Is there one thing that Tony Robbins, Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke can all agree on? Yes, there actually is. Recently they have all come forward with warnings that the national debt crisis could destroy America if something is not done. Unfortunately, our politicians continue to spend us into oblivion as if there will never be any consequences. When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today, it is 15.6 trillion dollars and it is rising at the rate of about 150 million dollars an hour. During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from 1776 to 1995. The United States now has a debt to GDP ratio of over 100 percent, and another credit rating agency downgraded U.S. debt earlier this month. Any talk of a positive economic future is utter nonsense as long as we are bleeding red ink as a nation far faster than we ever have before. It is absolutely immoral to wreck the financial future of our children and our grandchildren and to leave them with a bill for the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, but that is exactly what we are doing. Unless our current debt-based financial system is thrown out, there are only two ways that this game is going to play out. One would involve absolutely bitter austerity and deflation unlike anything ever seen before, and the other would involve nightmarish hyperinflation. Either path would be hellish beyond what most Americans could possibly imagine.
Unfortunately, we are running out of time as a nation. You know that things are late in the game when the head of the Federal Reserve starts using apocalyptic language to talk about the national debt. The following is what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress recently….
Having a large and increasing level of government debt relative to national income runs the risk of serious economic consequences. Over the longer term, the current trajectory of federal debt threatens to crowd out private capital formation and thus reduce productivity growth. To the extent that increasing debt is financed by borrowing from abroad, a growing share of our future income would be devoted to interest payments on foreign-held federal debt. High levels of debt also impair the ability of policymakers to respond effectively to future economic shocks and other adverse events.
Even the prospect of unsustainable deficits has costs, including an increased possibility of a sudden fiscal crisis. As we have seen in a number of countries recently, interest rates can soar quickly if investors lose confidence in the ability of a government to manage its fiscal policy. Although historical experience and economic theory do not indicate the exact threshold at which the perceived risks associated with the U.S. public debt would increase markedly, we can be sure that, without corrective action, our fiscal trajectory will move the nation ever closer to that point.
The sick thing about this is that the Federal Reserve system is actually designed to generate government debt. The U.S. national debt is now more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was created back in 1913. So it is kind of ironic that the head of the organization that was designed to perpetually generate U.S. government debt is now warning that there is too much of it.
But Ben Bernanke is far from alone in warning about the danger of our exploding national debt.
For example, world famous motivational speaker Tony Robbins is also warning that the national debt crisis could destroy our future.
These days, most people throw around the phrase “a trillion dollars” without ever really grasping what it means.
In the video posted below, Tony Robbins uses a fun illustration to help put in perspective how large a “trillion dollars” really is.
If you had a million seconds to do something, would you consider that to be a long time?
Well, it turns out that a million seconds is only about 12 days.
What about a billion seconds? Is that a long period of time?
Well, yes, a billion seconds is close to 32 years. So that is definitely a lot longer than a million seconds.
What about a trillion seconds?
How long do you think that is?
Well, a trillion seconds is about 31,688 years.
So when we talk about how the U.S. government is stealing more than a trillion dollars from future generations every single year, we are talking about an absolutely massive amount of money.
The Tony Robbins video about the national debt crisis posted below has started to go viral all over the Internet. If you have not seen it yet, I definitely recommend taking a few minutes to watch it….
So why are our politicians not doing anything about the U.S. debt crisis?
Well, it is because most of them value getting elected over and over again above doing what is right for future generations.
For the past four decades, the United States has been enjoying a 15 trillion dollar party. All of this borrowed money has enabled us to live far, far beyond our means.
If our politicians voted to severely cut spending or to raise taxes dramatically at this point, our economy would suddenly readjust to a more realistic standard of living. But that would be extremely painful and most Americans voters would be absolutely furious. They would demand that someone “fix” the economy immediately. But the truth is that what we have been enjoying all these years has not been real. It has been bought with trillions of dollars stolen from future generations. But most of our politicians just want to keep the party rolling as long as humanly possible so that they can keep getting voted back into office.
Fortunately, there are a few politicians that are willing to stand up and tell the truth about our national debt crisis. For example, in the video posted below Ron Paul scolds the rest of Congress for continuing to vote for debt limit increase after debt limit increase….
Unfortunately, the American people seem to prefer politicians that endlessly lie to them about how bad things really are.
For example, back at the beginning of the Bush administration we were promised that we would be swimming in gigantic surpluses by now.
That didn’t exactly work out, now did it?
Barack Obama promised us that he would cut the size of the federal budget deficit in half by the end of his first term.
Since 1975, we have added more than 15 trillion dollars to the national debt. In fact, the U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
A lot of talking heads on television continue to assure us that everything is going to be okay, but the truth is that we are about to experience some absolutely devastating consequences for decades of really bad decisions.
For example, the rest of the world is rapidly losing faith in our currency and the reign of the U.S. dollar as the primary world reserve currency is in serious danger of coming to an end. When that happens, gasoline, food and just about everything else that you buy is going to be a lot more expensive.
Already, there are very ominous signs that the rest of the world is getting tired of financing our endless spending. In 2011, the Federal Reserve bought approximately 61 percent of all new government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department. This is not supposed to happen. The Federal Reserve is not supposed to be monetizing our debt and this is something that Congress should be looking into.
Also, at this time of the year people love to complain about the outrageous amount of taxes that most hard working Americans have to pay, but the truth is that eventually it will likely get a whole lot worse.
Just look at Greece. Taxes in Greece have been raised to suffocating levels, government spending has been slashed to the bone and yet they are still running up more debt.
That is going to happen in the United States at some point too, especially if our leaders choose the path of austerity and deflation.
You can’t hide from debt forever.
Have you ever run up debt on a credit card?
A lot of us did that when we were young and foolish, and it can be a lot of fun on the way up.
