These 13 Countries Just Signed an Agreement to Engineer a Global Famine by Destroying Food Supply the USA id ONE OF THEM

The United States and the following 12 countries have all signed on to an agreement that in practice will destroy agriculture worldwide while ushering in global famine and starvation:

DUMBEST COUNTRIES ON THE PLANET ARE LISTED BELOW:

• Argentina
• Australia
• Brazil
• Burkina Faso
• Chile
• Czech Republic
• Ecuador
• Germany
• Panama
• Peru
• Spain
• Uruguay

A loss of meat production from Australia, Brazil and the U.S. alone would be enough to starve countless people, not to mention all the other foods that are raised and grown in these three countries.

 

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Citing “climate change” and “global warming” as the reasons why such drastic measures must be taken, the globalists behind the climate scam are pushing the notion that agriculture, including animal rearing, must end in order to prevent animal flatulence from heating the environment.

“I am glad to see the shared commitment by the international community to mitigate methane emissions from agriculture as a means to achieve the goals we signed for in the Paris Agreement on climate,” said Luis Planas, Spain’s Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, in a statement.

Marcelo Mena, CEO of the Global Methane Hub, of course agrees.

“Food systems are responsible for 60 percent of methane emissions,” Mena explained in an announcement.

Without farms, there is no food-you GLOBAL MORONS!

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris made a statement of her own calling for a “reduced population.” This can be accomplished in part through the destruction of the global food supply.

The latest version of the global warming narrative is that food itself causes it. Apparently, the entire world must go back to a hunter and gatherer society with very few actual people remaining in order for the planet to “cool” itself down and return to “normal.”

“Mitigating methane is the fastest way to reduce warming in the short term,” claims former presidential wannabe John Kerry, who continues to be one of the loudest purveyors of global warming propaganda.

“Food and agriculture can contribute to a low-methane future by improving farmer productivity and resilience. We welcome agriculture ministers participating in the implementation of the Global Methane Pledge.”

Part of the Global Methane Pledge, by the way, involves transitioning the world from eating real foods like beef and chicken to instead consuming crickets and insect larvae, which are toxic and non-nutritious to humans.

As you can clearly see with the ongoing inflationary trend, which appears to be hyperinflation in slow motion, we are reaching a point where meat and food in general will become so unaffordable for the average person that many will have no choice but to try bugs, assuming they want to continue living in such a world.

“We can presume from this language that among the practices being considered are replacing a major portion of the beef and dairy cattle, pork, and chicken stocks that populations rely on for protein with insect larvae, mealworms, crickets, etc.,” says journalist Leo Hohmann about what the Global Methane Pledge entails.

“The U.N., World Economic Forum, and other NGOs have been promoting meatless diets and the consumption of insect protein for years, and billionaires have invested in massive insect factories being built in the state of Illinois, in Canada, and in the Netherlands, where mealworms, crickets, and other bugs will be processed as additives to be inserted into the food supply, often without clear labels that will inform people of exactly what they are eating.”

Hooters has abruptly shuttered 40 locations ,

Hooters – known for its scantily-clad waitresses – is the latest restaurant chain to abruptly shutters locations.

Like other struggling chains such as Red Lobster, Hooters is blaming the rising cost of rent and food.

A raft of closures happened over the weekend, while others were in recent weeks. They include locations in Florida, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Texas and Virginia.

The company is not thought to be in as dire financial situation as Red Lobster, which has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In fact, bosses said the 41-year-old brand ‘remains highly resilient and relevant,’ and highlighted a new range of Hooters frozen food which is being sold in supermarkets across America.

‘We look forward to continuing to serve our guests at home, on the go and at our restaurants here in the US and around the globe.’

Hooters will have about 300 restaurants globally after the closures. That is down from 333 in 2018.

Rivals Dave & Buster’s, Miller’s Ale House and Twin Peaks all have more restaurants.

Restaurants have been putting up prices over the past two years – as they pass on higher costs to customers. But these price hikes have led to a fall in visitors.

Bigger chains like Applebee’s, TGI Fridays and  Boston Market have have all recently shuttered restaurants, as have smaller chains like BurgerFi.

Chains have been worst hit in California where the minimum wage for fast food restaurants jumped to $20-an-hour from April 1. Mexican chain Rubio’s shut 48 locations in the state.

Hooters, as well as being known for scantily clad waitresses, also calls itself ‘the original American wing joint’, and celebrated its 40th birthday in 2023.

Only last May, it was opening restaurants – three in Las Vegas and three in Florida.

The first Hooters opened in Clearwater, Florida in 1983.

PLEASE OPEN SOME MORE SOON!

Dealers Who Forked Out for Ford’s ‘Exclusive’ EV ‘Certification’ Feel Like They Got SHAFTED

A source told PEOPLE the couple are selling the Beverly Hills home they’ve shared since 2023

Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are quietly trying to sell the $61 million Beverly Hills mansion they’ve shared since June 2023, an insider told PEOPLE. But the impressive spread is far from their only major chunk of real estate.

