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Market Analyst: “We’re Going To Have A Biblical Event… There Is No Way To Stop This”

Market Analyst: “We’re Going To Have A Biblical Event… There Is No Way To Stop This”

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Gregory Mannarino of TradersChoice.net has been eerily prescient in recent years, having accurately forecast stock movements, Federal Reserve rate hikes and market sentiment. In a recent interview with Greg Hunter at USA Watchdog, Mannarino says that U.S. debt has reached such extreme levels that when foreign creditors and investors finally decide to pull out of the U.S. dollar the system will collapse to such an extent that it will have a devastating impact not just on our way of life, but may lead to a massive bursting of what he has dubbed “the human population bubble.”

Citing a “hockey stick” graph of U.S. debt, Mannarino explains exactly why you need to put your survival and preparedness plan in place:

That chart in front of you has to continue to rise. It can never stop. We can never pay off the debt.

If we try to do this the system implodes… the system is dependent on debt being borrowed into existence in perpetuity, in greater and greater amounts… that’s why the debt has doubled under Obama… it will double under Trump as well… until the system hits a moment of maximum saturation… when we cannot borrow anymore… that’s when the system implodes…

The scary thing about with that hockey stick?

The global population is paralleled with that hockey stick… So what does that mean?

If the debt were to correct… and it is going to at one point… what do people think is going to happen to the human population?

We are going to have, unfortunately, a biblical event… there is no way to stop this. People think that their lives are going to go on the normal way if the debt bubble bursts… People think that things are not going to change dramatically…

 

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

Nomi Prins: Big Bank Concentration and Counterparty Risk Expands

Nomi Prins joined Sprott Money News for its Ask the Expert segment that covered the Federal Reserve system, Glass-Steagall reform and even the recent activity from the U.S Treasury.

Beginning the conversation she highlighted U.S debt and the position of U.S treasury bonds. Prins remarks, “One of the reasons in general that government debt is considered an asset is that it can be traded and holds enough liquidity to either raise money or post as collateral for other forms of capital. They have an intrinsic benefit in the financial system between central banks, large multinational institutions and banks, etc.”

“U.S Treasury bonds also have the idea behind them that they have this implicit guarantee by their respective government that they will not default. Even though, right now, these bonds barely have any interest from a return perspective and are not particularly lucrative, it does have the idea behind them that it is not going to lose its value.”

Nomi Prins is a former Wall Street insider where she worked as a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs among other major financial outlets. She is also a best-selling author who wrote All the Presidents’ Bankers, a book that examines the hidden alliances between Wall Street and Washington.

Switching gears, she was pressed on whether the U.S treasury bonds could face a replacement Nomi Prins noted, “In the current international monetary system we have where the U.S dollar is the major reserve currency there is a necessity for central banks and private banks to use and have the U.S treasury bonds. The bonds are used to balance payments and used for potential liquidity emergency mechanisms and any other financial circumstances.”

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

Brodsky: This Is A Red Flag Warning

Brodsky: This Is A Red Flag Warning

Authored by Paul Brodsky via Macro-Allocation.com,

Red Flag Warning

Two identifiable dynamics may signal significant market shifts imminently:

1. The US debt ceiling will be debated soon and signs point towards a messy outcome.

2. Recent economic data have been weak, confirming our thesis that US economic growth is slowing and will not be reversed until a recession is acknowledged.

Debt Ceiling

Excessive debt has a way of catching up with people and institutions, and the first true test for the US government may be at hand. Congress was expected to raise the debt ceiling by October or else Treasury could not fund all the government’s programs and current obligations. Yet talk of Trump tax reform in 2016 may have given taxpayers incentive to defer their liabilities. As a result, Treasury received about 3 percent less in revenues than expected, accelerating the timetable to debate and raise the debt ceiling.Progress on raising the ceiling will unlikely be made in August, as Congress is in recess.

Meanwhile, the political atmosphere in the Republican Party has splintered further under President Trump. The conservative wing, which tried to block raising the ceiling in the past, has signaled it will again dig in its heels to force the government to begin balancing its budget. Though it caved in the past, the conservative caucus’ resolve should not be doubted this time, judging by its will and ability to so far block health care reform that does not absolutely repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has stated that the Department has options if Congress does not raise the ceiling, but has not been forthcoming with specifics. If a cash flow shortfall develops in the fourth quarter, principal and interest payments on Treasury debt would be prioritized so that the government would avoid default.