But eventually a day of reckoning comes and it is extremely painful to find yourself drowning in credit card debt.
Well, we are rapidly approaching our credit limit as a nation.
Some hard choices will have to be made, and there will be a lot of pain.
The false prosperity that we are enjoying now is going to disappear.
Now is the time to prepare for the massive economic shift that is coming. In the coming economic environment, those that are currently living month to month and those that are 100% dependent on the system are going to be in a huge amount of trouble.
Instead of wildly spending money as if the good times will never end like most Americans are, now is the time to get out of debt, to become more self-sufficient and to set aside the money, resources and supplies you will need to weather the storm that is rapidly approaching.
Anyone with half a brain should be able to see that a gigantic economic collapse is coming.
Use the time that you still have left to prepare the best that you can.
The economic crisis in Europe continues to get worse and eventually it is going to unravel into a complete economic nightmare. All over Europe, national governments have piled up debts that are completely unsustainable. But whenever they start significantly cutting government spending it results in an economic slowdown. So politicians in Europe are really caught between a rock and a hard place. They can’t keep racking up these unsustainable debts, but if they continue to cut government spending it is going to push their economies into deep recession and their populations will riot. Greece is a perfect example of this. Greece has been going down the austerity road for several years now and they are experiencing a full-blown economic depression, riots have become a way of life in that country and their national budget is still not anywhere close to balanced. Americans should pay close attention to what is going on in Europe, because this is what it looks like when a debt party ends. Most of the nations in the eurozone have just started implementing austerity, and yet unemployment in the eurozone is already the highest it has been since the euro was introduced. It has risen for 10 months in a row and is now up to 10.8 percent. Sadly, it is going to go even higher. As economies across Europe slide into recession, that is going to put even more pressure on the European financial system. Most Americans do not realize this, but the European banking system is absolutely enormous. It is nearly four times the size that the U.S. banking system is. When the European banking system crashes (and it will) it is going to reverberate around the globe. The epicenter of the next great financial crisis is going to be in Europe, and it is getting closer with each passing day.
The following are 27 statistics about the European economic crisis that are almost too crazy to believe….
#2 The average unemployment rate in Greece in 2010 was 12.5 percent. During 2011, the average unemployment rate was 17.3 percent, and now the unemployment rate in Greece is up to 21.8 percent.
#3 The youth unemployment rate in Greece is now over 50 percent.
#4 The unemployment rate in the port town is Perama is about 60 percent.
#5 In Greece, 20 percent of all retail stores have closed down during the economic crisis.
#7 Some of the austerity measures that have been implemented in Greece have been absolutely brutal. For example, Greek civil servants have had their incomes slashed by about 40 percent since 2010.
#8 Despite all of the austerity measures, it is being projected that Greece will still have a budget deficit equivalent to 7 percent of GDP in 2012.
#10 In the midst of all the poverty in Greece, several serious diseases are making a major comeback. The following comes from a recent article in the Guardian….
The incidence of HIV/Aids among intravenous drug users in central Athens soared by 1,250% in the first 10 months of 2011 compared with the same period the previous year, according to the head of Médecins sans Frontières Greece, while malaria is becoming endemic in the south for the first time since the rule of the colonels, which ended in the 1970s.
Spain
#11 The unemployment rate in Spain is now up to 23.6 percent.
#12 The youth unemployment rate in Spain is now over 50 percent.
#13 The total value of all toxic loans in Spain is equivalent to approximately 13 percent of Spanish GDP.
#14 The GDP of Spain is about 1.4 trillion dollars. The three largest Spanish banks have approximately 2.7 trillion dollars in assets and they are all on the verge of failing.
#16 The number of property repossessions in Spain rose by 32 percent during 2011.
#17 The ratio of government debt to GDP in Spain will rise by more than 11 percent during 2012.
#18 On top of everything else, Spain is dealing with the worst drought it has seen in 70 years.
Portugal
#19 The unemployment rate in Portugal is up to 15 percent.
#20 The youth unemployment rate in Portugal is now over 35 percent.
#21 Banks in Portugal borrowed a record 56.3 billion euros from the European Central Bank in March.
#22 It is being projected that the Portuguese economy will shrink by 5.7 percent during 2012.
#23 When you add up all forms of debt in Portugal (government, business and consumer) the total is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP.
Italy
#24 Youth unemployment in Italy is up to 31.9 percent – the highest level ever.
#25 Italy’s national debt is approximately 2.7 times larger than the national debts of Greece, Ireland and Portugal put together.
#26 If you add the maturing debt that the Italian government must roll over in 2012 to the projected budget deficit, it comes to approximately 23.1 percent of Italy’s GDP.
Well, the powers that be are pulling out all their tricks.
For example, the European Central Bank decided to start loaning gigantic mountains of money to European banks. That accomplished two things….
1) It kept those European banks from collapsing.
2) European banks used that money to buy up sovereign bonds and that kept interest rates down.
Unfortunately, all of this game playing has also put the European Central Bank in a very vulnerable position.
The balance sheet of the European Central Bank has expanded by more than 1 trillion dollars over the past nine months. The balance sheet of the European Central Bank is now larger than the entire GDP of Germany and the ECB is now leveraged 36 to 1.
So just how far can you stretch the rubberband before it snaps?
Perhaps we are about to find out.
The European financial system is leveraged like crazy right now. Even banking systems in countries that you think of as “stable” are leveraged to extremes.
For example, major German banks are leveraged 32 to 1, and those banks are holding a massive amount of European sovereign debt.
When Lehman Brothers finally collapsed, it was only leveraged 30 to 1.
You can’t solve a debt crisis with more debt. But the European Central Bank has been able to use more debt to kick the can down the road a few more months.
At some point the sovereign debt bubble is going to burst.
All financial bubbles eventually burst.
What goes up must come down.