Amid reports of a strain in their marriage, a source close to Lopez said that neither of the two stars has been happy with the home, which they purchased after a long house hunt in June of last year.

“Ben never liked the house. It’s too far away from his kids,” said the source, adding that the house is “way too big” for the singer. The massive property features 12 bedrooms and 24 bathrooms.

Of course, both Lopez, 54, and Affleck, 51, have owned plenty of other high-profile properties. Here’s everything to know about all the places they’ve lived throughout the years.

Beverly Hills

The couple bought the 38,000 square-foot home they’re currently trying to sell in the spring of 2023, per the TheWall Street Journal, after tying the knot the previous year.

Located on five acres of land, the house has “12 bedrooms, 24 bathrooms, a 12-car garage and a pool, plus a sports complex with basketball and pickleball facilities, a gym and a boxing ring,” according to the newspaper.

Bel Air

Lopez found a buyer for her previous Bel Air mansion in October 2023, according to a report from the Journal. First listed for $42.5 million in February of that year, the eight-acre estate eventually sold for just under $34 million.

At more than 12,000 square feet, the sprawling property features nine beds and 12 and a half baths. Originally designed by architect Samuel Marx, it was later reworked into a French country-inspired retreat, according to the listing.

Fittingly, at the time of the listing, a private screening room on the lower lounge level featured posters for Lopez and Affleck’s movies.

Related: Behind Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck’s Decision to Sell Their $61 Million Mansion (Exclusive Source)

Manhattan

The Maid in Manhattan star unloaded her $25 million New York City penthouse in April 2024, after seven years on and off the market.

The asking price for the four-bedroom, seven-and-a-half bathroom property, located near Manhattan’s Madison Square Park, was most recently $24,990,000, though its listing agents didn’t confirm the final sale price.

The 9,500-square-foot space is in a historic 1924 mansion conversion and features an indoor/outdoor design with four private terraces that offer views of the New York City skyline.

Amenities include a full-time doorman, top-of-the-line kitchen with a large island, a stainless-steel wine fridge, breakfast bar and a private guest wing with three bedrooms, staff quarters and a laundry room.

Pacific Palisades

Affleck listed his Pacific Palisades home in August 2022 for $30 million, following his marriage to Lopez. The 13,500-square-foot property, featuring seven bedrooms and nine bathrooms, is located near the swanky Riviera Country Club, with mountain views.

Per the Los Angeles Times, he sold it for $28.5 million in October 2022.

The Argo director purchased the then-newly-built gated property in 2018 for $19 million after his divorce from ex-wife Jennifer Garner, according to the Journal.

Miami’s Star Island

Lopez and former fiancé Alex Rodriguez, purchased a 10-bedroom mansion on Miami’s Star Island for $32.5 million in 2020, according to WSJ

The exclusive island, which is located in Biscayne Bay, is known to attract A-list residents.

Malibu

Lopez and Rodriguez, who ended their engagement the following April, put their Malibu fixer-upper on the market in July 2020.

They listed the five-bedroom, four-and-a-half bathroom oceanfront home for $7.99 million, after having purchased it from Entourage actor Jeremy Piven for $6.6 million in February 2019, according to the L.A.Times.

The home, spanning more than 4,400 square feet of living space over three levels, is in the heart of Malibu, with over 50 feet of private beachfront. It features walls of glass and expansive terraces on each level overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

In March 2019, shortly after the couple bought the property, home renovation star Joanna Gaines visited the couple there and was photographed with a film crew on the beach outside. A source told PEOPLE at the time that Gaines was considering helping Lopez and Rodriguez remodel the home.

It sold for $6.775 million, less than two months later, according to the Journal.

Hamptons

In 2013, Lopez dropped $10 million on a three-acre Hamptons property on New York’s Long Island, according to Forbes. The 8-bedroom, 7.5 bathroom home includes a pool, pool house, theater, sauna, steam room and covered porches.

Hidden Hills

Lopez bought this sprawling California estate in 2010 for $8.2 million, and completely renovated it during her time there, according to the Los Angeles Times. She sold it for $10 million in 2017.

Some of its highlights included formal and informal living rooms, a primary suite with a sitting room and a private terrace, dance and recording studios, a 20-seat theater, a game room, a speakeasy-style bar and a resort-style swimming pool.

Long Island

Lopez lived in a Brookville, Long Island, mansion when she was married to Marc Anthony, between 2004 and 2014.

“It was the place they brought their kids up,” Douglas Elliman vice chair Dottie Herman told ABC News, referring to Max and Emme, the twins Lopez and Anthony welcomed in 2008. “It’s hard to believe with J.Lo and Marc Anthony that they were regular people, but their kids and them had a normal life in a wonderful place that they felt was their home.”

