Eat, Drink And Make Merry
For Tomorrow We Will Be In The Street
By James Donahue
Perhaps there will be wisdom in the excessive alcoholism, rowdy merry-making and football fanaticism exhibited across America this New Year. It will be the best way to forget that the nation’s economic picture is so grim the year 2019 may be a block of time many of us might wish to skip over rather than face head-on.
It also will be a way of forgetting that we have sons and daughters, friends and relatives fighting ugly unending wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya, plus “interventions” in numerous other parts of the world.
And it will be a way of blocking out the critical need for repairing our nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and water and sewer systems, building mass transit systems to ease automobile traffic on gridlocked roads, find alternative energy systems to replace oil and coal, fix our failed education system, deal with extreme climate change, and head off increasing acts of terrorism at home and abroad.
All of this needs to be fixed, but thanks to greedy power brokers and elected national leadership during the last decade, our nation is all but bankrupt. At the last count we were over $21 trillion in debt. At last look our “president” has refused to sign the 2018-19 fiscal budget over an unpopular demand to spend billions building a wall between Mexico and the U.S. Congress is in rebellion over that issue. It does not seem to worry about the trillions of dollars earmarked for continued warfare throughout the world.
To put that into perspective, the estimated population in the United States is 331,195,364. To cover $21 trillion, every man, woman and child would share a personal debt of just over $63,406.
Very few U.S. households can ever cover this amount of debt. It is so deep now that the interest paid now exceeds one-half of a trillion dollars.
What is frightening is that Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy has placed the burden of this fantastic debt on the “middle class” in America. The Reagan “trickle down” theory has not worked. The wealthy are not investing and hiring, they tend to be hoarding. And at last count, the so-called middle class has been quickly eroding. People that once considered themselves among the middle class are now finding themselves struggling at the poverty level.
Consequently there is less and less money in circulation.
Today’s soup line is portrayed in the federal food stamp program. Federal money has been pouring into state unemployment insurance programs to keep money flowing, at least artificially, but thanks to the Trump cuts in funding for these programs, things are getting worse by the day.
Economists are warning of a looming financial crash, possibly hitting us sometime this new year. Some are comparing our financial situation to the way it was in the 1920s before the Great Depression. Is this what looms now?
Porter Stansberry, founder of Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, warned in 2010 that the U.S. Treasury would have trouble paying the 44 percent interest on its short term debt of over $2 trillion from foreign banks. He believes foreign investors may be reluctant to extend these loans if the nation goes into default.
When a nation gets deep enough in debt he said “the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that’s when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over.”
So how can the treasury get out of this? The only solution will be to print more paper money. And doing that will severely weaken the value of the dollar, devalue existing Treasury bonds, and lead to runaway inflation, especially when buying items manufactured overseas. The Trump induced trade war and his warning to seal off the Mexican border is exacerbating this issue, making everything we purchase too expensive at a time when wages are fixed, frozen or reduced. Many Americans are facing layoffs.
And if you haven’t already noticed, the reason the job market has dried up in America is because most manufacturing facilities have moved overseas. Nearly everything we buy, from television sets and sewing machines to cars and the steel with which they are made, now come from foreign countries.
Happy New Year.
For Tomorrow We Will Be In The Street
By James Donahue
Perhaps there will be wisdom in the excessive alcoholism, rowdy merry-making and football fanaticism exhibited across America this New Year. It will be the best way to forget that the nation’s economic picture is so grim the year 2019 may be a block of time many of us might wish to skip over rather than face head-on.
It also will be a way of forgetting that we have sons and daughters, friends and relatives fighting ugly unending wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Libya, plus “interventions” in numerous other parts of the world.
And it will be a way of blocking out the critical need for repairing our nation’s crumbling roads, bridges and water and sewer systems, building mass transit systems to ease automobile traffic on gridlocked roads, find alternative energy systems to replace oil and coal, fix our failed education system, deal with extreme climate change, and head off increasing acts of terrorism at home and abroad.
All of this needs to be fixed, but thanks to greedy power brokers and elected national leadership during the last decade, our nation is all but bankrupt. At the last count we were over $21 trillion in debt. At last look our “president” has refused to sign the 2018-19 fiscal budget over an unpopular demand to spend billions building a wall between Mexico and the U.S. Congress is in rebellion over that issue. It does not seem to worry about the trillions of dollars earmarked for continued warfare throughout the world.
To put that into perspective, the estimated population in the United States is 331,195,364. To cover $21 trillion, every man, woman and child would share a personal debt of just over $63,406.
Very few U.S. households can ever cover this amount of debt. It is so deep now that the interest paid now exceeds one-half of a trillion dollars.
What is frightening is that Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy has placed the burden of this fantastic debt on the “middle class” in America. The Reagan “trickle down” theory has not worked. The wealthy are not investing and hiring, they tend to be hoarding. And at last count, the so-called middle class has been quickly eroding. People that once considered themselves among the middle class are now finding themselves struggling at the poverty level.
Consequently there is less and less money in circulation.
Today’s soup line is portrayed in the federal food stamp program. Federal money has been pouring into state unemployment insurance programs to keep money flowing, at least artificially, but thanks to the Trump cuts in funding for these programs, things are getting worse by the day.
Economists are warning of a looming financial crash, possibly hitting us sometime this new year. Some are comparing our financial situation to the way it was in the 1920s before the Great Depression. Is this what looms now?
Porter Stansberry, founder of Stansberry & Associates Investment Research, warned in 2010 that the U.S. Treasury would have trouble paying the 44 percent interest on its short term debt of over $2 trillion from foreign banks. He believes foreign investors may be reluctant to extend these loans if the nation goes into default.
When a nation gets deep enough in debt he said “the creditors wake up and ask themselves: What are the chances I will ever actually be repaid? And that’s when the trouble starts. Interest rates go up dramatically. Funding costs soar. The party is over.”
So how can the treasury get out of this? The only solution will be to print more paper money. And doing that will severely weaken the value of the dollar, devalue existing Treasury bonds, and lead to runaway inflation, especially when buying items manufactured overseas. The Trump induced trade war and his warning to seal off the Mexican border is exacerbating this issue, making everything we purchase too expensive at a time when wages are fixed, frozen or reduced. Many Americans are facing layoffs.
And if you haven’t already noticed, the reason the job market has dried up in America is because most manufacturing facilities have moved overseas. Nearly everything we buy, from television sets and sewing machines to cars and the steel with which they are made, now come from foreign countries.
Happy New Year.