Right now, the major industrialized nations of the world are approximately 55 trillion dollars in debt.
It has been a fun ride, but this fraudulent pyramid of risk, debt and leverage is going to come crashing down at some point.
It is only a matter of time.
Already, there are a whole bunch of signs that some very serious economic trouble is on the horizon.
Hopefully we still have a few more months until it hits.
But in this day and age nothing is guaranteed.
What does seem abundantly clear is that the current global financial system is inevitably going to fail.
When it does, what “solutions” will our leaders try to impose upon us?
Which lifestyle choice produces better results – being a hard working American or being a government parasite? Actually, when you look at the cold, hard numbers they may just surprise you. In America today, we deeply penalize hard work and we greatly reward government dependence. If you live in a very liberal area of the country and you know how to game the system, it is entirely possible to live a comfortable existence without ever working too much at all. In fact, there are some Americans that have been living off of “government benefits” for decades. Many of these people actually plan their lives around doing exactly what they need to do to qualify for as many benefits as possible. America is rapidly turning into a European-style socialist welfare state and it is destroying our nation socially and financially. Ever since the “war on poverty” began our debt has absolutely exploded and yet now there are more poor people in this country than ever before. Obviously something is not working.
Now don’t get me wrong. I deeply believe in having compassion for those that are going through tough times and having a safety net for those that cannot take care of themselves. We should not have a single person in this nation going without food or sleeping in the streets.
But in America today it is absolutely ridiculous how many people are climbing aboard the “safety net”. At this point, an astounding 49 percent of all Americans live in a home that receives some form of government benefits.
So who pays for all of this?
The people that drag themselves out of bed and go to work each day pay for it all.
For a few moments, let’s examine how the lifestyle of a typical hard working American compares to the lifestyle of a government parasite.
In America today, the median yearly household income is somewhere around $50,000. About half of all American households make more than that and about half of all American households make less than that. When you break it down, it comes to about $4000 a month.
So how far does $4000 go in America today?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t go very far at all.
First of all, a hard working American family will need some place to live. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the decent jobs are near the big cities, and it is more expensive to live near the big cities. Let’s assume that an average family of four will spend about $1000 a month on rent or on a mortgage payment.
The government parasite, on the other hand, has a whole host of federal, state and local housing programs to take advantage of. During the recent economic downturn, more Americans than ever have been turning to the government for help with housing costs. For example, federal housing assistance outlays increased by a whopping 42 percent between 2006 and 2010.
Once you have a place to live, you have to provide power and heat for it. For the average hard working American, this is going to probably average about $300 a month, although this can vary greatly depending on where you live.
For the government parasite, there are once again a whole host of government programs to help with this. For example, LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) assists low income households in paying their home heating bills.
Most average hard working Americans are also going to need phone and Internet service. Let’s assume that the hard working family of four in our example is extremely thrifty and only spends $100 a month for these services.
For the government parasite, cell phone service is not a problem. As I have written about previously, those that “qualify” can receive a free cell phone and free cell phone minutes every single month from the federal government. In addition, in some areas of the nation low income families can qualify for deeply subsidized home Internet service.
In order to earn money, our hard working family is going to need to get to work. In most households, both parents have decided to work these days so both of them will need cars. Let’s assume that the family is very thrifty and that both cars were purchased used and that the car payments only total about $400 a month.
The hard working family will also need auto insurance for the two vehicles. Let’s assume that both parents have a great driving record and that they only pay a total of about $100 a month for car insurance.
The cars will also need to be filled up with gasoline. The average U. S. household spent $4155 on gasoline during 2011, but let’s assume that our family is very, very careful and that they only spend about $300 on gas each month.
So what about the government parasite? Well, the government parasite does not need to go to work, so this expense can potentially be eliminated entirely. But since most other things are paid for by the government or are deeply subsidized, in many instances government parasites are actually able to afford very nice vehicles.
In addition, a new bill (The Low-Income Gasoline Assistance Program Act) has been introduced in Congress that would give “qualifying” households money to help pay for gasoline….
Low-Income Gasoline Assistance Program Act – Directs the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to states to establish emergency assistance programs to pay eligible households for the purchase of gasoline.
A hard working American family is also going to need health insurance. Well, we all know how expensive health insurance has become. In fact, health insurance costs have risen by 23 percent since Barack Obama became president. But let’s assume that our hard working family has somehow been able to find an amazing deal where they only pay $500 a month for health insurance for a family of four.
For the government parasite, health insurance is not needed. If there is an emergency, the government parasite can just go get free medical care at any emergency room.
And of course there is always Medicaid. Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid. Today, one out of every 6 Americans is on Medicaid, and things are about to get a whole lot worse. It is being projected that Obamacare will add 16 million more Americans to the Medicaid rolls.
So what about food?
Everyone has to eat, right?
Well, the hard working family in our example is faced with an environment where food prices are constantly rising but paychecks are not keeping up. Let’s assume that the hard working family in our example clips coupons and cuts corners any way that it can and only spends about $50 for each member of the family on food and supplies each week. That comes to a total of $800 a month for the entire family.
So what about the government parasite?
Government parasites need to eat too.
Well, that is where food stamps come in. Right now, there are more than 46 million Americans on food stamps. Since Barack Obama became president, the number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14 million. Food stamps have become so popular that rappers are even making rap videos about using food stamp cards.
Okay, so after all of this where do we stand?
Well, the average hard working family so far has spent $3500 out of the $4000 that they have to spend for the month.
We still need to find money for clothing, for paying off credit card debt, for paying off student loan debt, for dining out, for entertainment, for medications, for pets, for hobbies, for life insurance, for vacations, for car repairs and maintenance, for child care, for gifts and for retirement savings.
But wait.
There is actually no money left at all because we have forgotten one of the biggest expenses of all.
Taxes.
