How would you feel if a million Americans lost their jobs?  Would you consider that to be a pretty catastrophic event for the economy?  Well, as you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is projecting that more than a million Americans could lose their jobs in the months ahead.  Needless to say, Fed projections are usually wildly optimistic.  So what will the real number be?  Ultimately, I think that things are going to be far worse than most of the experts would dare to imagine right now.  According to Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the number of layoffs during the first three months of this year was 396 percent higher than the number of layoffs during the same period in 2022.  A tremendous amount of negative momentum has been building up, and there is a whole lot of fear out there.

Fear of what could happen to PacWest drove their stock price 22 percent lower on Thursday.  Overall, PacWest is now down close to 80 percent so far in 2023…

Shares of PacWest were under pressure once again Thursday after the struggling regional bank said that deposit outflows resumed in the first week of May.

The stock dropped 22.7%, further extending its recent declines. PacWest's shares have now fallen more than 50% this month and nearly 80% for the year.

The only reason why PacWest's stock price is falling so rapidly is because it is getting a lot of media attention.

If you look closely at the numbers, PacWest really isn't that much different from hundreds of other regional banks that are essentially insolvent at this point.