South Carolina reported record-high new daily coronavirus cases during this week, as case counts continue to rise in more than half of U.S. states.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott said the state is facing a massive outbreak with another 5,000 cases reported Wednesday. California Gov. Gavin Newsom reported Wednesday 7,149 tested positive, a record number for the nation’s largest state. Both states this week surpassed the entire European Union on the average number of daily cases.

Things are particularly bad in California.  Over the past two days, we have seen a 69 percent increase in the number of newly confirmed cases…

The California Department of Public Health reported its second straight record jump in coronavirus cases on Wednesday as the state joins a handful of others with growing case numbers.

California reported an additional 7,149 Covid-19 cases since Tuesday, a 69% increase in two days, bringing the state’s total to 190,222 cases, according to the state’s health department. The previous highest day jump was reported on Tuesday when the state recorded 5,019 additional new cases.

Needless to say, the snowflake politicians in California are going to be even less eager to return to business as usual than they were before.  And since the state of California accounts for more economic activity than any other U.S. state does, this is going to be a major drag on the U.S. economy as a whole.

If this pandemic keeps dragging on for a couple more years, what are states like California going to do?  Many had anticipated that life would be getting back to normal by now, but instead we are starting to see things go in reverse.  In fact, we just learned that the reopening of Disneyland has been postponed indefinitely…

Disney is delaying the phased reopening of Disneyland and Disney California Adventure, the company’s flagship theme parks in California, the company said on Wednesday.

The resort, located in Anaheim, California, was set to welcome back guests on July 17 after being closed for months because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Other very large corporations are making similar moves.  For example, Apple just shut down a whole bunch of their stores because of this new surge in coronavirus cases…

On Friday, stocks slumped as second wave fears were reignited following a report that Apple would temporarily shutter 11 U.S. retail stores across Florida, Arizona, North Carolina and South Carolina.”Due to current COVID-19 conditions in some of the communities we serve, we are temporarily closing stores in these areas,” an Apple spokesman said in a statement.“We take this step with an abundance of caution as we closely monitor the situation and we look forward to having our teams and customers back as soon as possible.”

Fast forward to today, when with stocks already sliding on renewed virus of a second wave of virus infections, moments ago Apple reported that it would re-close another 7 stores in Houston and Texas due to the coronavirus spike.

According to the optimists, this wasn’t supposed to happen.  The worst part of this pandemic was supposed to be over, and it was supposed to be all downhill from here.

But instead it has become exceedingly clear that this virus will be with us for a long time to come.  New York, New Jersey and Connecticut have all announced that those traveling in from nine different states where COVID-19 is out of control will be forced into mandatory quarantine for 14 days, and police in New York will actually be actively searching for vehicles that have license plates from those particular states…

In New York, cops will stop cars with license plates from the affected states to ask the person why they are not quarantining and how long they have been in the state for.

The quarantine applies to any state with infection rate of 10 infections per 100,000 people on a seven day rolling average or 10 percent of the total population testing positive.

Speaking of New York, this pandemic has already had a much larger financial impact than most observers had anticipated.

In particular, New York City is facing a nine billion dollar reduction in tax revenue, and Mayor Bill de Blasio says that the city may be forced to let 22,000 workers go…

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city is considering 22,000 layoffs and furloughs among its 326,000 employees to cut $1 billion of expenses after lockdown-related revenue losses.

De Blasio has projected a $9 billion loss in tax revenue over the next two years because of the pandemic.

Sadly, a whole lot more government workers will be fired across the country before this crisis is over.

Of course things are even worse for the private sector, and we continue to get more examples of this every single day.  On Tuesday, we learned that GNC has decided to declare bankruptcy…

GNC Holdings Inc., which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection late Tuesday, has released an initial list of stores that will close.

The list posted at the Pittsburgh-based chain’s site, GNCevolution.com, includes 248 closing stores, including 219 U.S. locations and 29 in Canada.