When you total up all federal, state and property taxes, our average hard working family is going to pay at least $1000 a month in taxes.
So that puts our average hard working family in the hole every single month.
Meanwhile, the government parasite does not pay any taxes because he or she does not earn enough money to be taxed.
Are you starting to get the picture?
In many ways, life can be so much easier when you are constantly taking from the government instead of constantly giving to the government.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie recently put it this way….
“We’ll have a bunch of people sitting on a couch waiting for their next government check”
Once again, I am not dumping on those that have been through all kinds of nightmares because of this economy. As I have written about so frequently, the U.S. economy is simply not producing enough jobs for everyone anymore, and this is creating major problems.
Just about everyone needs a helping hand at some point, and we should always be compassionate to those that are in need.
However, there is also a growing number of Americans that are content to simply give up and live off of the government, and that is fundamentally wrong.
It is not the job of the U.S. government to take care of you from the cradle to the grave. What the U.S. government is supposed to do is to make sure that we have a well functioning economy that operates in an environment where hard working individuals and small businesses can thrive, and sadly the U.S. government has failed miserably in that regard.
We desperately need the U.S. economy to be fixed, but I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
As economic conditions get even worse in this country, millions more Americans are going to turn to the government for assistance and at some point the safety net is going to break.
What is our country going to look like when that happens?
Most Americans have no idea how much economic trouble is heading our way. Most of them just assume that everything will eventually “return to normal” just like it always has before and that those running our economy “know what they are doing” and that we should trust them to do their jobs. Unfortunately, these beliefs are being reinforced by the bubble of false hope that we are experiencing right now. For example, it is being reported that weekly unemployment claims in the United States have fallen to a four-year low. That is a very good thing. Let us hope that unemployment claims go even lower and that the current period of stability lasts for as long as possible. We should enjoy these last fleeing moments of tremendous prosperity for as long as we can, because when they are gone they won’t be coming back. As I noted the other day, all of this false prosperity in the United States has been financed by the 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying. We are adding about 150 million dollars to our debt every single hour so that we can continue to enjoy an inflated standard of living. Unfortunately, nobody in the history of the world has ever been able to keep a debt spiral going indefinitely, and our debt bubble will burst eventually as well.
Sadly, when you attempt to end (or even slow down) a debt spiral the consequences can be extremely painful. Just look at what is happening in Greece. Several waves of austerity measures have been implemented, the Greek economy has been plunged into a full-blown depression and Greek debt is still going up.
The rest of the nations of the eurozone are also now implementing austerity measures, and most of them are also starting to fall into recession. The economic pain in Europe is just beginning and it will go on for quite a long time.
And eventually the United States is going to join the pain. Right now the U.S. government can still borrow trillions of dollars at super low interest rates thanks to games being played by the Federal Reserve. But it is simply not possible for this Ponzi scheme to last too much longer. When it ends, the pain will be extremely great.
And even in the short-term there are some extremely troubling signs for the U.S. economy.
The following are 19 signs of very serious economic trouble on the horizon….
#1 According to one new survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
#2 The U.S. housing industry is bracing for another huge wave of foreclosures in 2012. The following is from a recent Reuters article….
“We are right back where we were two years ago. I would put money on 2012 being a bigger year for foreclosures than 2010,” said Mark Seifert, executive director of Empowering & Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP), a counseling group with 10 offices in Ohio.
#3 The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index, a key indicator watched by many economists, is on the verge of heading into negative territory.
#4 We are supposed to be in the middle of an economic recovery in the United States, but bad news just keeps pouring in from major companies. For example, Yahoo is firing thousands of workers and Best Buy is closing dozens of stores.
#5 Richard Russell says that the “big money” is starting to quietly exit from the financial markets….
“My guess is that this is the big money that has been holding off as long as it decently can — and then dumping their goods just before the close. I don’t think the big money likes this market, and I think they have been slowly exiting this market, as quietly as they can.”
#6 Goldman Sachs is projecting that the S&P 500 will fall by about 11 percent by the end of 2012.
#7 All over the country, local governments are going into default and we have not even entered the next recession yet.
#8 The U.S. government will add more to the national debt in 2012 than it did from the time that George Washington became president to the time that Ronald Reagan became president.
#9 The Federal Reserve is desperately trying to control interest rates. The Fed purchased approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011. This is the only thing that is keeping interest rates in the United States from soaring dramatically.
#16 In the aftermath of a 77-year-old retiree killing himself in front of the Greek parliament in protest over pension cuts, the economic rioting in Greece has flared back up dramatically.
#17 At this point, Greece is experiencing an economic depression with no end in sight. Some of the statistics coming out of Greece are really hard to believe. For example, one port town in Greece now has an unemployment rate of approximately 60 percent.
#19 At this point, even some of our top scientists are projecting economic trouble. For example, researchers at MIT are projecting a “global economic collapse” by the year 2030 if current trends continue.
But the truth is that we will experience a “global economic collapse” long before 2030 comes rolling around.
Let us hope that we still have at least several more months of economic prosperity in the United States before things really fall apart.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans need more time to prepare for what is coming.
Sadly, most Americans are not preparing. Most Americans have blind faith that those in positions of power are going to fix everything and set us on the path to even greater prosperity than ever before.
Unfortunately, all Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama have been doing is kicking the can down the road and making our eventual collapse much worse.
As many of us have painfully learned, you can run from debt for a while, but you can’t hide from it forever. Eventually debt catches up with you, and when it does it can be very cruel.
The 15 trillion dollar party is coming to an end, and the consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are going to fall on this generation.
