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Endgame: US Federal Debt Interest Payments About To Hit $1 Trillion
Endgame: US Federal Debt Interest Payments About To Hit $1 Trillion
There was a shocking number in today’s latest monthly US Budget Deficit report. No, it wasn’t that US government outlays unexpectedly soared 15% to $646 billion in June, up almost $100 billion from a year ago…
… while tax receipts slumped 9.2% from $461 billion to $418 billion, resulting in a TTM government receipt drop of over 7.3%, the biggest since June 2020 when the US was reeling from the covid lockdown recession; in fact never have before tax receipts suffered such a big drop without the US entering a recession.
Needless to say, surging government outlays coupled with shrinking tax revenues meant that in June, the US budget deficit nearly tripled from $89 billion a year ago to $228 billion, far greater than the consensus estimate of $175 billion. One can only imagine which Ukrainian billionaire oligarch’s money laundering bank account is currently enjoying the benefits of that unexpected incremental $50 billion US deficit hole: we know for a fact that the FBI will never get to the bottom of that one, since they can’t even figure out who dumped a bunch of blow inside the White House – the most protected and surveilled structure in the entire world.
And with the monthly deficits coming in higher than expected and also far higher than a year ago, it is also not at all surprising that the cumulative deficit 9 months into the fiscal year is already the 3rd highest on record, surpassed only by the crisis years of 2020 and 2021: at $1.393 trillion, the fiscal 2022 YTD deficit is already up 170% compared to the same period last year.
Again, while sad, none of the above numbers are surprising: they merely confirm that the US is on an ever faster-track to fiscal death, but not before the Fed is forced to monetize the debt once again…
…click on the above link to read the rest…
The True Size Of The U.S. National Debt, Including Unfunded Liabilities, Is 222 Trillion Dollars
The True Size Of The U.S. National Debt, Including Unfunded Liabilities, Is 222 Trillion Dollars
The United States is on a path to financial ruin, and everyone can see what is happening, but nobody can seem to come up with a way to stop it. According to the U.S. Treasury, the federal government is currently 22 trillion dollars in debt, and that represents the single largest debt in the history of the planet. Over the past decade, we have been adding to that debt at a rate of about 1.1 trillion dollars a year, and we will add more than a trillion dollars to that total once again this year. But when you add in our unfunded liabilities, our long-term financial outlook as a nation looks downright apocalyptic. According to Boston University economics professor Laurence Kotlikoff, the U.S. is currently facing 200 trillion dollars in unfunded liabilities, and when you add that number to our 22 trillion dollar debt, you get a grand total of 222 trillion dollars.
Of course we are never going to pay back all of this debt.
The truth is that we are just going to keep accumulating more debt until the system completely and utterly collapses.
And even though the federal government is the biggest offender, there are also others to blame for the mess that we find ourselves in. State and local governments are more than 3 trillion dollars in debt, corporate debt has more than doubled since the last financial crisis, and U.S. consumers are more than 13 trillion dollars in debt.
When you add it all together, the total amount of debt in our society is well above 300 percent of GDP, and it keeps rising with each passing year.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
FedEx Is Talking As If A Global Recession Has Already Begun – And The Numbers Back That Up
FedEx Is Talking As If A Global Recession Has Already Begun – And The Numbers Back That Up
“Slowing international macroeconomic conditions” is just a fancy way to say that the global economy is in big trouble. For months, I have been warning that economic conditions are deteriorating, and we just keep getting more confirmation that we are facing the worst global downturn since the last financial crisis. For the second time in three months, FedEx has slashed its revenue forecast for this year. In an attempt to explain why revenue is declining, FedEx’s chief financial officer placed the blame squarely on the faltering global economy. The following comes from CNBC…
The multinational package delivery service reported declining international revenue as a result of unfavorable exchange rates and the negative effects of trade battles.
“Slowing international macroeconomic conditions and weaker global trade growth trends continue, as seen in the year-over-year decline in our FedEx Express international revenue,” Alan B. Graf, Jr., FedEx Corp. executive vice president and chief financial officer, said in statement.
The use of the word “trends” implies something that has been going on for an extended period of time, and obviously FedEx doesn’t expect things to get better any time soon if they have cut profit projections twice in just the last three months.
And FedEx certainly has a lot of company when it comes to having a gloomy outlook for the global economy. In one recent article, Bloomberg boldly declared that the global economy is in the worst shape it has been “since the financial crisis a decade ago”…
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
As The Economy Teeters On The Brink Of A Recession, U.S. Debt Levels Are Absolutely Exploding
As The Economy Teeters On The Brink Of A Recession, U.S. Debt Levels Are Absolutely Exploding
We now have official confirmation that the U.S. economy has dramatically slowed down. In recent days I have shared a whole bunch of numbers with my readers that clearly demonstrate that a new economic downturn has begun. And even though stock prices have been rising, the numbers for the “real economy” have been depressingly bad lately. But what we didn’t have was official confirmation from the Federal Reserve that the economy is really slowing down, but now we do. According to the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model, the economy is growing “at a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the first quarter”…
The U.S. economy is growing at a 0.3 percent annualized rate in the first quarter, based on data on domestic construction spending in December released on Monday, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow forecast model showed.