The home was listed for $9 million in 2015, and according to Newsday, sold for $4.5 million in 2017.

Georgia

Affleck purchased an 87-acre property on Hampton Island Preserve outside Savannah, Georgia, as a getaway in 2003, reportedly paying $7.11 million for it, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The compound, which includes three houses, river access and a dock complex, served as the site of wedding celebrations Affleck and Lopez held with friends and family in August 2022, a month after getting married in Las Vegas.

The pair had “an extraordinary weekend of celebrations planned,” leading up to their second wedding, including “a pre-wedding party, a ceremony and … lots of fun lined up,” a source told PEOPLE at the time.

Miami

According to Forbes, Lopez owned a 1929 waterfront property on Biscayne Bay until selling it in 2005 to businessman Mark Gainor, who renovated the home. The 1.2-acre property included seven bedrooms, nine and a half baths and Miami skyline views.

In 2015, Phil Collins paid $33 million for the property.

The Summit

According to Trulia, Lopez owned a Los Angeles mansion called The Summit from 2000 to 2004. Gwen Stefani purchased the seven-bedroom, seven-and-a-half-bath residence with Gavin Rossdale in 2006 and sold it for $21,650,000 in 2019.

Features touted in the listing included an infinity pool, playground, chicken coop, lighted tennis court and expansive outdoor living spaces.

Is love just great the third, fourth and fifth time around???

ONLY DEMOCRATS AND THEIR EXPERTS CAN BE RELIED UPON TO RUN THE COUNTRY CLAIMS THE CURRENT CROP OF EXPERTS!

Washington Post Warning: If Trump Wins, We’ll No Longer Have the “Experts” in Charge

Like the weirdos appointed by the Biden administration…?

“The most politically powerful person right now in the state is a hog farmer,” Frerick tells ABC RN’s Late Night Live.

And he wondered how one farmer could come to amass and sell more than 5 million pigs each year.

Frerick is a fellow of Yale’s Thurman Arnold Project, which researches competition policy and antitrust enforcement. Recently he published Barons: Money, Power, and the Corruption of America’s Food Industry.

After that conversation at the bar, Frerick realised that what was happening in the pork industry — this huge consolidation of power and wealth — was happening throughout the US food system.

When he started investigating, he found that a handful of US families controlled most of the US’s food production and distribution system, including meat, dairy, grains, fruit and groceries.

While some have recognisable names, most are private individuals running private companies. All are worth billions of dollars.

And while their influence is evident in the US, it stretches around the world — and that includes Australia.

How did these farmers become so powerful?

The history of American agriculture is rooted in slavery and genocide but it was in the 1980s that the pro-corporate framework really took hold , Frerick says.

With the election of Republican president Ronald Reagan, Frerick says that “the guardrails came off and you see this massive consolidation of power in the hands of a few people”.

In the 1950s, then-president Dwight D Eisenhower’s secretary of agriculture urged farmers to “get big or get out”, and succeeded in passing a bill that watered down laws protecting small family-run farms.

Reagan continued to water down this legislation.

Frerick says this meant his home state of Iowa, which had some of the best soil in North America, was transformed into an industrial wasteland.

“It’s empty, it’s dead, it’s barren — you don’t see animals, you smell them,” he says.

For example, in Iowa, pigs currently outnumber people seven to one.

“We basically shove most animals into these massive sheds called confinements, where they never see a blade of grass.”

He says where Iowa used to be made up of independent, middle-class family farms, it is now mostly families of low-wage workers employed by the mega-rich and often out-of-town agricultural barons.

And Frerick believes these mega-rich baron families have one thing in common which led to their success.

“They were willing to cross ethical lines others weren’t willing to cross. [For instance] most hog farmers weren’t willing to pack thousands of their animals into a windless metal shed,” he says.

So who exactly are the families that own so much of the agricultural industry?

The hog barons: Jeff and Deb Hansen

Via their Iowa Select Farms pork production company, the Hansens own 800 farms in 50 counties in Iowa. That makes them the fourth largest pork producer in the US. Iowa Select Farms’ revenue from 2022 was $91 million.

Frerick learnt that the Hansens live between their home in the only gated community in Iowa and a home in Naples, Florida.

“[And] they have their own private jet that they fly back and forth between the two and allegedly on this jet are the words ‘When pigs fly’, ” Frerick says.

The grain barons: The Cargill-MacMillan family

Frerick says he grew up aware of the company owned by the Cargill-MacMillan family.

“I played soccer next to a Cargill plant, I went to church by a Cargill plant, but [the family is] not consumer-facing, they don’t put their name on anything,” he says.

So, he never realised the scale of the operation.

The family owns equity in the food company Cargill Inc, one of the largest privately owned corporations in the US, with branches around the world, including Australia.

According to Forbes, 21 of the Cargill-MacMillian family members are billionaires.