And we have also just learned that the end may be near for Chuck E. Cheese…

The coronavirus pandemic could spell the end of Chuck E. Cheese. The popular kid’s restaurant had to close its 610 locations nationwide during the outbreak. Now, $1 billion in debt has Chuck E. Cheese’s parent company, CEC Entertainment, approaching bankruptcy.

The Wall Street Journal reports that CEC is asking lenders for a $200 million to keep its business going.

I haven’t been to a Chuck E. Cheese in many years, but when I was a kid I absolutely loved to eat there.

As a youngster, it seemed like such a magical place, and now it deeply saddens me to hear that the company may not survive.

In the end, a lot more iconic companies will go under as America plunges even deeper into this new economic depression.

Fear of a virus has turned our economy completely upside down, and thanks to the mainstream media much of the population is going to remain deathly afraid of this virus for the foreseeable future.

Seemingly every major real-estate broker in the tri-state area has appeared on CNBC over the past 3 weeks to talk about how their phone has been ringing off the hook with Brooklyn-based millennial couples looking to get the hell out of New York City.

Most are looking into the first-ring suburbs around the city, stretching as far as Connecticut’s Fairfield County (and even parts of southern Litchfield), while all of North Jersey is potentially accessible for office workers who will likely never return to the daily commute. Meanwhile, brokers in NYC, who enjoyed a decade-long post-crisis, are assuring their TV audience that the city’s real estate market will always bounce back, just like it did after 9/11.

Not everyone is so optimistic, especially when it comes to New York City. Even before the pandemic, the city was struggling with a crumbling subway, surging homelessness. Taxes have been raised, while city services have deteriorated. And as the NYPD pulls hundreds of undercover officers off the street, virtually guaranteeing that the open air drug markets of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s will make a comeback, along with myriad other quality of life problems, some of the city’s most successful real estate investors think young people are probably better off staying in the suburbs, or moving to some other smaller, better-run city.

During a wide-ranging Bloomberg interview, Barry Sternlicht, the billionaire founder of Starwood Capital Group, shared a vision for NYC that sounded like the beginning of a disaster movie: office buildings in the city will lose 40% of their value – putting unprecedented pressure on the family businesses of the president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner – one-third of all hotels in the city will go bankrupt, and – most importantly – residential rents will plummet as the wave of gentrification that priced out many minorities from the neighborhoods in which they grew up happens in reverse.

While the looting and the violence witnessed during the protests over George Floyd’s murder didn’t help, the protests and the virus aren’t the City’s only problem. In fact, some of the forces driving this trend have nothing to do with the virus, Sternlicht said. Instead, he blamed a “blue-state mentality” that has brought the city to its present “tipping point”.

Democrats see upping taxation as the best way to close state budget gaps. When taxes on the wealthiest rise substantially, many of those people leave, creating even bigger holes in the state’s revenue stream. Sternlicht isn’t the only NYC financier to relocate to Miami in recent years.

As the tax base shrinks, services deteriorate, and taxes rise on those who are increasingly unable, or unwilling, to pay them. People leave, setting off a vicious cycle.

“If they raise taxes, more people leave and the social burden of those that are less fortunate falls on an ever-smaller revenue base,” he said. “The services of the city get worse, the city gets dirtier, the police show up less often. It’s a negative cycle.”

So long as there’s no COVID-19 vaccine and the virus continues to spread, big city tourism, sports and conventions – a major source of revenue for city businesses and tax revenue for city and state government – will remain largely on hold. While Sternlicht’s Starwood, which has some $60 billion in assets, can withstand the hit to its 1 Hotel locations near Central Park and on the Brooklyn waterfront, as well as to its Baccarat Hotel New York in midtown Manhattan, others won’t be so lucky. In the end, one-third of hotels will go bankrupt.