If you knew that you could live in luxury for the rest of your life but that by doing so it would absolutely destroy the future for your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren would you do it? Well, that is exactly what we are doing as a nation. Over the past several decades, we have stolen 15 trillion dollars from future generations so that we could enjoy a dramatically inflated level of prosperity. Our 15 trillion dollar party has been a lot of fun, but what we have done to our children and our grandchildren has been beyond criminal. We ran up the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the planet and we are sticking them with the bill. Sadly, both political parties have been responsible for the big spending that has been going on. Both Democrats and Republicans have run up huge budget deficits when in power. But instead of learning the hard lessons of the past, both political parties continue to vote for even more debt. They would rather continue to steal trillions of dollars from future generations than have the party end and have to face the consequences.
And the consequences will be dramatic when the party ends. During fiscal year 2011, the U.S. government spent 3.7 trillion dollars but it only brought in 2.4 trillion dollars. That means that the U.S. government spent about 1.3 trillion dollars that it did not have. It is important to understand that even if the U.S. government spent that 1.3 trillion dollars on really stupid things, that money still got into the pockets of ordinary Americans who then spent it on things like food, gas, housing, etc. In turn, most of those that received money from providing those goods and services would spend it on other things.
So extra government spending can definitely stimulate the economy. The problem is that we have been doing it permanently. Since 1975, we have added more than 15 trillion dollars to the national debt. This has fueled a false prosperity that was way beyond what we could afford.
If the U.S. government tried to go to a balanced budget now, our standard of living would crash and there would be riots in the streets. The American people have been enjoying false prosperity for so long that they have lost any notion of what “normal” actually is.
Think of it this way. If your family makes $40,000 this year and you spend an extra $20,000 on your credit cards, your family would be enjoying a false sense of prosperity.
You could do that year after year as long as the credit card companies keep loaning you more money.
But debt always catches up with you in the end.
It is the same thing with the United States.
We have been running up our national credit card balance and the interest payments have become quite painful.
The U.S. government spent over 454 billion dollars just on interest on the national debt during fiscal 2011.
That is 454 billion dollars that the people of the United States do not receive anything in return for.
So in order to keep up with interest on the national debt and to enjoy a standard of living that is beyond our means we now have to run deficits that are in excess of a trillion dollars every single year.
And a trillion dollars is a staggering amount of money.
If right this moment you went out and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.
Since Barack Obama was elected, the U.S. government has added about 5 trillion more dollars to the national debt.
That kind of debt is a recipe for national financial suicide.
How are we supposed to explain to our children that we are passing a debt of $15,579,852,946,457.64 down to them?
At this point, the United States government is responsible for more than a third of all the government debt in the entire world.
The 15 trillion dollar party that we have been enjoying has been amazing, but all of that debt is soon going to bring us a tremendous amount of pain.
And there is really no way out under our current financial system. As our population ages, government budget deficits are projected to spiral wildly out of control in future years.
Already, entitlement programs are starting to cause massive problems. For example, mandatory federal spending surpassed total federal revenue for the first time ever in fiscal 2011. That was not supposed to happen until 50 years from now.
If the federal government used GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) like all publicly-traded corporations are required to do, the situation would be much worse.
The truth is that the U.S. government never had a “balanced budget” during the end of the Clinton administration. The federal government was borrowing gigantic amounts of money from the Social Security trust fund to finance regular government operations. It was a big fraud. Under GAAP, there would have been huge budget deficits during those years.
And even under the non-GAAP numbers used by the U.S. Treasury Department, the U.S. national debt still increased every single year during the Clinton administration.
So let’s get real.
Our national financial situation has always been much worse than we have been told.
It has been estimated that our current budget deficits would be in the neighborhood of 4 to 5 trillion dollars under GAAP.
And looking down the road a bit, we are facing a tsunami of unfunded liabilities that is absolutely nightmarish.
In other words, we have committed ourselves to tens of trillions of dollars of expenses that we don’t have any money for.
According to Professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff, the U.S. is facing a “fiscal gap” of over 200 trillion dollars in the coming years. The following is a brief excerpt from a recent article that he did for CNN….
The government’s total indebtedness — its fiscal gap — now stands at $211 trillion, by my arithmetic. The fiscal gap is the difference, measured in present value, between all projected future spending obligations — including our huge defense expenditures and massive entitlement programs, as well as making interest and principal payments on the official debt — and all projected future taxes.
And it just keeps getting worse. Recently it was revealed that Obamacare will add 17 trillion dollars more to our long-term unfunded obligations.
Basically what we have done is we have committed future generations to a life of endless debt slavery to pay for our debts and for the financial promises that we have made.
How could we be so stupid?
Of course this entire fraudulent system is going to completely collapse before we get too much farther down the road anyway. Right now the whole thing is essentially being held together by chicken wire and duct tape.
Most Americans do not realize this, but the Federal Reserve bought approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011.
Normally, the Federal Reserve is not supposed to be doing this.
But right now there are not nearly enough buyers of U.S. government debt at the super low interest rates that the U.S. government wants to pay. A recent Money News article explained that foreigners have been increasingly shying away from U.S. debt….
“In 2009, such foreign purchases of U.S. debt amounted to 6 percent of GDP and has since falled by over eighty percent to a paltry 0.9 percent.”
Instead of interest rates on U.S. Treasuries rising to attract additional investors, the U.S. Federal Reserve has been intervening to make up the difference.
This is essentially “monetizing the debt” and it is something that Ben Bernanke promised that he would never do.
But he is doing it.
If the Federal Reserve was not buying up all this debt, interest rates on U.S. debt would soar and so would U.S. government interest payments.
Yes, this is a giant Ponzi scheme and it cannot last for long.
Of course all of this could have been avoided if our politicians had not been running up such massive amounts of debt all these years.
Some have suggested that our problems could be solved by simply increasing taxes on the wealthy.
Well, the truth is that the top 5 percent of all income earners already pay nearly 50 percent of all federal taxes and soaking them even more will not even come close to solving the federal budget crisis.
For example, if Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.
