The Federal Reserve raised its key federal funds rate to a 16-year high on May 3 in an attempt to bring down runaway inflation. This was the Fed’s 10th consecutive rate hike since March 2022, and local banks will now have to pay between 5.0 and 5.25 percent interest on loans they take from America’s central bank.

Yet while inflation has dropped from 9.1 to 5.0 percent since the Fed started raising rates, many small to midsize banks are struggling with the higher cost associated with borrowing money.

Banking failure: Three of the top five biggest bank failures in U.S. history have occurred in the past nine weeks. The banking collapse of 2023 is now bigger than the collapse of 2008. Collectively, Signature Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank had about $550 billion in assets, more than all 25 banks that collapsed during the Great Recession.

And the banking collapse of 2023 may not be finished. Both PacWest and Western Alliance are teetering, so the U.S. could experience its fifth and sixth biggest bank failures before the end of this year if it stays on its current financial path.

Orchestrated crisis: The fifth plank of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto is the “centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” Many radicals in the Biden administration are pleased that the largest commercial bank in America, JPMorgan Chase, bought First Republic’s assets. Before the Communists can accomplish their goals, they must destroy local banking.

Some radicals want to abolish commercial banking entirely and have every American establish an account at the Federal Reserve. But before this happens, small and midsize banks need to be gobbled up by financial elites in league with the government.

Coming collapse: Herbert W. Armstrong warned that communism would strip America of its blessings—the greatest ever conferred on any people—not simply because socialists outmaneuvered conservatives but because America’s people have turned away from God. He warned that communism would pervert America’s morals, sabotage its educational system, wreck its social structure, destroy its spiritual life, weaken its military, and sap its economic strength. Today, we see an orchestrated effort to weaken America’s economy to the point where the government can nationalize it.

Learn more: Read the chapter “Our Financial 9/11 Was Prophesied!” in our booklet He Was Right.