“I think a quarter, a third of hotels in New York City could go bankrupt,” Sternlicht said. “It’s going to be ugly. You tell me when big businesses are going to force their clients or customers or employees to go to a group meeting in Vegas or in New Orleans or in Orlando.”

Outside NYC, Sternlicht says, his company’s properties are faring much better. Hotel bookings in markets like Miami are still happening. But NYC’s top retail corridors – like Fifth Avenue and SoHo – will be hard pressed to convince shoppers to return, as more Americans have come to rely on Amazon. This could take a sledgehammer to retail rents in the city, which started showing weakness as far back as 2018.

As fewer young people are willing to move to the city, big tech companies that signed huge leases in Manhattan or Brooklyn office buildings will simply walk away.

WeWork, still the city’s biggest corporate landlord, is on track to substantially shrink its footprint, if the company doesn’t collapse outright. Tech firms like Facebook and Google are planning to allow far more workers to work remotely. Even on Wall Street, banking executives are talking about needing less overall space. With all of this factors hitting at once, NYC is bound to become the toughest commercial real estate market in the country.

All told, the result may be the city’s biggest real estate slump in at least three decades. According to Cushman & Wakefield data going back to 1990, Manhattan rents haven’t fallen by more than 20% in a single year. “Rents could drop 25% in New York – office rents. I think expenses could go up 25%. You could see office values drop 40% because of that,” Sternlicht said. “It’s probably going to be the toughest office market in the country.” Read more: Gorman sees Morgan Stanley future with ‘much less real estate’ And if jobs move elsewhere, the residential market will collapse too. landlords are “desperate” to retain young tenants and increasingly willing to cut apartment rents by as much as 25%, Sternlicht said.

In summary, Sternlicht’s “negative cycle” theory is pretty simple: first, the income base erodes. That puts strain on city services and infrastructure, that causes quality of life to deteriorate while cost of living rises, prompting more wealthier residents to leave.

Put another way: New York City’s drain is the sunbelt’s gain (that is, if the coronavirus outbreak doesn’t swallow up the entire region).

Starwood Capital has been investing in so-called red states with Republican governors, such as Florida, Texas and Tennessee, Sternlicht said, because they have growing populations, companies are relocating there and the non-union construction costs are much lower than in blue states run by Democrats. “I don’t think you can make New York miserable for the affluent and expect it to be successful for everyone,” Sternlicht said. “There are other incredible places in the country – or they will be incredible when all the New Yorkers populate them.”

Of course, Sternlicht’s businesses are feeling substantial strain from the coronavirus pandemic. While he insists Starwood’s hotels business will make it through relatively unscathed, its malls business is defaulting on its debts.

Authored by Stephen Moore via RealClearPolitics.com,

The latest Department of Labor employment data confirm that when it comes to the economy, America is two nations: red and blue.  As the post-coronavirus shutdown era begins, blue states are losing jobs at record paces and red states are starting to gain them.

Here is what the data is telling us: 10 states had unemployment rates in May above 15%.  They are all states with Democratic governors, with the exception of deep-blue Massachusetts with its liberal Republican governor, Charlie Baker. 

Ranked from highest to lowest they are Nevada (25.3%), Hawaii (22.6%), Michigan (21.2%), California (16.3%), Rhode Island (16.3%), Massachusetts (16.3%), Delaware (15.8%), Illinois (15.2%), New Jersey (15.2%), Washington (15.1%). 

The five states with the lowest unemployment rates are all red states – most of which never shut down at all. These are Nebraska (5.2%), Utah (8.5 %), Wyoming (8.8%), Arizona (8.9%), and Idaho (8.9%). 

This is exactly as Arthur Laffer and I predicted in a study we conducted back in March on the economic effects of lockdowns.  States with very strict business shutdown and stay-at-home orders would be facing a much tougher recovery period than states that never shut down, like Utah and Wyoming, and states that rapidly reopened, such as Arizona.  This would be a bifurcated red state, blue state recovery – and so it is, so far.