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

Fed Chair Janet Yellen Warns Congress: US Debt Trajectory Is Unsustainable

Fed Chair Janet Yellen Warns Congress: US Debt Trajectory Is Unsustainable

During her tesimony this morning, Fed Chair Janet Yellen urged Congress to take into account the growth trajectory of the federal debt when making decisions about spending and taxation.

She said lawmakers need to work toward achieving “sustainability of this debt path over time,”

“Let me state in the strongest possible terms that I agree” the U.S. federal debt trend is unsustainable, may hurt productivity, and living standards of Americans.

Of course she is correct, but we do not remember her being so forthright during the last few years of President Obama’s reign as he doubled the national debt?

As a reminder, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last month the national debt could reach 91% of gross domestic product by 2027. Lawmakers are weighing major fiscal policy changes, including tax cuts, changes to health care and infrastructure spending, that could drive deficits higher in the coming years. Furthermore, at the cuirrent spending/taxation rates, debt/GDP expected to hit 150% by 2047 if the current government spending picture remains unchanged.

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

4 Year Proposition? – Next President Has To Contend With Obama’s Massive Debt Burden At “Epic Turning Point”

4 Year Proposition? – Next President Has To Contend With Obama’s Massive Debt Burden At “Epic Turning Point”

Whoever wins the 2016 presidential election tomorrow night could be in for a rough 4 years in the White House courtesy of the gigantic debt burden amassed by Obama over the previous 8 years.  While an accommodative monetary policy, including seemingly unlimited treasury buying by the Fed and foreign governments, has suppressed the budget impact of Obama’s ballooning federal debt balance, as Ed Yardeni told Bloomberg, “one shudders to think what would happen if rates actually ever did go back to normal.”
“We’ve really got ourselves into a pickle here,” said Edward Yardeni, president of Yardeni Research Inc. in New York, who’s been following the bond market since the 1970s. “All these years we’ve been kicking the can down the road, and suddenly we’re seeing a brick wall.”

“There’s been so much borrowing going on that’s been enabled by extremely low interest rates, one shudders to think what would happen if rates actually ever did go back to normal,” Yardeni said. “The impact on the interest expense would be significant, and could really bring deficit concerns back to the fore.”

US Debt
As a report published by the Congressional Budget Office today points out, nearly 60% of the federal budget is spent on entitlements and interest payments on public debt.  While the public debt balance has increased every single year of Obama’s Presidency, declining rates have largely offset the budget impact.
Outlays for the three largest entitlement programs—Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid—rose by $29 billion (or 3 percent), $27 billion (or 5 percent), and $19 billion (or 5 percent), respectively. Spending for Medicaid grew largely because of new enrollees added through expansions of coverage authorized by the Affordable Care Act. With that growth, Medicaid spending has risen by almost 40 percent in the past three years.

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

Three Reasons Why the U.S. Government Should Default on Its Debt Today

Three Reasons Why the U.S. Government Should Default on Its Debt Today

The overleveraging of the U.S. federal, state, and local governments, some corporations, and consumers is well known.

This has long been the case, and most people are bored by the topic. If debt is a problem, it has been manageable for so long that it no longer seems like a problem. U.S. government debt has become an abstraction; it has no more meaning to the average investor than the prospect of a comet smacking into the earth in the next hundred millennia.

Many financial commentators believe that debt doesn’t matter. We still hear ridiculous sound bites, like “We owe it to ourselves,” that trivialize the topic. Actually, some people owe it to other people. There will be big transfers of wealth depending on what happens. More exactly, since Americans don’t save anymore, that dishonest phrase about how we owe it to ourselves isn’t even true in a manner of speaking; we owe most of it to the Chinese and Japanese.

Another chestnut is “We’ll grow out of it.” That’s impossible unless real growth is greater than the interest on the debt, which is questionable. And at this point, government deficits are likely to balloon, not contract. Even with artificially low interest rates.

One way of putting an annual deficit of, say, $700 billion into perspective is to compare it to the value of all publicly traded stocks in the U.S., which are worth roughly $20 trillion. The current U.S. government debt of $18 trillion is rapidly approaching the stock value of all public corporations — and that’s true even with stocks at bubble-like highs. If the annual deficit continues at the $700 billion rate — in fact it is likely to accelerate — the government will borrow the equivalent of the entire equity capital base of the country, which has taken more than 200 years to accumulate, in only 29 years.