For years, the goal has been to get U.S. growth above the key 3 percent threshold, but what this forecast is telling us is that economic growth is currently at one-tenth of that level.
That is just barely above recession territory.
So when I say that we are teetering on the brink of a recession, I am not exaggerating.
We also just got some really bad news about construction spending…
Construction spending fell 0.6% in December from November, based on a seasonally adjusted annual rate, released today by the Commerce Department. Compared to December a year earlier, total construction spending inched up only 0.8% (not seasonally adjusted), the lowest growth rate since Oct 2011, coming out of the great recession.
Now we can add that to the list of all the other numbers that are telling us that very rough times are ahead.
Meanwhile, debt levels in the U.S. just continue to explode.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
The Most Depressing Stat Of The Month: The U.S. National Debt Is About To Pass The $22 Trillion Mark
The Most Depressing Stat Of The Month: The U.S. National Debt Is About To Pass The $22 Trillion Mark
The U.S. national debt is wildly out of control, and nobody in Washington seems to care. According to the U.S. Treasury, the federal government is currently $21,933,491,166,604.77 in debt. In just a few days, that figure will cross the 22 trillion dollar mark. Over the last 10 years, we have added more than 11 trillion dollars to the national debt, and that means that it has been growing at a pace of more than a trillion dollars a year. To call this a major national crisis would be a massive understatement, and yet there is absolutely no urgency in Washington address this absolutely critical issue. We are literally destroying the financial future of this nation, but most Americans don’t seem to understand the gravity of the situation that we are facing.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the national debt and interest on that debt will both explode at an exponential rate in future years if we stay on the path that we are currently on. According to the CBO, the federal government spent 371 billion dollars on net interest during the most recent fiscal year…
In fiscal 2018, the government spent $371 billion on net interest, while the Defense Department budget was $599 billion. Social Security benefits cost $977 billion, Medicare $585 billion and Medicaid $389 billion, according to the CBO estimates.
But the CBO said interest outlays’ rate of growth in fiscal 2018 was faster than that for the three mandatory federal programs: Social Security (up $43 billion, or 5 percent); Medicaid (up $14 billion, or 4 percent); and Medicare (up $16 billion, or 3 percent). In comparison, net interest on the public debt increased by $62 billion, or 20 percent.
The 371 billion dollars that we spent on interest could have been spent on roads, schools, airports, strengthening our military or helping the homeless.
Instead, it was poured down a black hole.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
$100 Increase In Monthly Mortgage Payment Would Sink 75% Of Canadian Homeowners
$100 Increase In Monthly Mortgage Payment Would Sink 75% Of Canadian Homeowners
According to a new survey from Manulife Bank, nearly 75% of Canadian homeowners would have difficulty paying their mortgage every month if their payments increased by as little as 10%. And, given that the average house in Canada costs roughly $200,000 and carries a monthly mortgage payment of $1,000, that means that most Canadians couldn’t incur and $100 hike in their monthly mortgage payments without possibly going under. Per CBC:
The bank polled 2,098 homeowners — between the ages of 20 to 69 with household incomes of $50,000 or higher — online in the first two weeks of February.Fourteen per cent of respondents to Manulife’s survey said they wouldn’t be able to withstand any increase in their monthly payments, while 38 per cent of those polled said they could withstand a payment hike of between one and five per cent before having difficulty. An additional 20 per cent said they could stomach a hike of between six and 10 per cent before feeling the pinch.
Add it all up, and that means 72 per cent of homeowners polled couldn’t withstand a hike of just 10 per cent from their current record lows.
Of course, such a huge sensitivity to small budget fluctuations isn’t a great sign when we’re in the midst of record-low interest rates and about to enter a period of sustained hikes.
“What these people don’t realize is that we’re at record low interest rates today,” said Rick Lunny, president and CEO of Manulife Bank.If mortgage rates increase by as little as one percentage point, some borrowers could be facing a hike of 10 per cent on their monthly bills. A bigger mortgage rate hike would bring more pain.
Meanwhile, 45% of millennials in the same survey said they had to borrow money from their parents to purchase their home and 25% admitted they have no savings.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Japan projects to spend 43% of tax revenue just to pay interest on the debt
Japan projects to spend 43% of tax revenue just to pay interest on the debt
It’s entirely possible that we may see interstellar space travel in our lifetime. And what a dream that would be.
But in the meantime, for anyone that’s losing patience with space technology, I would recommend you visit Japan. Because for anybody that has been here, this place is as close as it gets to being on another planet.
Japan is a land of irony and dichotomy. It is one of the most conservative cultures in the world, while simultaneously being one of the most perverted.
Business culture here is yet another thing that seems totally alien. Creativity and innovation are constrained by process and procedure. The individual is never celebrated, and dutiful compliance is everything.
In Japanese corporate culture, business meetings follow a strict agenda. New ideas, no matter how valuable, are simply not welcome.
They actually have a term here called nemawashi, which is a meeting before a meeting. The idea being that if you have an idea to present at a meeting, you need to discuss it first so that nobody’s caught off guard or embarrassed by not having a prepared response.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
