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The Congressional Budget Office reveals shocking forecasts for immigration, debt and spending for the next 30 years

The national debt is expected to skyrocket to an unprecedented 144% of gross domestic product by 2049, or twice the level today.

How do you know a politician is lying to you? Simple: His lips are moving.

Yes, it’s an old one — but none the worse for that.

The 2020 election season is getting into full swing. Politicians on all sides are ramping up their rhetoric, including their promises, forecasts and accusations.

But it’s fascinating what you can find out if you just read official documents. Especially some of the fine print.

And here are 10 remarkable forecasts and assumptions that Washington is making and isn’t telling you. These are all contained in the Congressional Budget Office’s most recent Long-Term Budget Outlook, the cornerstone document of government financial and economic planning.

1. We’re going to have a lot more immigrants. A lot. They’re expecting a net 22.5 million more immigrants to come to the U.S. over the next 20 years. By 2049, they’re expecting immigration to account for a stunning 87% of annual population growth.

2. We’re going to have a lot more illegal immigrants. Despite the current bluster and the scandals at the border, the CBO expects we’ll have 2.4 million more illegal immigrants (or “undocumented residents,” or whatever) in 20 years’ time than we have today.

3. We’re going to be up to our eyeballs in debt. The national debt is expected to skyrocket to an “unprecedented” 144% of gross domestic product by 2049, or twice the level today. That would put the debt just under $100 trillion. The figure today: Around $18 trillion. As recently as 2000: $4 trillion. Oh, and this isn’t even the worst-case scenario: The national debt could exceed 200% of GDP in 30 years’ time, the CBO acknowledges.

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

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Blasts America’s ‘Rent-Seeking’ Economy

March 9, 2017

Nobel Prize Winning Economist Blasts America’s ‘Rent-Seeking’ Economy

I’m really grateful Angus Deaton was willing to come out and state the obvious. That is, the fact this economy isn’t what we’ve been told. In reality, it’s largely a rent-seeking based system, in which a meaningful percentage of the people who earn the most money are not only not adding value to society, they’re in fact parasites feeding off the general public.

Market Watch reports:

Income inequality is not killing capitalism in the United States, but rent-seekers like the banking and the health-care sectors just might, said Nobel-winning economist Angus Deaton on Monday.

If an entrepreneur invents something on the order of another Facebook, Deaton said he has no problem with that person becoming wealthy.

“What is not OK is for rent-seekers to get rich,” Deaton said in a luncheon speech to the National Association for Business Economics.

Rent seekers lobby and persuade governments to give them special favors.

Bankers during the financial crisis, and much of the health-care system, are two prime examples, Deaton said.

Rent-seeking not only does not generate new product, it actually slows down economic growth, Deaton said.

“All that talent is devoted to stealing things, instead of making things,” he said.

Another prime example of rent-seeking is that the Medicaid is funding opioid prescriptions for low-income workers, Deaton said. The results are workers who are becoming addicted and overdosing while profits are going to the Sacker family which owns Purdue Pharma that makes OxyContin.

But Jeff Sessions swears it’s all the fault of the evil marijuana.

Deaton said he favors a single-payer health system only because our current part-private and part-public system is exquisitely designed to give opportunities for rent-seeking.

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

Opinion: Inside the global elite’s bag of financial tricks

February 21, 2017

Opinion: Inside the global elite’s bag of financial tricks

Easy money masks global economy’s precarious health

Too much of economic growth and the accompanying bull market in stocks is the result of financial engineering. Increasingly, companies seek to improve earnings or increase their share price by means that are not necessarily directly linked to their actual business.

Companies have increased the use of lower-cost debt financing, taking advantage of the tax deductibility of interest. In private equity transactions, the level of debt is especially high. Complex securities have been used to arbitrage ratings and tax rules to lower the cost of capital.

Major benefits appear to have accrued financially to corporate insiders, bankers, and consultants.