And as Bill Whittle has shown, you could take every single penny that every American earns above $250,000 and it would only fund about 38 percent of the federal budget.
So taxing the wealthy will certainly not solve all of our problems.
In fact, when you tax the wealthy and the “somewhat wealthy” it slows economic growth in a number of different ways.
Number one, they have less money to spend into the economy.
Number two, they have less money to invest in business activities.
Number three, it gives wealthy individuals and corporations more of an incentive to move out of the United States. As I have written about previously, the global elite are already hiding about 18 trillion dollars in offshore banks. The U.S. government keeps trying to tap into all of that offshore wealth, but the elite always seem to be a few steps ahead of the game.
Yes, we should try to close loopholes in the tax system, but the truth is that the root cause of our problem is that the federal government is simply spending way, way too much money.
Right now, spending by the federal government accounts for about 24 percent of GDP. Back in 2001, it accounted for just 18 percent.
But our politicians always want to put off spending cuts for another day because they know that immediate spending cuts would really hurt the economy.
“The time for austerity is not today,” Lew told NBC News “Meet the Press.” “If we were to put in austerity measures right now, it would take the economy in the wrong way.”
Yes, the Obama administration definitely does not want to hurt the economy with an election coming up in a few months.
So when will it be time to seriously cut government spending?
The day never seems to arrive.
But even though the federal government has been pumping more than a trillion extra dollars into the economy every year, the economy has not shown much improvement. The percentage of working age Americans that have jobs has barely budged for over two years.
Yes, the policies of the Obama administration have stabilized the U.S. economy for the moment, but if he was actually going to tell the truth he would say something like this….
“By mortgaging the future of our children and our grand-children I have stabilized our economic statistics for the short-term. Unfortunately, I am going to have to continue to financially abuse future generations to keep us from falling into another Great Depression. Meanwhile, I am making our long-term financial problems far, far worse. But the most important thing is that I win re-election so that I can continue to be president. Thank you for being so selfish and so willing to destroy the future of your children. Vote for me in 2012 and let the party continue!”
Unfortunately, the party is going to come crashing to an end at some point.
Right now, the global financial system is based on the U.S. dollar and on U.S. government debt.
There will come a time when the rest of the world is going to get sick and tired of watching this Ponzi scheme play out and they are going to completely lose faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. government debt. In fact, there are already signs that this is starting to happen.
When faith in our currency and our debt is completely gone, it will be nearly impossible to get back and the game will be over.
The false prosperity that we are experiencing right now is about as good as things are going to get.
Enjoy it while you still can, because when it is gone that will be the end of it.
Both the Democrats and the Republicans have failed us. They played fast and loose with our future and they never planned for the long-term.
Now we are facing a collapse of unprecedented magnitude that most Americans will never even see coming.
Is the U.S. economy going to be okay? Well, if the only source you listened to was the mainstream media, you would be left with the distinct impression that the U.S. economy is heading toward a full recovery and that everything is going to be alright. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. The United States is rapidly becoming poorer as a nation and less competitive in the global marketplace. At the same time, consumer debt levels are rising, corporate debt levels are rising, state and local government debt levels are rising and the U.S. government is indulging in a debt binge unlike anything the world has ever seen. Considering the insane amount of money the U.S. government has been pumping into the economy, we should have seen a much more robust recovery by now. Instead, the employment statistics have barely moved and government dependence is at an all-time high. That is really sad, because this is as good as “the recovery” is going to get. The next major economic downturn is just around the bend, and in future years millions of us will desperately yearn for the “good old days” of 2012.
Below, I have compiled a list of things that I have entitled “Everything Is Going To Be Alright?”
It is composed in the form of a song, but it really isn’t meant to be sung. It is probably actually more of an economic horror poem than it is a song. What I have tried to do is to point out the absurdity of what we are all being told by our politicians and by the media. Hopefully you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it….
Don’t worry about a thing – Harry Reid says everything is going to be alright.
Home prices in the United States hit a 10 year low in the month of January. They are now down 34.4 percent from the peak in 2006.
Don’t worry about a thing – Barack Obama says everything is going to be alright.
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is rapidly approaching the $4.00 mark.
Don’t worry about a thing – Anderson Cooper says everything is going to be alright.
Median household income in the United States is down 7.8 percent since December 2007 after adjusting for inflation.
Don’t worry about a thing – Barack Obama says everything is going to be alright.
When Barack Obama first took office, the number of “long-term unemployed workers” in the United States was approximately 2.6 million. Today, that number is sitting at 5.6 million.
Don’t worry about a thing – Nancy Pelosi says everything is going to be alright.
Don’t worry about a thing – Barack Obama says everything is going to be alright.
One out of every five Americans will be 65 or older by 2030 and nobody has any idea where all the money is going to come from to pay them the benefits that they have been promised.
Don’t worry about a thing – Rachel Maddow says everything is going to be alright.
Don’t worry about a thing – Barack Obama says everything is going to be alright.
The number of Americans on food stamps has increased by 14 million since Barack Obama became president and is sitting at an all-time record high.
Don’t worry about a thing – Hillary Clinton says everything is going to be alright.
The U.S. government will add more to the national debt in 2012 than it did from the time that George Washington became president to the time that Ronald Reagan became president.
Don’t worry about a thing – Barack Obama says everything is going to be alright.
The U.S. national debt is currently increasing by about 150 million dollars every single hour.
Don’t worry about a thing – Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says everything is going to be alright.
The Federal Reserve bought approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011. This is a Ponzi scheme that will completely collapse at some point.
Don’t worry about a thing – Barack Obama says everything is going to be alright.
—–
So what is your opinion?
Do you believe that everything is going to be alright?
Please feel free to leave a comment with your thoughts below….
