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America Is Committing Suicide: Over The Past 12 Months, The U.S. National Debt Has Increased By 1.271 Trillion Dollars

America Is Committing Suicide: Over The Past 12 Months, The U.S. National Debt Has Increased By 1.271 Trillion Dollars

If we do not change course, our once great nation will be destroyed by a debt that has grown wildly out of control.  We are facing an unprecedented debt crisis that literally threatens to bring our country to an end, and yet our politicians are almost entirely silent on this issue in 2018.  In fact, Republicans and Democrats just worked together to pass another big, fat spending bill through Congress that is actually going to increase the pace at which we are going into debt.  What the Republicrats are doing is not just wrong.  To be honest, the truth is that they are committing crimes against humanity, and they are completely wiping out the very bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  How in the world is America supposed to be “great again” when we are buried in so much debt that future generations can never have any possible hope of getting free from it?

The fiscal year of the federal government goes from October 1st to September 30th.  During the fiscal year that just ended, the U.S. national debt increased by 1.271 trillion dollars

The federal debt increased by $1,271,158,167,126.72 in fiscal 2018, according to data released today by the Treasury.

The total federal debt started the fiscal year at $20,244,900,016,053.51 according to the Treasury, and finished the fiscal year at $21,516,058,183,180.23.

This is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Washington.  Our current “representatives” are completely and utterly failing us.

Once upon a time, at least members of the Tea Party would stand up and say something, but these days nobody seems to care that America’s future is being systematically destroyed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Destroying America: It Is Being Projected That The U.S. National Debt Will Hit 99 Trillion Dollars By 2048

Destroying America: It Is Being Projected That The U.S. National Debt Will Hit 99 Trillion Dollars By 2048

Temporary prosperity that is created by exploding levels of debt is not actually prosperity at all.  At this moment, the U.S. government is 21.4 trillion dollars in debt, and we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to that debt since 2009.  And if we stay on the path that we are currently on, the trajectory of our debt will soon accelerate dramatically.  In fact, as you will see below, the Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that the U.S. national debt will reach 99 trillion dollars by 2048 if nothing changes.  Congressional Budget Office projections always tend to be overly optimistic, and so the reality will probably be much worse than that.  Of course we will never actually see the day when our national debt reaches 99 trillion dollars.  Our government (and our entire society along with it) will collapse long before we ever get to that point.  In our endless greed, we are literally destroying America, and emergency action must be taken immediately if we are to survive.

Debt always makes things seem better in the short-term, and it is always destructive in the long-term.

When we go into debt as a nation, we are literally stealing from the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.  Through the first 11 months of this fiscal year, the official U.S. budget deficit was $895,000,000,000, which means that we continue to steal more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

And it is important to remember that not all additions to the national debt are included in the official budget deficit.  One year ago, our national debt was sitting at 20.1 trillion dollars, and that means that we have added an astounding 1.3 trillion dollars to the debt over the past 12 months.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Debt Doesn’t Matter, Because “We Owe It to Ourselves”? Why Krugman and Keynes Are Wrong about This

Debt Doesn’t Matter, Because “We Owe It to Ourselves”? Why Krugman and Keynes Are Wrong about This

It is an undeniable fact that debt, whether private or public, must, eventually, be repaid.

Creditors have better memories than debtors. This elegant line was coined by Benjamin Franklin—political philosopher, prolific writer, humorist and American ambassador to France. Mr. Franklin also was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. A true polymath and a man of great common sense.

An entrepreneur assumes he is entitled to an inexhaustible supply of credit and nonchalantly racks up debt. Soon, he will discover that creditors have better memories than debtors. Credit will dry up. Workers will stop working. Suppliers will stop supplying. Debt, after all, needs to be paid back. Credit and debt are two sides of the same coin.

They will insist there is something subtle about debt we don’t understand.

The creditor is always a virtual partner of the debtor. He has linked his fate with that of the debtor. Every grant of credit is a speculative entrepreneurial venture, the success or failure of which is uncertain.” – Ludwig von Mises in Human Action (Chapter 20 – p539)

Mainstream economists will not deny this. After all, how could they? Yet, they will say we got it wrong. They will argue we don’t get the full picture. They will insist there is something subtle about debt we don’t understand.

