A “perfect storm” occurs when disparate disasters happen simultaneously, with each pushing the other to greater heights of destruction. We’re currently seeing a perfect storm in America as the Biden administration’s economic policies crash headlong into the effects of El Niño in all its fury.

As a native Californian who always looked forward to El Niño years because they ended California’s cyclical droughts, I pay a lot of attention to this weather phenomenon. Its effects, while salutary when it comes to California’s droughts, are also disastrous, as California’s floods attest.

El Niño is a cyclically occurring warming phase in the Pacific. It has nothing to do with anthropogenic climate change (“It is believed that El Niño has occurred for thousands of years”), and its effects are always dramatic. In some places, it leads to increased cyclones. In America, it can trigger increased precipitation along the Gulf Coast and the West Coast, while bringing droughts elsewhere.

Storm image by kjpargeter (edited).

The most obvious effect of weather disruption is crop disruption, and that’s exactly what’s happening in America. According to a South Dakota news outlet, the winter wheat crop in Kansas, one of America’s major food-producing states, is in trouble:

Spring is typically a good time for rain on winter wheat. However, intense drought conditions in western Kansas continue to hurt winter wheat.

Less than 20 percent of Kansas winter wheat is in good to excellent condition. The U.S. Drought Monitor says only 15 percent of Kansas’ acres are not experiencing any level of drought stress. More than 36 percent of the state reported D4 exceptional drought compared to just a little over one percent last year. D3 extreme drought conditions are hurting 16 percent of the state, with D2 severe drought hitting 13 percent of Kansas.

The same is true across large swaths of America, as reported in a grimly named survivalist site, “The Economic Collapse.” That site has collated news stories reporting wheat crop failures and minimal plantings across the United States. Even in California, where there’s no drought, the volume of water is drowning the fields, making planting impossible.

It's not just crops, though. The same site points out that we’re at our lowest number of beef cows in America since 1962. In 1960, by the way, the census showed that America had almost half of today’s population.

Just to pile on the stressors, remember that climate change madness and Biden’s war are decreasing food production across the world, thanks to rising fuel prices, unsustainable crop practices, and government land seizures to decrease “nitrogen emissions.” (See, e.g., Germany, Sri Lanka, and Holland.)

Meanwhile, here in America, the Chinese are buying up our farmland. It’s highly unlikely that they’re planning to feed us when there are food shortages in America.

Here’s one more piece of grim economic news for you to contemplate—small businesses are going under even faster than they did during the height of COVID lockdowns:

Small businesses across the United States are experiencing a surge in bankruptcies, surpassing levels not seen since 2020. According to a UBS note reviewed by The Epoch Times, conditions could become worse as the knock-on effects from the recent banking crises begin to manifest.

The note from UBS Evidence Lab shows private bankruptcy filings in 2023 have exceeded the highest point recorded during the early stages of the COVID pandemic by a considerable amount. The four-week moving average for private filings in late February was 73 percent higher than in June 2020.

“[We] believe one of the more underappreciated signs of distress in U.S. corporate credit is already emanating from the small- and mid-size enterprises sector,” Matthew Mish, head of credit strategy at UBS, wrote in a recently published research note. “[The] smallest of firms [are] facing the most severe pressure from rising rates, persistent inflation and slowing growth.”

Industries hit hardest by the wave of bankruptcies include real estate, health care, chemicals, and retail outlets, according to the Swiss Bank’s report.

Contrary to climate change fanatics, we cannot control natural phenomena like El Niño. However, everything that’s putting stress on America’s economic and food security is the result of misbegotten Democrat policies. They shut down the economy for years, they started a war in Ukraine, their insane environmental policies are making it increasingly harder to produce food, and their ESG investment mandates (and do remember that Biden vetoed a bipartisan bill that would end ESG madness) are destabilizing our financial systems.