Good morning!

America’s economy is in deep trouble. Several signs this week showed it, including the federal government offering its highest interest rate on newly issued bonds in 25 years. It holds record debt—now approaching $40 trillion—and is having to pay a premium to convince investors to keep financing still more debt.

Receive a free news briefing in your inbox each weekday—the Trumpet Brief.

• Yesterday, the Treasury sold 30-year bonds at 5.216 percent, their highest yield since 2001. On Wednesday, it sold its 10-year note at 4.683 percent interest, the highest rate since 2007. Only then were buyers willing to part with their money.

By every ordinary rule, this should be a lender’s market for the U.S. government. Two forces should be lowering America’s borrowing costs rather than driving them to their highest level in a quarter-century:

• Low unemployment: At 4.1 percent, the jobless rate should mean the economy is healthy enough that lenders can’t demand high risk premiums.
• A war: A conflict like the one with Iran would normally send global capital fleeing into U.S. treasuries—the world’s traditional safe haven—pushing prices up and yields down. Now that tendency is being undermined by fear over America’s finances.

The fact that the world’s soundest borrower has to sweeten its offer to find takers, especially in these favorable conditions, shows that the world is seriously rethinking America’s long-term value.

But investors have good cause to be nervous. Several factors show just how shaky the U.S. economy is:

• Last month the federal government collected $334 billion and spent $766 billion, Treasury Department figures revealed Wednesday. That’s a record $432 billion budget deficit in a single month—$1.33 spent for every dollar that came in.
• Meanwhile, labor force participation has sunk to its lowest since 1977, shrinking the pool of taxpayers meant to pay the bills.

America’s debt-to-GDP ratio has surpassed 121 percent. The government now pays more on interest each year than on national defense.

• In July alone, the U.S. spent $91 billion in interest. For the fiscal year, interest payments have topped $1.17 trillion, up 15 percent.
• By around 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects, entitlements and interest together will consume every dollar of federal revenue. That means defense, law enforcement and everything else must be paid for with borrowed money.

No nation can borrow its way out of a debt crisis. Every time America auctions off more debt, it digs itself into a deeper hole that it has no apparent plans to climb out of.

God prophesied that if America—one modern nation descended from the ancient Israelites—turned from Him, the foreigner “shall lend to thee, and thou shalt not lend to him: he shall be the head, and thou shalt be the tail” (Deuteronomy 28:44).

• America was granted the richest birthright in human history, yet now sits pledged to its creditors, overwhelmed by a debt it cannot repay, and is turning not to God in repentance but rather to increasingly dangerous and wrong financial methods.

Herbert W. Armstrong taught that a worldwide financial crisis would set off a chain of end-time prophecies. The bond market is flashing a warning of how close we are to that crisis occurring.

See why America’s blessings are turning into burdens by reading The United States and Britain in Prophecy. And see where this road leads in “The King of Debt.”

Deutsche Bank Given a Direct Line to Beijing

Trade between Europe and China became a lot simpler this week as China authorized Deutsche Bank as the first non-Chinese bank to clear yuan payments in Europe. The agreement will make it much easier for European business to convert euros directly to yuan (also known as renminbi) without using the dollar as an intermediary.

• This could be done before, but only Chinese banks had access to the Chinese reserve bank and were able to process large currency transactions directly with that bank. Deutsche Bank is already a core part of Europe’s banking and trade infrastructure, helping many more companies change currency direction.

Deutsche Bank’s China president Leo Yin called the connection a “direct bridge” to the Chinese financial system.

The Berliner Zeitung explained China’s overall strategy: “For years, Beijing has been trying to expand the international importance of its currency and reduce the enormous dominance of the U.S. dollar.” It has made progress but remains a long way behind the dollar.

It continued, “Beijing is therefore strategically expanding the infrastructure designed to make international business transactions in yuan simpler and more attractive.”

So much of America’s wealth comes from its control of world trade. One important part of that is physical control: Its navy keeps sea trade safe and removes obstructions to that trade.

• That dominance is now being challenged by Iran. If even a second-rate power can shut down trade in its neighborhood, how dominant is America, really?

The other factor behind America’s wealth is its financial dominance. Loaning money to the U.S. government is the default safe investment, and dollars are the default international currency.

• Now China and Germany are challenging that assumption. If the world no longer needs dollars to trade, then investing in the U.S. government is no longer safe.