We Owe it to Ourselves

The subtlety we fail to see—according to the mainstream—is that public debt and private debt are two different animals. When government owes money to other organizations or individuals, a different rule applies than when a private person or a private enterprise owes money. That rule is: we owe it to ourselves.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

Today, America is nearly 70 trillion dollars in debt, and that debt is shooting higher at an exponential rate.  Usually most of the focus in on the national debt, which is now 21 trillion dollars and rising, but when you total all forms of debt in our society together it comes to a grand total just short of 70 trillion dollars.  Many people seem to believe that the debt imbalances that existed prior to the great financial crisis of 2008 have been solved, but that is not the case at all.  We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in history, and with each passing day that mountain of debt just keeps on getting bigger and bigger.  It simply is not mathematically possible for debt to keep on growing at a pace that is many times greater than GDP growth, and at some point this absurd bubble will come to an abrupt end.  So those that are forecasting many years of prosperity to come are simply being delusional.  Our current standard of living is very heavily fueled by debt, and at some point we are going to hit a wall.

Let’s talk about consumer debt first.  Excluding mortgage debt, consumer debt is projected to hit the 4 trillion dollar mark by the end of the year

Americans are in a borrowing mood, and their total tab for consumer debt could reach a record $4 trillion by the end of 2018.

That’s according to LendingTree, a loan comparison website, which analyzed data from the Federal Reserve on nonmortgage debts including credit cards, and auto, personal and student loans.

Americans owe more than 26 percent of their annual income to this debt. That’s up from 22 percent in 2010. It’s also higher than debt levels during the mid-2000s when credit availability soared.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

There is Over $7.5 Trillion In Debt That’s Highly Vulnerable To Rising Rates – Here’s What To Expect

There is Over $7.5 Trillion In Debt That’s Highly Vulnerable To Rising Rates – Here’s What To Expect

The 10-year interest rate hit the critical level of 3% this morning.

And this is the highest level it’s been since 2014 – four years ago. . .

A couple months back, I highlighted the correlation of the rise in the Fed Funds Rate (FFR) and the Interest Payments Due on the U.S. National Debt. And as President Trump and Congress are showing no signs of slowing down their borrowing – this debt service cost will only keep rising.

But the U.S. Treasury will get funded no matter what – foreigners will buy the debt, or the Fed will print dollars to do it. Either way, they will borrow – no matter the cost.

But individuals and companies that borrow aren’t as lucky. . .

They’re forced to pay the higher interest payments.

 

So, with interest rates moving up, it would be smart to see what businesses and sectors are most vulnerable to rising yields.

And for this, we need to look at the LIBOR rate. . .

LIBOR stands for London Interbank Offered Rate and is a benchmark rate that the world’s leading banks charge each other for short-term lending. It’s the first step when calculating interest rates on various kinds of loans – whether government bonds, corporate bonds, mortgages, or student debt.

You might have heard about LIBOR over the last few years. Many of the world’s leading financial institutions were caught manipulating the rate for years to profit and protect themselves.

Here’s an example: back in the 2007-08 financial meltdown, Barclays Bank manipulated the LIBOR downward. This lowering of rates in a time where rates were trending higher because of global bankruptcy risks gave off the impression that they were ‘less’ risky.

The LIBOR Scandal is known as one of the greatest financial crimes in history. And banks were hit with many billions in fines.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Debt Cancer: More Than 80 Percent Of American Adults Owe Somebody Else Money

Debt Cancer: More Than 80 Percent Of American Adults Owe Somebody Else Money 

How long can our debt levels keep growing much, much faster than the overall economy?  We haven’t had a year of 3 percent growth for the U.S. economy since the middle of the Bush administration, but we keep borrowing money as if there is no tomorrow.  Much of the focus has been on the exploding debt of the federal government, and that is definitely something I plan to address once I get to Washington.  But on an individual level, U.S. consumers have been extremely irresponsible as well.  In fact, one new survey has found that more than 80 percent of all American adults are currently in debt

It’s no secret that America is a nation that runs on debt, but it may surprise you to learn that the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults owe money in some way, shape, or form. According to new data from Comet, here’s how many Americans have debt at present:

  • 80.9% of Baby Boomers
  • 79.9% of Gen Xers
  • 81.5% of Millennials

For most of us, it starts very early.  We were told that going into debt to get a college education would not be a problem because we would be able to pay those loans off with the good jobs we would get after graduation.

