Tag Archives: National Debt

Congress Spending Surge is National Suicide, by Ron Paul

Posted on August 5, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you spend money you don’t have long enough, you’ll go broke. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

With a national debt approaching $23 trillion and a trillion dollar deficit for this year alone, Congress last week decided to double down on suicidal spending, passing a two year budget that has the United States careening toward catastrophe. While we cannot say precisely when the economic crash will occur, we do know that it is coming. And last week Congress pounded down on the accelerator.

We are told that the US economy is experiencing unprecedented growth, while at the same time the Fed is behaving as it does when we are in recession by cutting rates…and dodging insults from the President because it’s not cutting fast enough. This is not economic policy – it’s schizophrenia!

But that’s only the beginning.

Take what they call “national defense” spending. This is the misnomer they use to try and convince us that pumping trillions into the military-industrial complex will make us safe and free. Nothing could be further from the truth: probably ninety percent of the “defense” budget is aggressive militarism and welfare for the rich.

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Things to Come, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on July 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

A dire political and economic confluence will soon put the US in a world of hurt. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

“American exceptionalism has led to a country that is exceptionally un-self-aware.” — Peter Thiel

The economic contraction ahead will put this borderline psychotic country through some interesting ch-ch-ch-changes. Mr. Trump now fully owns the Potemkin status quo of record stock markets poised against a withering rot of human capital at the core of an industrial society in sunset mode. Leadership at every corner of American life — politics, business, media — expects an ever-higher tech magical updraft of fortune from an increasingly holographic economy of mere fugitive appearances in which everybody can get more of something for nothing. The disappointment over how all this works out will be epic.

Globalism is wobbling badly. It was never what it was cracked up to be: a permanent new plateau of exquisitely-tuned international economic cooperation engineered to perfection. It was just a set of provisional relations based on transient advantage. As it turned out, every move that advantaged US-based corporations blew back ferociously on the American public and the long-term integrity of the social order. Sinister as it seems, the process was simply emergent: a self-organizing evolution of forces previously set in motion. And, like a lot of things in history, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

“Off-shoring” US industry jacked up corporate profits while it decimated working class livelihoods. In return, that large demographic got “bargain shopping” at Walmart, a life of ever-upward revolving debt, and dead downtowns. The country got gigantic trade deficits and government debt loads. In effect, globalism compelled America to borrow as much as possible from the future to keep running things the way they were set up to run. Now, there is just suspicion that we’ve reached the limits of borrowing. Soon it will be a fact and that fact will upend everything we’ve been doing.

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Posted in Business, Collapse, Debt, Economy, Energy, Geopolitics, Government, Investigations, Politics

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The House Passes Budget Deal to Increase Military Spending, by Bill Bonner

Posted on July 29, 2019 | Leave a comment

The US is hooked on fiat debt and the newest budget debt adds still more. From Bill Bonner at bonnerandpartners.com:

Yesterday, the House voted to go along with the budget deal, providing more money (more inflation) to just about every cockamamie scheme the feds can come up with.

The Washington Post:

The House passed a sweeping two-year budget deal Thursday that increases spending for military and domestic programs and suspends the debt ceiling through mid-2021, sending the White House-backed legislation to the Senate.

We pause to remind readers that “inflation” means an increase in the amount of money available. It can show up in consumer prices… or in asset prices.

The important thing is that once you inflate (stimulate with money and credit) an economy – either Main Street or Wall Street – people adjust their behavior. They pay more. They spend more. They borrow more.

Then, their livelihoods, their wealth, their reputations – and the entire economy – depend on more inflation. So, you’ve got to continue inflating… or go into rehab.

Inflate or Die. There’s no third choice.

Weirdness Prevails

In the meantime, strange and remarkable things happen. Inflation changes markets, economies, and even the way people think. The longer it goes on, the more distortions, perversions, and curiosities it brings.

Yesterday alone brought news from Oddity Central that…

A 20-year-old woman was recently arrested in Germany for walking into a car dealership and trying to buy a €15,000 (roughly $16,700) car with fake banknotes printed on a cheap inkjet printer using regular printing paper.

One employee told German media that he literally asked the woman if she wanted to play Monopoly or buy a car, but after seeing that she was serious, he called the police.

And this headline from CNN:

Nike’s rare ‘Moon Shoe’ is sold for $437,500, shattering the auction record for sneakers

And a tweet arrived with this shocker:

#Switzerland’s #yieldcurve is now negative for all maturities, hence anywhere between 3 months and 50 years.

All over the news spectrum, weirdness prevails. Comets shaped like dollar signs are seen in the night sky. Elvis is spotted in a mall in Kansas City. An egg is laid, etched with the Federal Reserve’s formula for the neutral rate… Surely, the second coming is at hand.