The economic curses prophesied in your Bible have already set in, as last night’s Trumpet Brief shows. The fall of the dollar will be one of the most dramatic of those curses. You can read more of what that looks like in our article “When Will the Dollar Collapse?”

Putin Provokes Japan With Visit

Russian President Vladimir Putin visited the Kuril Islands on Thursday, exacerbating political tension between Russia and Japan over the disputed island chain.

• Japan claims that Russia occupies the territory. Both nations have claimed it since the Japanese Empire fell in 1945 and the Soviet Union annexed the islands and deported their 17,000 Japanese residents.
• The dispute over the Kuril Islands (referred to as the Chishima Islands in Japanese) is the single substantive reason that Japan has never signed a formal World War II peace treaty with Russia in 81 years and counting.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said the visit “offends the sentiments of the Japanese people and is absolutely unacceptable.” She also said it made it harder to “restore relations in the medium to long term.”

• Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi summoned Russian Ambassador Nikolay Nozdrev and told him to reassert that the islands belong to Japan based on their history and on international law.

This is just one of Russia and Japan’s numerous disagreements over the past 150 years, which have ranged from Manchuria to sanctions.

However, a prophecy found in Ezekiel 38 indicates that these different, powerful, proximate and somewhat antagonistic peoples will actually become world war allies, uniting with China and other Asian nations into a superpower opposing the United States and the West. Russia and China in Prophecy states:

Russia, China and Japan will likely combine in Asian alliances, with the ultimate intention of forcing the U.S. out of the Russian “sphere of influence” and out of the western Pacific. Then, as has been the strategy of the EU, Asian political and economic cooperation will ultimately progress to a military and security alliance.

To understand which prophecies apply to the current situation in east Asia, including which peoples in the Bible equate to Japan, Russia, China and other nations, read chapter 5 of Russia and China in Prophecy.

IN OTHER NEWS

NATO downs drone in Latvian airspace: An unauthorized drone breached Latvian airspace this morning, prompting nato fighter jets to shoot it down. The drone’s point of origin has not yet been determined, but analysts believe it could be the latest instance of Russia hijacking a Ukrainian drone midflight and redirecting it toward one of Ukraine’s partner nations. As the Telegraph reported in May, “Russia has found a way to commandeer them and use them for its own war goals.” In recent months, Russia has used this high-tech tactic to violate the territory of Estonia, where one drone crashed and nato jets scrambled and destroyed another; Lithuania, where the prime minister was forced to shelter in an underground bunker; and several times in Latvia. To understand how Europe is responding to such provocations, read “Russia Is Redirecting the War Into Europe—One Drone at a Time.”

Will Hamas candidates run in Palestinian elections? Hamas-operated Al-Aqsa tv claimed Wednesday that the terror group plans to participate in Palestinian elections on November 28, the first in 20 years. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who belongs to Hamas’s rival Fatah group, has promised elections at least four times before, only to cancel them. Fatah leaders might feel they can politically defeat Hamas in its last strongholds in war-ravaged Gaza, but Zechariah 14:1-2 and other Bible prophecies show that Palestinians in the West Bank will grow so volatile that they will conquer half of Jerusalem. Rather than a Fatah takeover of Gaza, a Hamas takeover in the West Bank appears to be the likelier outcome. Gerald Flurry details what the Bible says about the short-term future of the holy city in Jerusalem in Prophecy.

A new front in Sudan’s civil war has opened. On Tuesday, the Ta’sis coalition in Ethiopia crossed the border into Sudan and overran the capital of the Geisan locality in southeastern Blue Nile State. Although the Ethiopian government did not direct this attack, the coalition’s ability to stage and launch it from Ethiopian territory indicates that the Ethiopian government is indirectly but actively working against the Sudanese government. These worsening tensions could contribute to the violence your Bible says will soon drastically change Ethiopia’s alliances.

Somali government suffers major losses: On Saturday, Somalia received full control of the Buurhakaba military base from the African Union Stabilization and Support Mission in Somalia. This is one example of the African Union accelerating its withdrawal, originally planned for 2028, after the U.S. withheld anti-terrorism funding in July. The American Enterprise Institute said the move “will jeopardize [Somalia’s] ability to sustain operations after 2026.” This African Union pullout comes soon after U.S. officials met the leaders of the semi-autonomous Somalian states Puntland and Jubbaland in late July and early August, and after Puntland forces forcibly took three government-aligned bases on August 5. The U.S. has worked with Somalia’s central government for decades to counter Somali terrorism, but the calculus in this nation, and in this volatile region as a whole, appears to be changing.