Unfortunately, those good jobs never really materialized for many of us, and now millions of former college students are absolutely drowning in debt

A study released Friday by the Brookings Institution finds that most borrowers who left school owing at least $50,000 in student loans in 2010 had failed to pay down any of their debt four years later. Instead, their balances had on average risen by 5% as interest accrued on their debt.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Washington Nuts? Increasing Spending AND Cutting Taxes Will EXPLODE The Size Of The National Debt

Is Washington Nuts? Increasing Spending AND Cutting Taxes Will EXPLODE The Size Of The National Debt

Our national debt is rapidly approaching 21 trillion dollars, and yet Congress wants to follow up a large tax cut bill with a massive increase in federal spending.  This is absolute madness, and it is going to make our long-term financial problems as a nation far worse.  After passing the tax bill, the appropriate thing to do would have been to cut federal spending.  Yes, that would have not been a positive thing for the economy in the short-term, but we must start addressing our long-term priorities.  If we do not do something about this exploding national debt, it could potentially destroy our republic all by itself.

Earlier today, I was absolutely horrified when I learned of a budget deal in the Senate that would increase federal spending by about 200 billion dollars in each of the next two years…

The Senate’s Republican and Democratic leaders unveiled a sweeping two-year budget agreement on Wednesday that would increase federal spending by hundreds of billions of dollars on domestic and defense programs alike.

That deal would eliminate strict budget caps, set in 2011 to reduce the federal deficit, and would allow Congress to spend about $200 billion more in the current fiscal year and in fiscal year 2019.

Seriously?

Our federal debt is going to hit 21 trillion dollars some time this year, and they want to throw hundreds of billions of dollars more spending on top of what we are already doing?

This alone is why we need true conservatives all over the nation to run for Congress.  Our endless greed is literally destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US National Debt Will Jump by $617 Billion in 5 Months

US National Debt Will Jump by $617 Billion in 5 Months

Just as the Fed accelerates its QE Unwind. Treasuries reacted.

While everyone is trying to figure out how to twist the new tax cut to their advantage and save some money, the US Treasury Department just announced how much net new debt it will have to sell to the public through the second quarter to keep the government afloat: $617 billion.

That’s what the Treasury Department estimates will be the total amount added to publicly traded Treasury securities — or “net privately-held marketable borrowing” — through the end of the second quarter. This will be the net increase in the US debt through the end of Q2. By quarter:

  • During Q1, the Treasury expects to increase US public debt by $441 billion. It includes estimates for “lower net cash flows.”
  • During Q2 – peak tax seasons when revenues pour into the Treasury – it expects to increase US public debt by $176 billion.

It also “assumes” that with these increases in the debt, it will have a cash balance at the end of June of $360 billion.

So over the next five months, if all goes according to plan, the US gross national debt of $24.5 trillion currently – which includes $14.8 trillion in publicly traded Treasury securities and $5.7 trillion in internally held debt – will surge to about $25.1 trillion.

That’s a 4% jump in just five months. Note the technical jargon-laced description for this (marked in green on the chart):

The flat lines in 2013, 2015, and 2017 are a result of the prior three debt-ceiling fights. Each was followed by an enormous spike when the debt ceiling was lifted or suspended, and when the “extraordinary measures” with which the Treasury keeps the government afloat were reversed. And note the current debt ceiling, the flat line that started in mid-December.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Debt to GDP: Only 4 Major Countries Worse Off Than the US

Of major nations, only Japan, Greece, Italy, and Portugal have debt-to-GDP ratios higher than the US.

With the new tax overhaul, U.S. government debt will rise by one to two trillion dollars over the next decade. I view that assessment as majorly optimistic as it assumes no recession and unlikely growth.

Citing IMF statistics, the Wall Street Journal reports Just Four Large Countries Have a Higher Debt Burden Than the U.S.

Japan’s government carries debts at 240.3% of gross domestic product, far and away the world’s largest burden. Japan has struggled in recent decades to tackle its debt, in part because its economy has been stagnant. Attempts to raise revenue via higher taxes have often knocked the economy into recessions. Tax cuts haven’t generated enough growth to ease debt burdens.