This is not a coronavirus recession. It is a blue state lockdown recession.  Democrats say they have shut down their economies to maintain the safety of their citizens.  But that is a stretch.  Studies are now finding that the negative health effects from the lockdown (suicide, delayed treatments for cancer and heart problems, depression, spousal abuse, alcohol and drug overdoses, to name a few) could easily match the saving of lives from lockdowns. 

But there is a much bigger problem with this argument.  It is factually untrue that blue states did a better job than red states in keeping their citizens safe. They didn’t.  The 10 states with the highest death rates from coronavirus (as a percentage of the state population) are all states with Democratic governors.  A blue state resident was twice as likely to die from the virus as a red state resident even though the red states were not heavy-handed in locking down their economies.  (Population density likely factored in as well.)

The tragedy for blue state America is that these states – especially in the Northeast and Midwest – were already seeing major outmigration of families, businesses, and capital before the pandemic.  The blue state governors’ mishandling of the crisis has only put these states in deeper holes. 

Of course, the Democrats are now saying that the caseloads are climbing in the red states. That’s true, but caseloads don’t tell us much of anything.  If going outside and gathering in public while ignoring social distancing orders is the reason for the increase in cases (and in some cases hospitalization rates) then we would expect to see a surge in cases in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, and Washington, D.C.  That is where the largest, and most prolonged, George Floyd protests took place.

So the blue states have not only failed to keep their citizens safe, they’ve ruined their economies as well. Democrats are promising to make America look more like New Jersey, Washington, and California. God forbid.  The latest annual data from United Van Lines shows that the seven states with the most outbound traffic were: 

1) New Jersey, blue

2) Illinois, blue

3) New York, blue

4) Connecticut, blue

5) Kansas, blue

6) Ohio, red

7) California, blue 

The toxic combination of coronavirus, lockdowns, riots, poor city and state leadership, and massive budget deficits are making the blue states bleed red.

Over 40,000 Illinois residents applied for a gun permit over a two-week period this month, a jump of more than 500% over this time last year according to Illinois State Police.

“Take a full glass of coronavirus, shake in a shot of riots and another of this defund police notion, and everything goes crazy,” gun shop owner Mark Glavin told the Chicago Tribune. “Not to mention the backlog on background checks.”

The state’s mandatory 72-hour background check has stretched to more than a week for some of Glavin’s customers, putting Illinois residents in the same boat as Californians – who have a 10-day wait before they can take possession of recently bought firearms.

The firearms services bureau of the Illinois State Police is taking an average of 94 business hours — not counting holidays, weekends, the day the gun is purchased, or the day the sale is approved or denied — to process background checks, roughly a day longer than usual, according to state police spokeswoman Beth Hundsdorfer.

The bureau is responsible for issuing firearm owner’s identification cards and concealed carry licenses, as well as conducting background checks for licensed gun dealers when a sale is made. Its work started to pick up in March and has spiked in June, Hundsdorfer said. –Chicago Tribune

Between June 1 and June 17, there were over 42,089 applications for FOID cards vs. just 7,000 during the same period last year – an increase of 501%. Putting that into further context, there were 48,194 applications between December, January and February combined.

“We know that traditionally there’s an uptick in gun purchases around elections and major tragedies,” said DePaul University associate professor of social work, Noam Ostrander.

“There’s two big predictors of gun ownership — not sport-type rifle owners — but among new gun owners usually, and that is perceived risk of victimization and then a belief that the world is a dangerous place,” Ostrander continued. “And if we dig into that second one, right, the world does look like a dangerous place right now.”

Des Plaines gun store and range owner Dan Eldridge says that half of the customers scrambling to arm up are first-time buyers.

“The numbers I saw from the National Shooting Sports Foundation … said 40% of respondents to (store) surveys were new, first-time buyers. And of those, 40% are female — 40% of the 40%,” said Eldridge. “We’re tracking 150% of a typical May in firearms sales … and that’s with being open by appointment only.”