Mergers and acquisitions as well as various types of corporate restructurings (such as spin-offs and carve-outs) have been used to create “value.” Given the indifferent results of many such transactions, the major benefits appear to have accrued financially to corporate insiders, bankers, and consultants.Share buybacks and capital returns, sometimes funded by debt, have been used to support share prices. In January 2008, prior to the global financial crisis, U.S. companies were using almost 40% of their cashflow to repurchase their own shares. Ominously, that position is similar today.

Tax arbitrage, especially by international companies operating in multiple jurisdictions, has increased post tax earnings. The use by many companies of special vehicles in low tax jurisdictions, like Ireland, evidences this trend.

Some companies have used trading to increase earnings. Oil companies can make money from trading or speculating in oil, for example. Accordingly, they can make money irrespective of whether the oil business is good or bad or the price of crude is high or low, profiting from uncertainty and volatility. It is not even necessary to produce, refine, or consume oil to benefit from its price fluctuations.

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

Fed Vice Chair Fischer Admits Fed is Waiting for Godot

October 8, 2016

Fed Vice Chair Fischer Admits Fed is Waiting for Godot

The Fed’s fourth mandate.

In his keynote speech on the usual suspects of central-bank topics at the Institute of International Finance’s big shindig in Washington DC today, Fed Vice Chair Stanley Fischer nevertheless managed to develop a new theory for a fourth Fed mandate.

This new mandate would come on top of the third mandate: inflating asset bubbles at all costs (unlimited asset price inflation). The other two mandates are “full employment” (whatever that means) and “price stability,” which is ironically defined as consumer price inflation, the way the Fed counts it, of at the moment 2%, and a lot more in most people’s real-life experience.

Fischer has been grumbling about the slow growth of the US economy for a while – “Everybody is trying to find out what is going on,” he said today, and then went on to explain what’s going on. Turns out, what’s restraining economic growth and investment is a lack of “confidence” and “animal spirits.”

“Confidence has to be turned on for people to want to invest and we’re waiting to see that happen,” he said, according to MarketWatch. “It will happen at some point. But precisely when” is unknown he said.

“Animal spirits aren’t there – people aren’t excited about growth prospects.”

So no interest rate increases until these “animal spirits” and “confidence” show up?

But, but, but… the Fed’s monetary policies for the past eight years have created the biggest credit bubble in US history, including the biggest junk bond bubble ever, a stock market bubble, housing bubbles in numerous cities around the country that exceed by far the peaks of the prior housing bubbles that imploded so spectacularly, the most gigantic commercial real estate bubble, now according to the Green Street Commercial Property Price Index, 26.5% above its totally crazy bubble peak of August 2007….

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

Opinion: The banking system faces an existential threat — and it’s not bitcoin

January 5, 2016

Opinion: The banking system faces an existential threat — and it’s not bitcoin

A movement in Europe would require banks to fully back deposits

In 1666, King Charles II put control of the money supply into private hands. The privatization of the money-creation process gave birth to the system we use today.

Christmas did not offer much good cheer to the world’s bankers, who have received a sustained kicking since the financial crisis erupted in 2008.

In the latest blow, Switzerland announced that it would hold a referendum on a radical proposal that would strip commercial banks of the ability to create money, depriving them of a great deal of their profit-making capabilities. If the Swiss proposal catches on around the world, it could shred core business assumptions that have underpinned the banking model over the past three centuries.

From Babylon to central bank

The earliest banks we know of, in ancient Babylon, were temples that doubled as repositories where one could store wealth. At some point, the guardians of the stored treasure realized they could put this accumulated wealth to work, and banks accordingly began to lend capital. Borrowers would pay interest on what they borrowed, and this interest would ultimately find its way back to the lenders after the banks had taken a cut. The banks became trusted intermediaries that brought lender and borrower together and ensured neither would be cheated. Paper money emerged after people found it was easier to buy things using deposit slips from their bank than carrying gold around.

The next evolution happened when bankers realized that since depositors almost never simultaneously withdrew all their funds, banks could lend more capital than had been deposited. This allowed banks to “create” money in the sense that bankers could issue loans not necessarily backed up by hard deposits.

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

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