The Bank of Japan has embarked on the world’s most aggressive monetary policies, including decades of rates near zero, and the world’s largest asset-purchase program. None of it has revived growth or inflation, meaning Japan’s debt burden has been slowly grinding higher. (Although the low rates have meant the costs to the government of servicing that debt have remained under control.)

Japan’s government debt has been a persistent fiscal challenge, but never quite blossomed into a full-blown crisis.

The next three nations haven’t been so lucky. Greece’s debt-to-GDP stands at 180.2% of GDP, Italy’s at 133% and Portugal’s at 125.7%. When the global financial crisis struck, and government revenues plunged around the world, Greece and Portugal found themselves unable to manage debts on their own. Both nations turned to international bailouts to make it through the years of weak growth that followed. All three nations have had to bail out some of their largest banks in order to keep their financial systems from collapsing.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Will America’s Prosperity Be Completely Wiped Out By Our Growing Debt?

Will America’s Prosperity Be Completely Wiped Out By Our Growing Debt?

The federal government is now 20.4 trillion dollars in debt, and most Americans don’t seem to care that the economic prosperity that we are enjoying today could be completely destroyed by our exploding national debt.  Over the past decade, the national debt has been growing at a rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour, and this is a debt that all of us owe.  When you break it down, each American citizen’s share of the debt is more than $60,000, and so if you have a family of five your share is more than $300,000.  And when you throw in more than 6 trillion dollars of corporate debt and nearly 13 trillion dollars of consumer debt, it is not inaccurate to say that we are facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

Debt cannot grow much faster than GDP indefinitely.  At some point the bubble bursts, and when it does the pain that the middle class is going to experience is going to be off the charts.  Back in 2015, the middle class in the U.S. became a minority of the population for the first time ever.  Never before in our history has the middle class accounted for less than 50 percent of the population, and all over the country formerly middle class families are under a great deal of stress as they attempt to make ends meet.  The following comes from an absolutely outstanding piece that was just put out by Charles Hugh Smith

If you talk to young people struggling to make ends meet and raise children, or read articles about retirees who can’t afford to retire, you can’t help but detect the fading scent of prosperity.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 2: 99.9% Of The Global Population Lives In A Country With A Central Bank

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 2: 99.9% Of The Global Population Lives In A Country With A Central Bank

Even though the nations of the world are very deeply divided on almost everything else, somehow virtually all of them have been convinced that central banking is the way to go.  Today, less than 0.1% of the population of the world lives in a country that does not have a central bank.  Do you think that there is any possible way that this is a coincidence?  And it is also not a coincidence that we are now facing the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world.  In Part I of this series, I discussed the fact that total global debt has reached 217 trillion dollars.  Once you understand that central banks are designed to create endless debt, and once you understand that 99.9% of the global population lives in a country that has a central bank, then it finally makes sense why we have accumulated so much debt.  The elite of the world use debt as a tool of enslavement, and central banking has allowed them to literally enslave the entire planet.

Some of you may not be familiar with how a “central bank” differs from a normal bank.  The following definition of a “central bank” comes from Wikipedia

A central bank, reserve bank, or monetary authority is an institution that manages a state’s currency, money supply, and interest rates. Central banks also usually oversee the commercial banking system of their respective countries. In contrast to a commercial bank, a central bank possesses a monopoly on increasing the monetary base in the state, and usually also prints the national currency,[1] which usually serves as the state’s legal tender.

 

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 1: Debt As A Tool Of Enslavement

How The Elite Dominate The World – Part 1: Debt As A Tool Of Enslavement

Throughout human history, those in the ruling class have found various ways to force those under them to work for their economic benefit.  But in our day and age, we are willingly enslaving ourselves.  The borrower is the servant of the lender, and there has never been more debt in our world than there is right now.  According to the Institute of International Finance, global debt has hit the 217 trillion dollar mark, although other estimates would put this number far higher.  Of course everyone knows that our planet is drowning in debt, but most people never stop to consider who owns all of this debt.  This unprecedented debt bubble represents that greatest transfer of wealth in human history, and those that are being enriched are the extremely wealthy elitists at the very, very top of the food chain.

Did you know that 8 men now have as much wealth as the poorest 3.6 billion people living on the planet combined?

Every year, the gap between the planet’s ultra-wealthy and the poor just becomes greater and greater.  This is something that I have written about frequently, and the “financialization” of the global economy is playing a major role in this trend.