Eldridge also noted that sales of defensive ammunition, such as hollow-point bullets, were 10x as high.

“What is significant is a whole lot of people who have firearms for their house or self-defense are saying, ‘I’d better have some ammunition for this thing or it’s not going to do me any good.’” he added.

Liberals embracing the 2nd Amendment

University of Illinois at Chicago associate professor of Political Science, Alexandra Filindra, says that there’s plenty of research and anecdotal evidence that many of the white, first-time gun buyers identify as politically progressive.

“It’s not so much a security concern, though they may tend to want to misidentify it as fear,” said Filindra. “But typically people who are highly anxious and afraid tend to be more supportive of gun control.”

A 38-year-old man from Dixon — who didn’t want his name used, citing employment reasons — described himself as “a very liberal Democrat” who for decades has been “for most forms of gun control politically.” But since March, he’s been waiting for his first gun permit to arrive so he can keep his family safe, he said.

“My views have recently changed, and I have accepted that the Second Amendment provides for the personal ownership and use of a firearm,” he said in an email. “The recent social unrest of a divisive president, the pandemic and dramatic rise in unemployment, and the more recent social unrest because of the way we police in this country have all been reasons that have prompted my recent application.” –Chicago Tribune

Concealed Carry gun instructor and owner of Safer USA, David Lombardo, says he’s had several callers recently who have disclosed their political beliefs while asking him for private one-on-one training because “they don’t want anyone to know they’re doing the training, let alone going to buy a firearm.”

“I have seen the emergence of a new class of students seeking training: anti-Second Amendment liberals,” he said.

Carrie Lightfoot, founder of the popular shooting blog The Well Armed Woman, said there’s nothing hypocritical about changing your views when the world around you is changing. And she’s not surprised women make up a good portion of these new gun buyers.

Women have always understood they are at a disadvantage when it comes to a male aggressor who will likely be taller, heavier and stronger. Now we are “all shaken to our core” by world events, which is why “it is only natural” women are arming themselves, she said.

“I am seeing women come to gun ownership who literally just weeks or months ago were opposed to people owning guns personally,” Lightfoot said. “Sometimes, it is in moments of personal need and through our personal concerns that our life’s context changes.” –Chicago Tribune

Lots of guns, not a lot of training

DePaul’s Ostrander points out what few are saying; first-time gun owners are eight-times more likely to accidentally shoot themselves vs. those in gun-free homes, because they lack training.

“If they feel safer having 5 pounds of metal in their home, then at least let’s try to get some basic instruction going. Some standard gun safety,” he said.

Read the rest of the report here.

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

Just when you think that 2020 has been filled with enough trouble, even more stuff starts happening.  Coming into this week, we were already dealing with a new COVID-19 surge which has pushed the number of daily cases to the highest levels we have seen so far, a global economy which is in the process of imploding all around us, massive civil unrest in U.S. cities from coast to coast, and giant swarms of locusts that are wiping out farms all the way from eastern Africa to parts of India.  Unfortunately, now we have several more items to add to our growing list.

Let’s start by talking about an alarming new outbreak of locusts.  The following comes from a British news source…

Dramatic footage captures an “astonishing” swarm of locusts swarm through farmland and destroy crops.

The short-horned grasshoppers are capable of devouring the same amount of crops as 2,500 people would each day.

Some of you may have just read that paragraph and come to the conclusion that this is “old news”.

After all, we have been hearing about the colossal armies of locusts in Africa for months, and I have published numerous articles about that unprecedented plague.

But the news story that I just quoted wasn’t talking about those locusts.  Instead, that report was about a brand new infestation that has erupted in Argentina, and one local official is saying that he has never seen anything like it ever before.

Just like on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, these little critters are voraciously gobbling up everything in sight, and countless farms are being destroyed.