Yet despite their reach, Frerick says the family aims to keep a low profile.

“[For example] they’re still in Russia, they don’t care about Putin because you don’t know who they are and so you can’t boycott [them],” he says.

“They want to be in every grain production region in the world and they want to shape those markets to their personal benefit.”

Frerick says the other advantage of the family’s anonymity is that “it’s actually really, really hard to find out what they own, how much they own, where they operate”.

And how they operate.

In 2022, the president of the New South Wales Farmers Association, Xavier Martin was critical of the way “multinational middleman” like Cargill treat NSW grain growers.

“There’s a heck of a lot of farmers who’ve had an absolute belting and then find they’ve got a hundred-tonne gorilla … completely mugging them at the market,” Mr Martin said.

The dairy barons: Mike and Sue McCloskey

Select Milk Producers, the sixth largest milk co-operative in America, is owned by Mike and Sue McCloskey.

The couple started their own dairy in California with just 250 cows, but they’ve since moved their operation to New Mexico and Indiana. And now their co-operative is an operation with 35,000 cows.

Beyond dairy farming, Frerick says the pair are also involved in American politics.

“The dairy [barons] were very early supporters of [Trump]; they gave him a massive amount of money,” the author says.

In 2016, following the election of Donald Trump, Mike McCloskey was considered for the role of US secretary of agriculture, but was not appointed to the role.

While their farming operation is based in north-west Indiana, the McCloskeys claim residency at the Ritz-Carlton in Puerto Rico, Frerick says.

The grocery barons: The Waltons family

“They’re the largest company we’ve ever seen in the food system in the history of mankind,” Frerick says.

The Waltons, the owners of Walmart, are unsurprisingly America’s richest family, and Frerick describes them as the “king of kings”.

Frerick says a Walmart supplier once described their relationship to the grocery monolith as “it’s supply and command … they dictate you”.

The berry barons: The Driscolls

It’s easy to find berry brand Driscoll in Australian supermarkets, but the company is headquartered in California.

Brothers J Miles and Garland Reiter founded the company in the late 1800s, and the company now sells one in three berries in the world.

Yet Frerik says: “They don’t grow a single berry.”

He says companies like Driscoll often contract out their production to people in other countries who can engage in labour practices that would not generally be accepted in developed countries.

A 2022 Guardian investigation found that berry farm workers in Portugal appear to have been working illegally long hours picking berries for less than minimum wage.

Some of the berry farms identified in the investigation supply berries to European supermarkets through Driscolls.

Frerick explains the creation of the supermarket baron Walmart led to the offshoot of “parent” barons.

He adds: “That’s how Driscolls became a baron … they realise one company wants four berries for 4,000 stores year round,” he says.

“And so what you see is massive consolidation in the food system.”

The beef barons: The Batista family

The billionaire Brazilian Batista brothers, Joesley and Wesley, own JBS Foods, one of the world’s largest meat processing companies.

This company has been heavily involved in political influence.

In 2020, top executives of the company pleaded guilty to bribing more than 1,900 Brazilian politicians to advance their business interests.

The company was fined yet, as Frerick explains, the brothers “kept their monopoly”.

In Australia, JBS is the country’s largest meat and food processing company, employing more than 14,000 workers across 50 sites.

You might not know the name JBS. But if you buy Primo ham, McDonald’s burgers or meat from Coles, Woolworths or Aldi, you’re likely eating JBS products.

Recently, JBS expanded into fish farming in Tasmania, acquiring Huon Aquaculture, a major salmon producer sold around Australian and exported globally.

Where to from here?

Frerick would like to see the US return to sustainable, independent farming practices because he believes the current food system in America is “truly radical” given the size and scale of these current farming enterprises.

“Honestly, the simplest thing is to put animals back on the land,” he says.

“We have to end this industrial model; it’s better for rural communities, better for the environment [and] it makes better tasting food.”

Agriculture is a major contributor of emissions and as the world deals with a deepening climate crisis, Frerick says the American food system needs to change.

“You have industrial dairy occurring in the West and aquifers that cannot sustain them, that are just awful for the cows and awful for the workers.”

Frerick says it all comes down to political will.

“You just have to break [these companies] up. This isn’t hard,  it’s more about the question of political courage.”

Zombies: Ranks of world’s most debt-hobbled companies are soaring, and not all will survive

NEW YORK (AP) — They are called zombies, companies so laden with debt that they are just stumbling by on the brink of survival, barely able to pay even the interest on their loans and often just a bad business hit away from dying off for good.

An Associated Press analysis found their numbers have soared to nearly 7,000 publicly traded companies around the world — 2,000 in the United States alone — whiplashed by years of piling up cheap debt followed by stubborn inflation that has pushed borrowing costs to decade highs.

And now many of these mostly small and mid-sized walking wounded could soon be facing their day of reckoning, with due dates looming on hundreds of billions of dollars of loans they may not be able to pay back.

