This report was originally published by Michael Snyder at The Economic Collapse
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. Republicans have been in control of both houses of Congress, but our debt problems just continue to get worse and worse. And the truth is that the budgets that have been passed since Donald Trump became president are simply slightly revised Obama budgets. The Republicans have allowed the Democrats to have their way time after time, and it has been absolutely disgusting to watch.
In 8 of the past 11 fiscal years, the U.S. national debt has risen by more than a trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is now sitting at an all-time record high of 21.52 trillion dollars.
What we are doing is literally insane, and if we want our nation to survive we must change course immediately.
These days, there is a lot of discussion about the political gains that “Democratic socialists” have been making all over America, and Republicans are trying to assure us that the American people don’t actually want socialism.
But you know what?
We have already gone most of the way down the road toward socialism. I think that Ron Paul made this point very well in his most recent article…
We know socialism does not work. It is an economic system based on the use of force rather than economic freedom of choice. But while many Americans seem to be in a panic over the failures of socialism in Venezuela, they don’t seem all that concerned that right here at home President Trump just signed a massive $1.3 trillion dollar spending bill that delivers socialism on a scale that Venezuelans couldn’t even imagine. In fact this one spending bill is three times Venezuela’s entire gross domestic product!
Did I miss all the Americans protesting this warfare-welfare state socialism?
If you are really against socialism, you should be fighting for the federal government to be greatly reduced in size and scope.
But so few Americans seem to believe in true limited government these days.
It would be a great first step if we would actually try to start living within our means. But if 1.271 trillion dollars of government spending was pulled out of the economy over the past 12 months, the result would be a horrible economic depression. And politicians do not like economic downturns, because when things get bad voters tend not to vote for incumbents. So they just keep going into more debt and they keep kicking the can down the road.
But if we stay on the path that we are currently on, the CBO says that the United States will be 99 trillion dollars in debt by 2048.
Of course we will never actually ever get to 99 trillion dollars in debt. America will cease to exist long before we ever reach that mark.
If we want to save America, we must take action now, but very few people seem to even care about our exploding debt at this point.
And it isn’t just our national debt that is the problem. State and local government debt is at record levels all over the nation, corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, and U.S. consumers are more than 13 trillion dollars in debt…
If you added up the personal debt of every American — what they owe on their mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and more — the total is staggering. Collectively, we’re $13.2 trillion in the red. That’s the highest ever, according to the New York Fed.
Yet no one seems to be panicking. Maybe that’s because we can’t comprehend $13 trillion. Imagine buying every NFL team. And every NBA team. And every NHL team. And every Major League Baseball team. But that only adds up to $191 billion.
America is committing suicide in slow-motion, and it is an absolutely heartbreaking thing to witness.
It is almost as if we lack the will to survive as a nation. All we seem to care about is our comfort level at this moment, and we don’t want anyone to tell us that we have to cut back on anything. I think that Chris Martenson summed things up very well in his most recent piece…
Nothing grows forever. Cancer tries, but always defeats itself in the process. Yeast parties until all the sugar in the vat is gone or it pollutes itself out of an active existence.
Can humans do better? The jury is still out on that.
But so far, the signs say that, as a group, we lack the ability to organize effectively against big, complex challenges. Especially if doing so requires us to willingly choose to live a life of less. We’re simply too addicted to more.
We cannot continue to go down this road.
Because at the end of this road is not just economic collapse. What we are talking about is literally the end of the United States of America.
All throughout history, great societies have been done in by greed, sloth, corruption and laziness, and we are headed down the exact same path. If we want to survive, emergency surgery is necessary, but at this point nobody is even tending to the dying patient.
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About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.
The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots. It is a premium-members only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically. The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.
The Trumpsters are high on hopeium and the commies are all drinking hateorade. No one is even looking at the root cause of it all. Like I said many times, man is too stupid to be free. Never has been or ever will be.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZbKHDPPrrc
I AGREE with you….In the end it’s ALL BS, there is ALWAYS “somebody” holding it’s THUMB over you, NO matter WHERE, HOW or WHEN, man/woman are NEVER “free”……!!!!