Now these swarms are heading for Brazil, and Brazilian officials are definitely extremely alarmed.  One of my readers in Brazil sent me an article about this emerging crisis from a Brazilian news source, and the following is a quote from that article which has been translated into English…

In approximately one square kilometer they can have up to 40 million insects, which in one day consume pastures equivalent to what 2,000 cows or 350,000 people eat, Argentine agronomist Héctor Medina told Reuters.

What would you do if 40 million locusts suddenly descended on your farm?

Of course the truth is that there would be very little that you could do that would make any sort of a difference.  Just like so many other farmers around the globe, you would simply watch as all of your hard work is completely wiped out.

Meanwhile, an absolutely gigantic plume of dust from Africa has crossed the Atlantic Ocean and is about to hit the United States.  The following comes from CBS News…

A massive plume of dust from the Sahara desert in northern Africa has been traversing the atmosphere, thousands of feet above the tropical Atlantic Ocean, and is now cloaking the Caribbean and closing in on the southeastern United States.

Every once in a while a dust plume from Africa can cross the ocean like this, but the monstrous one that we are witnessing right now is truly unusual.

In fact, one expert says that this is “the most significant event in the past 50 years”…

“This is the most significant event in the past 50 years. Conditions are dangerous in many Caribbean islands,” Pablo Méndez Lázaro, from the University of Puerto Rico’s School of Public Health, told the Associated Press.

As this plume travels across the U.S., air quality in some areas will drop precipitously.  Some of the dust has already arrived, but a “thicker layer” is projected to starting hitting Texas on Friday…

On Wednesday, the dust is forecast to move across the Gulf of Mexico toward Texas.

Thursday morning, people in places like Brownsville in Texas and Houston will likely wake up to a beautiful sunrise and a hazier than normal sky.

Forecast models show the thicker concentration blanketing most of Central America and Mexico Thursday.

This thicker layer is likely to reach Texas by Friday and then take a turn to the east. If the forecast model is right, it will move over most of the Southeast and MidAtlantic states over the weekend.

On top of everything else, the west coast is starting to shake in a major way once again.  On Wednesday, southern California was struck by a magnitude 5.8 earthquake…

California residents received an emergency alert on their phones which read: “Earthquake! Expect shaking. Drop, Cover, Hold On. Protect yourself now. – USGS ShakeAlert”. The US Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake struck 17km south-southeast of Lone Pine. The tremor originated at a depth of 2.9km, with an epicenter around 17 kilometers south-east of Lone Pine.

According to a USGS interactive shake map the impact of the earthquake could be felt in the Death Valley National Park.

The earthquake has since been downgraded to 5.8 magnitude.

That quake was followed by numerous sizable aftershocks, including one that was measured to be magnitude 4.6.

Overall, there have been 2,267 earthquakes in California and Nevada over the last 7 days, and that is definitely alarming.

Farther south along “the Ring of Fire”, Mexico was hit by a magnitude 7.4 earthquake on Tuesday…

A powerful earthquake struck Mexico’s southern Oaxaca region on Tuesday, killing at least five people and shaking buildings hundreds of miles away.

The 7.4-magnitude quake struck mid-morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Its epicenter was off the Pacific coast about seven miles southwest of Santa María Zapotitlán, near the beach resort of Huatulco.

Very large seismic events are happening so frequently now that they barely make a blip on the news these days, and that is unfortunate because people need to wake up and understand that our planet is becoming increasingly unstable.

Here in the United States, scientists have been strongly warning us for years that we are way overdue for “the Big One” to hit California, and this is one of the things that I will be addressing in the new book that I am currently working on.

At some point there will be no more sand in the hourglass, and an unprecedented disaster will strike the west coast.  Let us pray that we still have quite a bit more time before that happens.

But nothing can stop the inexorable march of time, and the deeper we get into 2020 the crazier it gets.

Unfortunately, the truth is that this “perfect storm” is just getting started, and that means that what we have experienced up to this point is just the tip of the iceberg.