“They’re going to get crushed,” Valens Securities Managing Director Robert Spivey said of the weakest zombies.
Added Miami investor Mark Spitznagel, who famously bet against stocks before the last two crashes: “The clock is ticking.”

Zombies are commonly defined as companies that have failed to make enough money from operations in the past three years to pay even the interest on their loans. AP’s analysis found their ranks in raw numbers have jumped over the past decade by a third or more in Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom and the U.S., including companies that run Carnival Cruise Line, JetBlue Airways, Wayfair, Peloton, Italy’s Telecom Italia and British soccer giant Manchester United.

An Associated Press analysis found the number of publicly-traded “zombie” companies — those so laden with debt they’re struggling to pay even the interest on their loans — has soared to nearly 7,000 around the world, including 2,000 in the United States.
Takeaways from AP analysis on the rise of world’s debt-laden ‘zombie’ companies
FILE – Trader Michael Milano, center, works with colleagues on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange on May 30, 2024. World stocks are mixed on Friday, June 7, 2024, after a steady day on Wall Street as markets anticipate key U.S. jobs data to be revealed later in the day.

To be sure, the number of companies, in general, has increased over the past decade, making comparisons difficult, but even limiting the analysis to companies that existed a decade ago, zombies have jumped nearly 30%.

They include utilities, food producers, tech companies, owners of hospitals and nursing home chains whose weak finances hobbled their responses in the pandemic, and real estate firms struggling with half-empty office buildings in the heart of major cities.
As the number of zombies has grown, so too has the potential damage if they are forced to file for bankruptcy or close their doors permanently. Companies in the AP’s analysis employ at least 130 million people in a dozen countries.

Already, the number of U.S. companies going bankrupt has hit a 14-year high, a surge expected in a recession, not an expansion. Corporate bankruptcies have also recently hit highs of nearly a decade or more in Canada, the U.K., France and Spain.

Some experts say zombies may be able to avoid layoffs, selloffs of business units or collapse if central banks cut interest rates, which the European Central Bank began doing this week, though scattered defaults and bankruptcies could still drag on the economy. Others think the pandemic inflated the ranks of zombies and the impact is temporary.

“Revenue went down, or didn’t grow as much as projected, but that doesn’t mean they are all about to go bust,” said Martin Fridson, CEO of research firm FridsonVision High Yield Strategy.

For its part, Wall Street isn’t panicking. Investors have been buying stock of some zombies and their “junk bonds,” loans rating agencies deem most at risk of default. While that may help zombies raise cash in the short term, investors pouring money into these securities and pushing up their prices could eventually face heavy losses.

“We have people gambling in the public markets at an unprecedented level,” said David Trainer, head of New Constructs, an investment research group that tracks the cash drain on zombies. “They don’t see risk.”
WARNING SIGNS

Credit rating agencies and economists warned about the dangers of companies piling on debt for years as interest rates fell but got a big push when central banks around the world cut benchmark rates to near zero in the 2009 financial crisis and then again in the 2020-21 pandemic.

It was a giant, unprecedented experiment designed to spark a borrowing binge that would help avert a worldwide depression. It also created what some economists saw as a credit bubble that spread far beyond zombies, with low rates that also enticed heavy borrowing by governments, consumers and bigger, healthier companies.

The difference for many zombies is they lack deep cash reserves, and the interest they pay on many of their loans is variable, not fixed, so higher rates are hurting them right now. Most dangerously, zombie debt was often not used to expand, hire or invest in technology, but on buying back their own stock.

These so-called repurchases allow companies to “retire” shares, or take them off the market, a way to make up for new shares often created to boost the pay and retention packages for CEOs and other top executives.

But too many stock buybacks can drain cash from a business, which is what happened at Bed Bath & Beyond. The retail chain that once operated 1,500 stores struggled for years with a troubled transition to digital sales and other problems, but its heavy borrowing and decision to spend $7 billion in a decade on buybacks played a key role in its downfall.

Those buybacks came amid big paydays for top management, which Bed Bath & Beyond said in regulatory filings were intended to align with financial performance. Pay for just three top executives topped $140 million, according to executive data firm Equilar, even as its stock sunk from $80 to zero. Tens of thousands of workers in all 50 states lost their jobs as the chain spiraled to its bankruptcy filing last year.

Companies had a chance to cut their debt after then-President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax overhaul slashed corporate rates and allowed repatriation of profits overseas. But most of the windfall was spent on buybacks instead. Over the next two years, U.S. companies spent a record $1.3 trillion repurchasing and retiring their own stock, a 50% jump from the prior two years.

SmileDirectClub went from spending a little over $1 million a year on buying its own stock before the tax cut to spending $780 million as it boosted pay packages of top executives. One former CEO got $20 million in just four years. Stock in the heavily indebted teeth-straightening company plunged before it went out of business last year and put 2,700 people out of work.