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claims that the Federal Reserve averted a second Great Depression by bailing out the big Wall Street banks during the last financial crisis, and he says that if a similar financial crisis comes along that the correct “policy response” will be to do the exact same thing again. This was the theme of the lecture that Bernanke delivered to students at George Washington University on Tuesday. In previous lectures Bernanke has defended the existence of the Fed and detailed the history of Fed activities, but on Tuesday he addressed things that have happened since he has been at the helm of the Fed. And according to Bernanke, he has been doing a great job. Bernanke told the students that the “threat of a second Great Depression was very real” and that the Federal Reserve did exactly what needed to be done to fix the financial system. Unfortunately, the truth is that all Bernanke did was kick the can a bit farther down the road. You can’t fix a debt problem with more debt, and the debt bubble we are living in today is far larger than it was in 2008. Will Bernanke still be trying to portray himself as a hero when this house of cards finally falls apart?
During his lecture to the students on Tuesday, Bernanke stated the following….
“I think the view is increasingly gaining acceptance that without the forceful policy response that stabilized the financial system in 2008 and early 2009, we could have had a much worse outcome in the economy.”
So what did that “forceful policy response” entail?
Well, on slide 24 of his presentation to the students Bernanke tells us….
• On October 10, 2008, G‐7 countries agreed to work together to stabilize the global financial system. They agreed to – prevent the failure of systemically important financial institutions – ensure financial institutions’ access to funding and capital – restore depositor confidence – work to normalize credit markets
Please note that not all financial institutions got bailed out.
In fact, hundreds of small and mid-size U.S. banks failed during the financial crisis.
It was only the “systemically important financial institutions” that got bailed out.
So who decided which financial institutions were important enough to be bailed out?
The Federal Reserve made those decisions. There were no Congressional votes and no input from the public. The Federal Reserve determined who the winners and the losers would be in secret and without any public debate.
So once the Federal Reserve bailed out the “too big to fail” banks, what was the outcome?
On page 25 of his presentation to the students Bernanke claimed that the bailouts successfully prevented the global financial system from collapsing….
• The international policy response averted the collapse of the global financial system.
But it wasn’t just big Wall Street banks that got bailed out. Bernanke says that AIG was also bailed out because the insurance company was deemed to be too “interconnected with many other parts of the global financial system” to be allowed to fail….
Because AIG was interconnected with many other parts of the global financial system, its failure would have had a massive effect on other financial firms and markets.
Once again, we see that it is the Federal Reserve who picks the winners and the losers.
AIG got bailed out and was then able to pay 100 cents on the dollar of what it owed to Goldman Sachs.
That sure worked out well for Goldman Sachs.
In all, the Federal Reserve issued a grand total of more than 16 trillion dollars in secret loans during the financial crisis.
The big Wall Street banks got showered with cash while hundreds of smaller banks were allowed to die like dogs.
The fact that the Fed greatly favors the big Wall Street banks has allowed them to grow massively in size and in power.
Back in 1970, the 5 biggest U.S. banks held 17 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
Today, the 5 biggest U.S. banks hold 52 percent of all U.S. banking industry assets.
The “too big to fail” banks just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger.
Yet during his presentation to the students, Bernanke tried to talk out of both sides of his mouth by claiming that it is not a good thing for some banks to be “too big to fail”….
“But clearly, it is something fundamentally wrong with a system in which some companies are ‘too big to fail.'”
So who is to blame for them being so big?
Well, the Federal Reserve is probably the biggest culprit.
Thanks Bernanke.
The big Wall Street banks are bigger than ever and they are also more unstable than ever.
According to the Comptroller of the Currency, the biggest U.S. banks have exposure to derivatives that is absolutely mind blowing. Just check out these numbers which have just been released….
JPMorgan Chase – $70.1 Trillion
Citibank – $52.1 Trillion
Bank of America – $50.1 Trillion
Goldman Sachs – $44.2 Trillion
So what is going to happen when that bubble pops?
Is Bernanke going to zap tens of trillions of dollars into existence to bail out that gigantic mess?
Meanwhile, the debt bubble that we are all living in just keeps exploding in size.
Total student loan debt in the United States is over 1 trillion dollars at this point. Consumer debt is rising. Millions of mortgages are past due.
The American people are not in better financial condition than they were during the last financial crisis. In fact, they are significantly worse off.
All over America, state and local governments are also drowning in debt. In fact, there have been several very notable municipal bankruptcies lately.
The best that can be said is that he kicked the can down the road a little bit and made our long-term financial problems a lot worse at the same time.
Bernanke can create money out of thin air and loan it to his friends all he wants, but he is not going to be able to prevent this house of cards from crashing down indefinitely.
So grab a bucket of popcorn and get ready. The next few years are going to be fascinating to watch.
Ben Bernanke has decided that he needs to teach all of us why the Federal Reserve is good for America and about why the gold standard is bad. On Tuesday, Bernanke delivered the first of four planned lectures to a group of students at George Washington University. But that lecture was not just for the benefit of those students. Officials at the Fed have long planned for this lecture series to be an opportunity for Bernanke to “educate” the American people about the Federal Reserve. The classroom was absolutely packed with reporters and just about every major news organization is running a story about this first lecture. So the Federal Reserve is definitely getting the publicity that it was hoping for. You can see the slides from the presentation that Bernanke gave to the students right here. It is pretty obvious that one of the primary goals of this first lecture was to attack those that have been critical of the Fed over the past few years. In doing so, Bernanke “stretched” the truth on more than one occasion.
The entire event was staged to make Bernanke and the Federal Reserve look as good as possible. Prior to his arrival, the students gathered for the lecture were actually instructed to applaud Bernanke….
The 30 undergraduates at George Washington University sent up a round of applause. It was, they’d been told beforehand, “appropriate, even encouraged, to politely applaud” Tuesday’s guest lecturer.
But as noted above, this lecture was not for the benefit of those students. A USA Today article even admitted that “addressing the public directly” was one of the real goals of this lecture….