I guess we can officially take balancing the budget out of the party platform. I wonder if we would be in the same situation if Ron Paul had somehow been elected.
The globalist banksters would never have allowed Ron Paul to be president.Our presidents are selected,not elected
“If voting made a differenve, it would be illegal” .
The debt is only a problem because it is in interest bearing Federal Reserve Notes and foreign obligations resulting from the balance of trade deficit.
It can easily be paid off by Congress simply taking back its Constitutional authority to issue our money and having the Treasury issue debt free United States Notes to replace them, making our obligations paid in full without interest being involved.
And executing the fed reserve bankers for fraud and conspiracy to overthrow the US govt.
John Kennedy had printed Treasury Notes backed by U.S. government silver hoard. Then the powers that be had him killed and quietly removed them from circulation. Google it.
. . .A Note is a debt instrument. . .
These paper notes are still just paper, like the zimbabwe dollah, and just as worthless
if anyone thinks they will be exempt when reality comes calling, they are idiots.
the govt will tax you out of your house and then use is to rent it to you, they will size all possesions of value and you do not have enough guns to stop them.
venezula is coming here, it’s just a matter of when.
That’s just the debt. If you take all the unfunded liabilities into account, the total burden is growing at about $5tn each year.
It can’t be paid back so the losses will eventually be incurred by future generations in a vastly reduced standard of living (think of the “Dark Ages”, but less sophisticated, to give that some perspective).
They can keep this party going for a while yet. Wait till Washington passes health care for all, a basic income benefit, free college, forgiveness of student loans. They need look no farther than requiring all private 401k and pension plans to invest in good old US Treasury Bonds. This is in excess of a 25 trillion dollar pie for them to feed on. All backed by the good faith and promise of our friendly Uncle Sam. Heck, then there is always more taxes. They have a ways to go before they run out of other people’s money. But, the clock is still ticking. Be prepared come what may!
Fiat money has no intrinsic value. Therefore, the debt has no intrinsic value. You cant run out of something that is worthless. As long as they can add zeros, and they can loan those zeros to you, they will never run out of zeros.
When you take some of those zeros and purchase groceries, you are trading your labor with tokens called dollars. You are not trading wealth or real money.
TO be in the best shape, take those zeros and payoff your real property (real estate, gold, silver, food, water livestock) Only then, are you ahead of their game.
I will pay those excessive taxes the same way I pay them now. With devalued -inflated money. not cash just write a check on the bank where my goverment monthly digital deposit is sent.
Just wait till these so called representatives try to take the bill out of everyones paychecks, bank accounts and investments,
It will be done in the name of responsibility and the greater good.
Maybe its not so bad to have nothing the gov considers an asset.
They’re going to default on that debt eventually. Like other people say it can’t be paid back.
Our country is lost its way. Good qualified people don’t stand a chance to serve public office. Forget about a person’s 30+ years of service and impeccable track record. Now a person is measured by what they did, or didn’t do in HS and College.
We’re toast….keep stackin’ and packin’
The country was lost on the day that government was allowed into education.
How can you not be able to pay your debt when you can print money?
You say the foreigners won’t want dollars in repayment of their loans? Well, that’s what the debt is denominated in so if you don’t want dollars, you ain’t getting paid.
The problem is ????
The gov’t can keep this ball up far longer than people think. A currency collapse is not about the money itself – it’s about confidence. After all, everybody already knows the money is just a piece of paper. As long as Trump can keep the confidence level high, reality is irrelevant.
So, the way I see it is we have until the next Democrat president is elected to prepare. Use the time wisely.
One of the big news stories in the last 24 hours was that Amazon has decided to pay their workers a minimum wage of $15 per hour.
Let’s do some math based upon official government figures, shall we?
https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=15&year1=199001&year2=201808
Now $15 per hour in Jan 1990 wasn’t bad pay but nothing to write home about either. That’s $600 a week and thus $31,200 a year. Honestly it was very low wages before taxes. But if a husband and a wife BOTH made that back then, they would have a decent $62,500 a year and were middle class. This doesn’t benefits which by comparison were terrific back then. Now in 2018, they are terrifying.