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Government

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Realizing the Full Implications of the Forthcoming Catastrophe, MN Gordon

Posted on July 28, 2019 | Leave a comment

It’s been easy to descend the staircase into national bankruptcy. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

Delivering Tomorrow’s Curses

Roman poet Virgil penned these words in his epic, The Aeneid, roughly a generation before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.  They can be loosely translated to, “the descent to hell is easy.”  Those who’ve traversed this passage can attest to the veracity of this axiom.

Though not apparent in the milieu of Virgil’s poem, for our purposes today, we’ll extend its application to the insidious progression of currency debasement.  What short utterance more aptly characterizes the steady degradation, as currently practiced by today’s church of state?

Yesterday [Thursday], for example, the House acted with untroubled ease to further America’s descent to hell.  With little resistance, federal spending was increased and the debt ceiling was suspended for two years.  Having delivered tomorrow’s curses, the nation’s Representatives can skip town without missing a moment of summer recess.

As you can see, the allure of getting something for nothing is far too enticing for even the most honest politician to pass up.  And with an endless supply of fake money behind you, why stick your neck out and get clobbered?  The public debt encumbered is already well beyond honest repayment.  But that’s a problem for tomorrow; not today.

Representative government in America, circa now, has nothing to do with upholding individual freedoms and liberties.  Nor is it about making tough decisions in the interest of the long-term health of the nation.  It’s about doing the expedient – and suspending the debt ceiling so the descent to hell can be made as comfortable as possible.

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Trump can’t be both the president of growth and the president of debt, by Daniel Horowitz

Posted on July 28, 2019 | Leave a comment

The US economy is well beyond the point where debt and debt service are impeding growth, which means the more we go into debt, the less the economy will grow. From Daniel Horowitz at conservativereview.com:

With the unemployment rate below 4 percent for 16 consecutive months, one would expect economic growth to be soaring. Yet even as we experience the best job market since the late 1960s, this is the first time in modern history that we have not experienced a year of 3 percent GDP growth. What gives?

Earlier today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the economy had grown just 2.1 percent during the second quarter of this year (ending June 30). It also revised Q4 of 2018 down to just 1.1 percent, which now means that growth during the 12 months ending Q4 of 2018 was only 2.5 percent, not 3 percent as previously thought. This means that the U.S. economy has now gone 14 years without a year-over-year growth of 3 percent.  It’s been 19 years since we’ve hit 4 percent, which was during 1997-2000.

While the numbers don’t portend a coming recession, it is highly unusual for us to go for 16 consecutive months with unemployment below 4 percent and 43 months below 5 percent, yet never attain 3 or 4 percent annual GDP growth. In fact, that has never happened before. During the late 1990s, the unemployment rate ranged from 5.3 percent to 3.9 percent – not even as good as today’s 3.7 percent – yet GDP growth was over 4 percent. Ditto for the late 1960s, when we saw years of 6 percent growth. During the mid 1980s, we saw this growth even with higher unemployment rates.

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Posted in Business, Debt, Debtonomics, Economics, Economy, Government

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It’s Over: The Democrats And The Republicans Are Both Conspiring To Bankrupt America And Destroy Our Future, by Michael Snyder

Posted on July 23, 2019 | Leave a comment

The numbers don’t lie, and when they get big enough, which they probably are already, they show no mercy. From Michael Snyder at endoftheamericandream.com:

Both major political parties are working together to destroy America’s financial future, and most Americans don’t seem to care.  Once upon a time, the Republicans were considered to be “the party of fiscal responsibility”, but now they are just as bad as the “free spending” Democrats.  As you will see below, a “compromise” budget deal was just reached which will dramatically increase federal spending and will suspend the federal debt limit until after the next election.  In other words, both sides are conspiring to make our debt problem much, much worse over the next year and a half, and this should be causing howls of outrage all across America.  But instead most Americans seem content to go along with the free spending ways of our political leaders, and only a handful of voices are sounding the alarm as we steamroll toward financial oblivion.

When Barack Obama was inaugurated on January 20th, 2009, the U.S. national debt was sitting at a grand total of $10,626,877,048,913.08.

Of course we proceeded to go on the greatest debt binge in the history of our nation, and when Obama’s two terms ended the U.S. national debt had risen to $19,947,304,555,212.49.

Then Donald Trump took office, and we have continued to rack up debt at a staggering pace.  In fact, at this moment the U.S. national debt is $22,023,119,533,123.43.

So over the last 10 and a half years, we have added just under 11.4 trillion dollars to our mountain of debt.  And when you break that down, that means that our politicians have been stealing more than 100 million dollars every single hour of every single day from future generations of Americans during the Trump/Obama era.