“I was like, ‘How did this ever happen?’” said George Pettigrew, who held a tech job at the company’s Nashville, Tennessee, headquarters. ”I was shocked at the amount of the debt.”

Another zombie, JetBlue, suffered problems felt by many airlines, including the lingering impact of lost business during the pandemic. But it also was hurt by the decision to double its debt in the past decade and purchase hundreds of millions of dollars of its own stock. As interest costs soared and profits evaporated, that stock has dropped by two-thirds, and JetBlue has not made enough in pre-tax earnings to pay $717 million in interest over four straight years.

JetBlue said the AP’s way of screening for zombies isn’t accurate for airlines because big purchases of aircraft “are an intrinsic part of the business model” and don’t reflect an airline’s true health. The company added that it’s been shoring up its finances recently by cutting costs and putting off purchases of new planes. JetBlue also hasn’t done a major stock buyback in four years.

In some cases, borrowed cash has gone straight into the pockets of controlling shareholders and wealthy family owners.

In Britain, the Glazer family that owns much of the Premier League’s Manchester United soccer franchise loaded up the company with debt in 2005, then got the team to borrow hundreds of millions a few years later. At the same time, the family had the team pay dividends to shareholders, including $165 million to the Glazers themselves, while its stadium, the Old Trafford, fell into disrepair.

“They’ve papered over the cracks but we’ve been in decline for more than a decade,” fan lobbying group head Chris Rumfitt said after a recent downpour sent water cascading from the upper stands in what spectators dubbed “Trafford Falls.” “There have been zero investments in infrastructure.”

The Glazers, who separately own the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers, recently brought in a new part owner at Manchester United who has promised to inject $300 million into the business. The stock is falling anyway, down 20% so far this year to $16.25, no higher than it was a decade ago.

Manchester United declined to comment.

Zombie collapses wouldn’t be so scary if robust spending by governments, consumers and larger, more stable companies could act as a cushion. But they also piled up debt.

The U.S. government is expected to spend $870 billion this year on interest on its debt alone, up a third in a year and more than it spends on defense. In South Korea, consumers are tapped out as credit card and other household debt hit fresh records. In the U.K., homeowners are missing payments on their mortgages at a rate not seen in years.

A real concern among investors is that too many zombies could collapse at the same time because central banks kept them on life support with low interest rates for years instead of allowing failures to sprinkle out over time, similar to the way allowing small forest fires to burn dry brush helps prevent an inferno.

“They’ve created a tinderbox,” said Spitznagel, founder of Universa Investments. “Any wildfire now threatens the entire ecosystem.”
TIME RUNNING OUT?

For the first few months of this year, hundreds of zombies refinanced their loans as lenders opened their wallets in anticipation that the Federal Reserve would start cutting in March. That new money helped stocks of more than 1,000 zombies in AP’s analysis rise 20% or more in the past six months across the dozen countries.

But many did not or could not refinance, and time is running out.

Through the summer and into September, when many investors now expect the first and only Fed cut this year, zombies will have to pay off $1.1 trillion of loans, according to AP’s analysis, two-thirds of the total due by the end of the year.

For its calculations, the AP used pre-tax, pre-interest earnings of publicly-traded companies from the database FactSet for both years it studied, 2023 and 2013. The countries selected were the biggest by gross domestic product: the U.S., China, Japan, India, Germany, the U.K., France, Canada, South Korea, Spain, Italy and Australia.

The study did not take into account cash in the bank that a company could use to pay its bills or assets it could sell to raise money. The results would also vary if other years were used due to economic conditions and interest rate policies. Still, studies by both the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, an organization for central banks in Switzerland, generally support AP’s findings that zombies have risen sharply.

Most of the publicly traded companies in the countries studied — 80% of 34,000 total — are not zombies. These healthier companies tend to be bigger with more cash, and many have reinvested it in higher-yielding bonds and other assets to make up for the higher interest payments now. Many also took advantage of pandemic-era low rates to refinance, pushing out repayment due dates into the future.

But the debt hasn’t gone away, and could become a problem for these companies as well if rates don’t fall over the next few years. In 2026, $586 billion in debt is coming due for the companies in the S&P 1500.

“They aren’t on anyone’s radar yet, but they are a hurricane. They could be a Category 4 or Category 5 if interest rates don’t go down,” Valens Securities’ Spivey said. “They’re going to lay people off. They’re going to have to cut costs.”

Some zombies aren’t waiting.

Telecom Italia struck a deal last year to sell its landline network but debt fears continue to push down its stock, so it has moved to put its subsea telecom unit and cell tower business up for sale, too.

Radio giant iHeartMedia, after exiting bankruptcy five years ago with less debt, is still struggling to pay what it owes by unloading real estate and radio towers. Its stock has fallen from $16.50 to $1.10 in five years.