For that to still exist in August of 2018, due to inflation, they would have to earn $29.69 per hour each. But they don’t and if working for Amazon, they are earning HALF as much.
Deficit spending causes inflation and it is ruining American citizens. It is honestly slow serfdom over time as it creeps up on us all…and this is what happened over eighteen years. If a generation is twenty years, in LESS than a generation, the globalists ruined American citizens.
A young person earning $31,200 today due to inflation is making $15,600 a year. That is unsustainable.
Maranatha, Amazon is opening up 2 new facilities in my city and already hiring. They’re trying to get 1500 people for both facilities so they’ll end up with 1500 of the wrong kind of people.
If this police state can steal your money on the highway how long will it be before they are going door to door stealing anything you have of value? Like guns, gold and silver and other valuable items. It doesn’t seem that big of a leap to believe after they ordered citizens to shelter in place in Boston and have set up roadblocks across the nation to inspect travelers and nose into their affairs. Bank bail-ins of safety deposit boxes? I call them 9-11 bonuses.
Way to go Trump with all the tax cuts to the new world order corporations. We are going more in debt then if the democrats controlled office.
Well then Seven, I guess old Trump should triple all the taxes and everyone would be rich.
While ignorance can be cured, I’m afraid stupidity is permanent.
No one seems to really be concerned;some people give it lip service but that’s all. In the words of Alfred E. Newman of Mad Magazine “What? Me worry” seems to be the attitude.
I remember at the height of the Crash of ’08 – ’09 when the banks were being bailed out, and hearing about how the US was safe because the FED, being a central bank, could print money; and how it could print itself out the crash. These authorities said the US stood alone as the only country that could print itself out of the crisis.
Well, this turned out to be a load of crap.
Europe prints money. Japan prints money. Russia prints money. China prints money. There are 195 countries. Only 3-countries do NOT have central banks.
However there is only one country ready willing and able and actually use their military to enforce the Use of their created out of thin air digital and much much lesser amount of actual printed paper cash. The USA attacks anyone who dares to try and trade oil for anything other than the USA digital Petro Dollar.
And what does selling oil in dollars have to do with the national debt?
forcing the use of the Petro dollar insures the dollar remain the dominate currency used by the IMF. That allows the continued adding to the debt and the ability to continue to kick the ever increasing can of debt farther down the road.
If you take the last spending bill of 1.2 trillion and divide that by the population of 330 million people how much currency would each individual get?
Well, WHO is to BLAME the MOST….???? obama, the BIGGEST spender ever and we have NOTHING to SHOW for it……!!!!
I feel Trump is the best we’ve had in nearly forever yet was especially disappointed in the 500 million for planned parenthood.
The way I see it folks there will be a depression in the next 10 years. We ain’t climbing out of it. Civil war will start. Better know your neighbors because they gonna kill you for your preps.
What you do is put a small hole under the label in some canned goods. inject poison. seal hole with glue . And hide it where those thief neighbors can find it. find a few of those salamander newts and boil them. strain the liquid and you have your lethal poison. A group of hunters where camping. one scooped up a newt when filling the coffee pot. they all died.
When you look at the total debt world wide, both funded and unfunded, they all know it can never be paid back. Absolutely, no one wants to rationally address it. That is exactly what they want. There will come another major financial crisis and therein lies their opportunity. There will be another secret Bretton Woods type meeting where they will come up with a “solution” to cram down our throats and reset the world’s financial system. This will further the globalist agenda and change our lives in America forever. It could be chaos for a while. Our only path is to not be complacent and be prepared the best we can.
There are two very simple solutions to help mediate the problems.
First, all natural resources are sold to the federal government. Take domestic petroleum production. Instead of it being sold on the open markets and competing with foreign petroleum to arrive at a diluted price, sell it directly to the federal government. The government pays dollars as currency for it, and takes possession of the petroleum. Then in essence, currency becomes MONEY.