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Media and Politicians Ignore Oncoming Financial Crisis, by Ron Paul

Posted on July 1, 2019 | Leave a comment

If you keep spending money you don’t have, sooner or later you go broke. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:

The mainstream media was too busy obsessing over Russiagate to notice that, according to an annual Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees report, the Social Security trust fund will run out of money by 2035. The trustees also reported that the Medicare Hospital Insurance trust fund will be empty by 2027.

The trustees’ report is actually optimistic. Social Security is completely funded, and Medicare is largely funded, by payroll taxes. Therefore, their revenue fluctuates depending on the employment rate. So, when unemployment inevitably increases, payroll tax revenue will decline, hastening Medicare and Social Security’s bankruptcy.

Another dark cloud on the government’s fiscal horizon involves the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which provides federal bailouts to bankrupt pension plans. The PBGC currently has an over 50 billion dollars deficit. This deficit will almost certainly increase, as a number of large pension funds are likely to need a PBGC bailout in the next few years. Congress will likely bail out the PBGC to avoid facing the wrath of voters angry that Congress did not save their pensions.

Unfunded liabilities like Social Security and Medicare are not included in the official federal deficit. In fact, Congress raids the Social Security trust fund to increase spending and hide the deficit’s true size, while leaving the trust fund with worthless IOUs.

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Distressed Nation: Each American Would Owe $700,000 To Eliminate Worsening Debt Situation, by Tyler Durden

Posted on April 20, 2019 | Leave a comment

Got an extra $700,000 laying around to pay your share of the national debt and unfunded liabilities? No? Well somebody’s got to pay it. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

Truth In Accounting (TIA), a 501(c)(3) – focused on government financial information, published a new report that suggests the federal government’s overall financial conditions worsened by $4.5 trillion in 2018. The report also calculates the actual national debt on a per taxpayer basis.

With assets of $3.84 trillion, the federal government’s unfunded obligations and debt total $108.94 trillion, which contributed to a $105 trillion debt burden.

“Our elected officials have made repeated financial decisions that have left the federal government with a debt burden of $105 trillion, including unfunded Social Security and Medicare promises. That equates to a $696,000 burden for every federal taxpayer,” TIA states.

TIA rated the federal federal government with an “F” for its financial outlook and worsening fiscal situation that could trigger a crisis in the not too distant future.

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As the Madness Turns, by MN Gordon

Posted on April 6, 2019 | 1 comment

Government debt is growing much faster than the economy, which can only lead to disaster. From MN Gordon at economicprism.com:

The first quarter of 2019 is over and done.  But before we say good riddance.  Some reflection is in order.  To this we offer two discrete metrics.  Gross domestic product and government debt.

GDP for the quarter, as estimated by the March 29 update to the New York Fed’s GDP Nowcast, grew at an annualized rate of 1.3 percent.  For perspective, annualized GDP growth of 1.3 percent is akin to getting a 1.3 percent annual raise.  Ask any working stiff, and they’ll tell you…a 1.3 percent raise is effectively nothing.

By comparison, the U.S. budget deficit for fiscal year 2019 is estimated to hit roughly $1.1 trillion.  This amounts to an approximate 5 percent increase of the current $22.2 trillionnational debt.  In other words, government debt is increasing about 3.85 times faster than nominal GDP, which is about $21 trillion.

These two metrics offer a rough perspective on the state of the economy.  Deficit spending is grossly outpacing economic growth.  Heavy treatments of fiscal stimulus are being applied.  Yet the economy’s practically running in place.  In short, the state of the economy is not well.

And as the economy slows and then slips into reverse later this year, and as Washington then applies more fiscal stimulus, these two metrics will move even further towards madness.  What’s more, the Fed is gearing up to promote this greater state of madness in any and every way possible…

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US government’s net worth is now NEGATIVE $75 TRILLION, by Simon Black

Posted on April 4, 2019 | 1 comment

One guess as to who is on the hook for that negative $75 trillion. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

Usually around the middle of February each year, the US Treasury Department releases an annual report of the federal government’s financial condition.

It’s called the Financial Report of the US Government… and it looks a lot like an annual report that you might see filed by a big company like Apple or Facebook.

Except that, unlike Apple and Facebook, the US government’s annual report is absolutely gruesome.

This year’s report is no exception, save for one humorous anecdote: they -just- released it. In other words, they’re a month and a half LATE (given that the report is typically released in mid-February).

I actually CALLED the Treasury Department myself in early March, asking when they would publish the report.

The bewildered individual on the other end of the line said that he had no earthly idea, given that the government had been shut down for so long earlier this year.

Anyhow, if you want to see the report for yourself, you can download it here.

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