Exercise company Peloton Interactive has laid off hundreds of workers to help pay debt that has more than quadrupled to $2.3 billion in just five years even though its pretax earnings before the new borrowing weren’t enough to pay interest. Stock that had soared to more than $170 a share during the pandemic recently closed at $3.74.

“If rates stay at this level in the near future, we’re going to see more bankruptcies,” said George Cipolloni, a fund manager at Penn Mutual Asset Management. “At some point the money comes due and they’re not going to have it. It’s game over.”
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Local officials in New York have filed a lawsuit against Bark Air, an airline geared to dogs, alleging it violates airport usage restrictions in Westchester County.

The suit alleges that the private terminal at Westchester Airport from which Bark operates its charter flights limits companies to selling seats on aircraft with nine or fewer seats. Larger aircraft must operate out of the airport’s commercial terminal.

Bark indicates on its website that it conveys caninines on Gulfstream G5s, which accommodate 12 to 16 passengers. Bark notes that its planes are designed to fit 15 dogs along with their human companions, but that it never sells more than 10 tickets.

Westchester filed the suit against Bark and Talon Air, the private charter company that Bark contracted to operate its service.

Bark, the maker of BarkBox toy and treat subscriptions for pets, announced its flight service in April. It indicated it would initially operate routes between Westchester County and the Los Angeles area as well as internationally to London.

A Bark spokesperson said the company doesn’t comment on litigation, but added that “we don’t believe this will impact our operations.”

Westchester County attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bark Air’s sold-out maiden voyage departed New York for Los Angeles on May 23. Tickets cost $6,000 for one dog plus a human. Its website indicates that more flights, some of which are sold out, are scheduled to take off later this month.

How to write about the biggest, most written-about star in the world as summer 2024 approaches, and with it the arrival of Taylor Swift’s Eras tour in the UK later this week? We could take cues from the normally level-headed New Yorker. But even they recently threw up their hands and pronounced Swift as beyond review – not because reviewers might get doxxed by overzealous Swifties if they dare give her fewer than five stars, but because Swift’s work might officially be beyond good and evil.

The New Yorker’s Sinéad O’Sullivan contends that Swift is operating so far outside the norm for pop that assessing her output as mere songs is futile: she has created a Marvel-style universe all her own, in which complex internal references abound and the identity of her enemies, and the 3D chess games she is playing, are pored over across the social mediasphere. Teenage girls and young women, it turns out, are not passive consumers of glittery froth, but supercharged Dylanologists crossed with ninja cryptographers, operating at an emotional pitch on the scale of Beatlemania.

Swift not only has lore, she embarks on her multi-platform art knowingly, laying a trail of Easter eggs and numerological puzzles. She is also, of course, beyond interview, a “post-media” celebrity who does not have much use for middle-people. But in a rare 2023 exchange with Time magazine (when she was named person of the year) she discussed her emotive and canny album re-recording campaign to gain control of her masters – Taylor’s Versions – being like a mythical quest. “I’m collecting horcruxes,” Swift said, eyebrow only slightly raised. “I’m collecting infinity stones. Gandalf’s voice is in my head every time I put out a new one. For me, it is a movie now.”

In this universe, from news stories about her latest Swiftonomics milestone, to fan theories shared and dissected at light-speed, to university courses and symposia, the mass of Swift exegesis is weighty. This is, yes, yet another op-ed to toss on to a vast pile, but still it remains worth examining the phenomenon of a singer-songwriter who has become far, far more than just that. Swift’s fans cheer so loudly they twice registered as an earthquake on the Richter scale in the US last year. Donald Trump allies have threatened to wage “holy war” against Swift if she endorses Joe Biden for the US presidency. “Biggest gangsta in the music game right now,” Drake recently called her.

Drake considers Swift his only real competition but really, it’s not even close. A number-soup of statistics, of umpteen records broken and most-streamed this, or online reach that, supports Swift’s dominance. Her Eras tour looks set to be the highest-grossing of all time, tilting the financial tectonics of entire cities: Barclays has estimated that her shows here might be worth £1bn to the UK economy. The Swift lift is real: she has made American football, that most popular US sport, even more popular. Her boyfriend, Travis Kelce, plays for the Kansas City Chiefs; it’s been calculated that Swift has generated an additional $331.5m for the NFL between 24 September last year and 22 January this year.

The Swift lift could be political too. “I can’t comment on what Taylor Swift is saying, or not saying,” said a White House spokesperson in March, on whether Swift will endorse Biden this year; hilarious, if the context weren’t so charged. The star did endorse him in 2020 and Swift is, apparently, sky-high on Biden’s team’s wishlist. (She may be reticent to endorse a figure known to Palestinian supporters as “Genocide Joe”.) Fox News, meanwhile, has called Swift “a Pentagon psyop asset” and Trump allies have warned her to stay out of politics. What’s extraordinary is that everyone believes that she can swing the election.