Why do this? What is the value of a natural resource that is limited and thus is declining? It is priceless as it can never be replaced. Yet we fool ourselves into thinking petroleum is like field corn.
Every time we sell it by competing with foreign oil, we dilute the value of our precious limited natural resource.
Next the federal government owns vast amounts of domestic petroleum thus guaranteeing the sale. They in turn sell this domestic oil domestically thus ensuring a nominal profit to the federal government and reduce the transportation cost to domestic industry requiring petroleum.
However, since the federal government owns this oil, they sell it internationally ONLY when a high enough profit is favorable and at their discretion. Thus nations with petroleum or really any highly valued natural resource suddenly has vast economic power while those with limited natural resources (like Japan) have sharply reduced economic power.
Do this with both domestic natural resources and all grown resources as in agricultural. This helps us domestically in the fair price while as one controlling vast amounts that we allow to be sold internationally ONLY when favorable.
Then we have money instead of currency and it is diversified over all of our many kinds of natural and grown resources. It would make our currency very valuable and vastly reduce inflation and costs nothing.
Next do debt forgiveness in stages as many economists have suggested for over a decade. For example, the debt of home mortgages is forgiven against the principle as it is written off just as physicians routinely write off uncollectable medical debt receivables.
Suddenly home owners see a light at the end of the tunnel as they approach being free and clear. The government cannot increase wages as that is inflationary. But the government can forgive debt and that is stabilizing as it increases net worth, results in no new taxes, but as the owner becomes free and clear earlier, results in sound fiscal policy.
Imagine a future where a pharmaceutical company KNEW they could sell all of their many products at a fair bulk price to the federal government. In turn, these are then resold at a tiny profit domestically as a surcharge. All the domestic patients get inexpensive medication. Every citizen wins.
However, the US government determins the international value of these medicinal drugs and only sells them internationally IF that price is met or exceeded. Otherwise we cut other nations off as an economic weapon.
We do this with everything product, natural resource, and agricultural product. It’s capitalism except by buying in bulk, the government makes a small profit with domestic sales that benefit citizens. However, the government resists all international products which compete unless the overall transaction is profitable and favorable.
The government could REFUSE to sell to illegal aliens. No documentation equals no sales. All illegals would leave.
The government becomes a massive domestic monopoly thus wielding enormous economic power as a weapon.
Keep dreaming. You know its going to continue to regress until it comes apart at the seams. You better prep. for a year without any help.
It should say 28 years not 18.
For the craziest and most moronic reasons, the official US guideline is a benchmark of a minimum of 42,000 to a maximum of 125,000 in US dollars. But what the dork economists never admit is the dollar LOST half its value from January 1990 to August 2018 (28 years).
That effectively means that $42,000 has the purchasing power of $21,000 ie lower class (just to start off) in 1990 dollars and the maximum of $125,000 which once was very respectable income is only worth $62,500 in 1990 dollars.
Lots of salt of the Earth blue collar factory workers with their spouses were once having a household income of $62,500. An industrious (couldn’t resist the pun) husband and father could work 60 hours a week and make $62,500 in 1990 in the American Midwest and South. Real estate and the cost of living was low and life was great…and normal.
See the quandry that Free Trade, globalism, feminism, deficit spending and unchecked military spending has unleashed upon John and Jane Q Public?
Everything costs more yet is inferior in quality. Benefits that once were robust now are dilluted especially healthcare due to the meddling of Obummer.
Even if you doubled your wages from January 1990 to August 2018, you saw zero gains and in fact lost very valuable benefits especially healthcare.
The federal and state governments saw the handwriting on the wall. The industrial was intentionally imploded, the rise of a service economy was a cruel joke, the green energy economy was a total failure. And this is partially why the Millennials are doomed.
Only wise frugal investors who understood what was happening and thus achieved being free and clear and made modest gain in medium risk investments, then saw these offset income stream losses. This is a very small group of citizens. Otherwise the uber elite 0.01% saw enormous gains through mergers and acquisitions into the Pacific Rim.
This is the genuine reason billions of rounds of ammunition were purchased as the perpetrators FEAR the consequences.