 

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

Trumping the Federal Debt Without Playing the Default Card

Trumping the Federal Debt Without Playing the Default Card

“The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default.”

— Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan on Meet the Press, August 2011

In a post on “Sovereign Man” dated August 14thSimon Black arguedthat Donald Trump may be the right man for the presidency:

[T]here’s one thing that really sets him apart, that, in my opinion, makes him the most qualified person for the job:

Donald Trump is an expert at declaring bankruptcy.

When the going gets tough, Trump stiffs his creditors. He’s done it four times!

Candidly, this is precisely what the Land of the Free needs right now: someone who can stop beating around the bush and just get on with it already.

Black says the country is officially bankrupt, with the government’s financial statements showing a negative net worth of $17.7 trillion:

Nations that pass the economic point of no return can’t rebuild until they hit rock bottom. And the US is way past that point. So let’s get on with it already and hit the reset button.

Black recommends doing this by defaulting, preferably on Social Security and Medicare. But that is unlikely to sue to this leading Republican candidate. As Trump said on Meet the Press on August 16:

I want people to be taken care of from a healthcare standpoint.… I want to save Social Security without cuts. I want … a strong country with very little debt.

How can the country remain strong with very little debt, without defaulting on Social Security, Medicare, or the federal debt itself?

There is a way. The government can reduce the debt by buying it – and ripping it up. The debt can be bought either with debt-free US Notes of the sort issued during the Civil War, or with US dollars issued by the Federal Reserve in the form of “quantitative easing.”

 

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

A Mountain of Debt and no Growth

A Mountain of Debt and no Growth

Too Many Geezers

So far, we’ve proposed two reasons why the 21st century has been such a dud …

First … the developed nations are cursed with too many geezers. We have nothing against old people (especially as we hope to be one ourselves all too soon). But old people do not build a new economy; young people do. And today, there are not enough young people to power the kind of economic growth we’ve gotten used to.

Second… rules, regulations, subsidies, laws and orders now protect established financial interests against upstart competitors. Businesses get older along with the population, as government creeps over more and more of the economy.

The feds use monopoly force to prevent competition and reward today’s voters and capital owners. The baby born in 2015 finds himself subject to debts, obligations and restrictions that were meant to benefit his grandparents. Today, we give you another reason for the flop that is the 21st century. As you will see, they are all related…

1-2014-3_FR pages_webimage2013Pages in the Federal Register. There was a brief reprieve from over-regulation in the Reagan era, but shortly thereafter the regulatory State went into action again at full blast. Capitalism is slowly but surely asphyxiated, and with it any chance to escape the debt trap is dying with it (chart source: the George Washington University regulatory studies center) – click to enlarge.

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

 

Another step down the long, slow road to IRA nationalization

Another step down the long, slow road to IRA nationalization

Let’s take a brief walk into financial reality for a moment.

At the time of this writing, the United States government’s official debt is nearly $18.1 trillion.

Now, let’s look at who the biggest owners of that debt are:

1) Taxpayers of the United States.

If you’ve held a job in the Land of the Free, 15.3% of your salary has gone to fund Social Security and Medicare.

Each of these programs holds massive trust funds that are supposed to pay out beneficiaries, both present and future.

Conveniently, the trust funds are required by law to buy US government debt.

And given that every single US taxpayer is an ultimate beneficiary of these trust funds, that ranks the people of the United States as among the biggest holders of US debt.

How sustainable is this? Not very.

The 2014 trustee reports for both Medicare and Social Security indicate that nearly ALL of the trust funds are sliding towards insolvency.

 

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

Five complete lies about America’s new $18 trillion debt level

Five complete lies about America’s new $18 trillion debt level.

On October 22, 1981, the government of the United States of America accumulated an astounding $1 TRILLION in debt.

At that point, it had taken the country 74,984 days (more than 205 years) to accumulate its first trillion in debt.

It would take less than five years to accumulate its second trillion.

And as the US government just hit $18 trillion in debt on Friday afternoon, it has taken a measly 403 days to accumulate its most recent trillion.

There’s so much misinformation and propaganda about this; let’s examine some of the biggest lies out there about the US debt:

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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