What’s even more remarkable is how Swift manages to be a significant geopolitical and macroeconomic disrupter, while simultaneously cultivating an insightful, sensitive relatability. She is “your billionaire best friend”, according to Georgia Carroll, who spoke at the recent Australian Swiftposium; a star who made her money on the back of her songwriting (not by diversifying her portfolio into drinks, makeup or NFTs) and by leveraging the obsessiveness of her fans to consume multiple formats of her output. “My Pennies Made Your Crown” completes the keynote speech’s title (it’s a Taylor Swift lyric); Carroll’s thesis examined what expenditure does to cultural capital within the fan community.

Swift has been likened to a capitalist role model thanks to endless limited edition releases and merch drops, and her indefatigable work ethic: she has released five studio albums in the past five years, alongside four complete Taylor’s Version re-recordings. (Recently, Billie Eilish called out as “wasteful” unnamed other pop stars releasing multiple colours of the same vinyl record; Eilish’s vinyl is recycled.)

With discussion of Swift’s work and life powering several server farms’ worth of internet fan activity, it becomes harder to get your head around this epically unprecedented state of affairs. If the Kansas City Chiefs are not really in Kansas any more, Toto, then neither are the rest of us.

Swift’s exceptionalism, though, is well founded on both talent and tactics, and in the singular journey she has had through the past couple of high-churn decades. Ironically, given she dominates our age, Swift is actually a profoundly old-fashioned artist who would have made a great Broadway librettist. Unlike a lot of modern pop, her songs tell a story, in succinct, emotive ways that often scan meticulously, a legacy of her country beginnings. But Daddy I Love Him, off The Tortured Poets Department, is a vexed love story complete with meddling onlookers that may have nodded to Swift’s troubled relationship with the 1975’s Matty Healy. She quotes The Little Mermaid, wrongfoots expectations – “I’m having his baby/No I’m not, but you should see your faces” – and nonchalantly tosses off the line “all the wine moms are still holding out/But fuck ’em”.

When we’re repeatedly told that the value of recorded music has never been lower and that it is consumed largely as snippets on TikTok, Swift releases double albums that are events themselves; her body of work is studied as a whole. In a time where people engage with highly individualised content on their phones, Swift’s releases, gigs and pronouncements provide mass moments as stans, lighter-touch fans and onlookers race to digest her latest output, or decode a cryptic post.

But Swift is also profoundly of this era, where fame has significantly altered – especially for female pop artists. It has become more intense, bloodthirsty and fickle. The leftfield singer-songwriter and musician Ethel Cain, in a recent interview with the Guardian, suggested that fans nowadays treat female pop artists “like fantasy football teams”, arguing “about streams and stats and followers and almost using them like Pokémon to fight each other”. Swift knows a little about that.

Her current level of adulation has been hard won; back in 2016, the hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty trended, after a series of dramas, conflicts and PR nadirs where the Taylor avatar took a drubbing. That all seems very long ago now; you might quip that Swift’s narrative arc has been long, but it has bent towards justice, and – crucial to her ubiquity now – that justice has coded female.

Stars are, to some extent, two-dimensional characters; they are projections. But stars are also mirrors, reflecting back at us what we want – or need – to see. And what Swift’s many fans see is a woman whose songwriting reflects their concerns. She writes about the anticipation and disappointments of romantic love, privileging the intensity of the female experience but also all aspects of her complex story. There is, perhaps, a yawning unmet need now for an avenging angel such as Swift in the wake of the overturn of Roe v Wade – Swift speedily tweeted her “absolutely terrified” reaction – and the anti-choice legislation under way in various states.

But if Swift’s saga skews female, her feminism does have shortcomings: it’s been criticised for its paleness, despite some timely social media action at the time of #BlackLivesMatter, her embrace of Juneteenth and her friendship with Beyoncé. In the Q&A after her opening address to the recent Melbourne Swiftposium, senior Rolling Stone writer Brittany Spanos, a Black Swiftie, expressed some personal discomfort; that Swift had ground to make up.

There is, categorically, more that Swift could do on many fronts. Since her outburst in the Miss Americana documentary (2020), in which she argued with her father and other managers about supporting Democratic candidates in a local Tennessee election in 2018, her public commitments to social justice seem to have dropped off somewhat.

But key to her dominance is her own story: Swift has been cancelled, and risen, phoenix-like; surviving physical, legal and financial assaults. She proves the creeps are beatable, which is news we can use. More than just some idealised gracious Athene, Swift has access to reserves of Boudicca and Joan of Arc. It’s all been a postmodern hero’s quest, with a woman at its heart.

All entertainment is, inherently, distraction from more important things; circuses have traditionally come a close second to bread in the hierarchy of needs to avoid a descent into anarchy. But we need them. A tremendous multi-ring, multi-level circus is coming to town, and Swift is its vindicated ringmaster.