The entire global financial system is based on debt, and this debt-based system endlessly funnels the wealth of the world to the very, very top of the pyramid.

It has been said that Albert Einstein once made the following statement

“Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Globalists Are Systematically Destroying America’s Middle Class

The Globalists Are Systematically Destroying America’s Middle Class

When people are dependent on the government they are much easier to control.  We are often told that we are not “compassionate” when we object to the endless expansion of government social programs, but that is not how the debate should be framed.  In America today, well over 100 million people receive money from the federal government each month, and the number of Americans that are truly financially independent is continually shrinking.  In fact, only 25 percent of all Americans have more than $10,000 in savings right now according to one survey.  If we eventually get to the point where virtually all of us are dependent on the government for our continued existence, that would give the globalists a very powerful tool of control.  In the end, they want as many of us dependent on the government as possible, because those that are dependent on the government are a lot less likely to fight against their agenda.

Back in 1992, the bottom 90 percent of American income earners brought in more than 60 percent of the country’s income.  But last year that figure slipped to just 49.7 percent.  The wealth of our society is increasingly being concentrated at the very top, and the middle class is steadily being eroded.  Surveys have found that somewhere around two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time, and so living on the edge has become a way of life for most Americans.

Earlier today, I came across a Business Insider article that was bemoaning the fact that the U.S. economy seems to be rather directionless at this point…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Debt Nightmare: Does Anyone Actually Care That Our Exploding National Debt Is Destroying Our Future?

Debt Nightmare: Does Anyone Actually Care That Our Exploding National Debt Is Destroying Our Future?

When will America finally wake up?  The borrower is the servant of the lender, and we now have a colossal 20 trillion dollar chain around our collective ankles.  We have willingly enslaved ourselves, our children and our grandchildren, and yet our addiction is so insatiable that we continue to add more than 100 million dollars to our debt load every single hour of every single day.  The national debt is sitting at a grand total of $20,162,176,797,904.13 at this moment, but now that the debt ceiling has been lifted that number is expected to shoot up very rapidly toward 21 trillion dollars by the end of the year.  The national debt had been held down by accounting tricks to keep it under the debt limit for many months, but every time this has happened before we have seen the national debt absolutely explode back to projected levels once the debt ceiling was raised.

But very few of our “leaders” in Washington seem to care that we are in the process of committing national suicide.  There is no possible way that we will be able to continue to be the most powerful economy on the planet if we continue down this road.  During Obama’s eight years in the White House, we added more than 9 trillion dollars to the national debt.  That certainly improved things in the short-term, because if we could go back and take 9 trillion dollars out of the economy over the past 8 years we would be in an absolutely nightmarish economic depression right now.

But even with all of this borrowing and spending, our economy has still only grown at an average rate of just 1.33 percent a year over the last 10 years.

And by going into so much debt, we are literally destroying the future for our children and our grandchildren.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is This The Generation That Is Going To Financially Destroy America?

Is This The Generation That Is Going To Financially Destroy America?

Did you know that the federal government is going to spend more than 4 trillion dollars this year?  To put that into perspective, U.S. GDP for the entire year of 2017 is going to be somewhere between 18 and 19 trillion dollars.  So when you are talking about 4 trillion dollars you are talking about a huge chunk of our economy.  But of course the federal government doesn’t bring in 4 trillion dollars a year.  At the beginning of Barack Obama’s first term, we were 10.6 trillion dollars in debt, and now we are nearly 20 trillion dollars in debt.  That means that we have been adding more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt.  When you break that down, that means that we have essentially been stealing more than a hundred million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day to pay for our debt-fueled lifestyle.  Even Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen is warning that this is not sustainable, and yet we just keep on doing it.

Nobody can pretend that what we have today is the kind of limited federal government that our founders intended.  When federal spending accounts for more than 20 percent of GDP, it is hard to argue that we haven’t moved very far down the road toward socialism.  As I mentioned above, total federal spending will surpass 4 trillion dollars for the first time ever in 2017…

Both the Congressional Budget Office and the White House Office of Management and Budget project that federal spending will top $4 trillion for the first time in fiscal 2017, which began on Oct. 1, 2016 and will end on Sept. 30.

In its “Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2017 to 2027” published last week, CBO projected that total federal spending in fiscal 2017 will hit $4,008,000,000,000.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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