For Bernanke, the GW lectures serve a dual function:
They give him a chance to reprise the role of professor he played for more than two decades, first at Stanford and then at Princeton, where he eventually chaired the economics department.
And they give him a way to expand his mission of demystifying the Fed. As part of that campaign, Bernanke became the first Fed chief to hold regular news conferences and conduct town-hall meetings.
In addressing the public directly, Bernanke has also sought to neutralize attacks on the Fed, some of them from Republican presidential candidates.
So what did Bernanke actually say during the lecture?
Well, you can read all of the slides right here, but the following are some of the highlights….
On page 6 of the presentation, Bernanke makes the following claim….
“A central bank is not an ordinary commercial bank, but a government agency.”
Well, that is quite interesting considering the fact that the Federal Reserve has argued in court that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York is not an agency of the federal government and that the various Federal Reserve banks around the country are private corporations with private funding.
So did the Federal Reserve lie to the court or is Ben Bernanke lying to us?
And what other “agency” of the federal government is owned by private banks?
It is even admitted that the individual member banks own shares of stock in the various Federal Reserve banks on the Federal Reserve website….
The twelve regional Federal Reserve Banks, which were established by Congress as the operating arms of the nation’s central banking system, are organized much like private corporations–possibly leading to some confusion about “ownership.” For example, the Reserve Banks issue shares of stock to member banks. However, owning Reserve Bank stock is quite different from owning stock in a private company. The Reserve Banks are not operated for profit, and ownership of a certain amount of stock is, by law, a condition of membership in the System. The stock may not be sold, traded, or pledged as security for a loan; dividends are, by law, 6 percent per year.
The Federal Reserve always talks about how it must be “independent” and “above politics”, but when they start getting criticized they always want to seek shelter under the wing of the federal government.
It really is disgusting.
On page 7 of the presentation, the following statement is made….
“All central banks strive for low and stable inflation; most also try to promote stable growth in output and employment.”
Well, on both counts the Federal Reserve has failed miserably.
Right now, if inflation was measured the same way that it was back in 1980, the annual rate of inflation would be more than 10 percent.
And when you take a longer view of things, the inflation that the Federal Reserve has manufactured has been absolutely horrific.
Even using the doctored inflation numbers that the Federal Reserve gives us, the U.S. dollar has still lost 83 percent of its value since 1970.
The truth is that inflation is a “hidden tax” that is constantly destroying the value of every single dollar that you and I hold. Those that attempt to save money for the future or for retirement are deeply penalized under such a system.
As far as employment goes, the total number of workers that are “officially” unemployed in the United States is larger than the entire population of Portugal.
The average duration of unemployment is hovering near an all-time record high and almost every measure of government dependence is at an all-time record high.
So the Federal Reserve is failing at the exact things that Bernanke claims that it is supposed to be doing.
But instead of directly addressing many of the specific criticisms that have been leveled at the Fed, Bernanke instead chose to spend much of his lecture talking about the problems with adopting a gold standard. The following are statements that were pulled directly off of the slides he used during his speech….
-“The gold standard sets the money supply and price level generally with limited central bank intervention.”
-“The strength of a gold standard is its greatest weakness too: Because the money supply is determined by the supply of gold, it cannot be adjusted in response to changing economic conditions.”
-“All countries on the gold standard are forced to maintain fixed exchange rates. As a result, the effects of bad policies in one country can be transmitted to other countries if both are on the gold standard.”
-“If not perfectly credible, a gold standard is subject to speculative attack and ultimate collapse as people try to exchange paper money for gold.”
-“The gold standard did not prevent frequent financial panics.”
-“Although the gold standard promoted price stability over the very long run, over the medium run it sometimes caused periods of inflation and deflation.”
-“In the second half of the 19th century, a global shortage of gold reduced the U.S. money supply and caused deflation (falling prices). Farmers were squeezed between declining prices for crops and the fixed dollar payments for their mortgages and other debts.”
Bernanke spent more time on the gold standard during his speech than on anything else. At one point during the lecture, Bernanke made the following statement….
“To have a gold standard, you have to go to South Africa or someplace and dig up tons of gold and move it to New York and put it in the basement of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and that’s a lot of effort and work”
Bernanke even blamed the gold standard for the Great Depression. On a slide entitled “Monetary Policy in the Great Depression”, Bernanke made the following claims….
•The Fed’s tight monetary policy led to sharply falling prices and steep declines in output and employment.
•The effects of policy errors here and abroad were transmitted globally through the gold standard.
•The Fed kept money tight in part because it wanted to preserve the gold standard. When FDR abandoned the gold standard in 1933, monetary policy became less tight and deflation stopped.
Bernanke seems to want to frame the debate over monetary policy is such a way that the American people are given only two alternative systems to consider: the Federal Reserve and a gold standard.
But the truth is that there are a vast array of both “hard money” and “soft money” systems that would not include a central bank or a gold standard at all.
So the truth is that the American people would have many different systems to choose from if they wanted to shut down the Federal Reserve and set up something new.
In the past the U.S. government has issued debt-free money and it could certainly do so again.
But in his lecture, Bernanke did not even mention how the Federal Reserve creates money or how whenever new money is created more debt is created.
Under the Federal Reserve system, the money supply is designed to continually increase, and whenever more money is created more debt is also created.
In a previous article I discussed how more money is created on the federal level….
For example, whenever the U.S. government wants to spend more money than it takes in (which happens constantly), it has to go ask the Federal Reserve for it. The federal government gives U.S. Treasury bonds to the Federal Reserve, and the Federal Reserve gives the U.S. government “Federal Reserve Notes” in return. Usually this is just done electronically.
So where does the Federal Reserve get the Federal Reserve Notes?
It just creates them out of thin air.
Wouldn’t you like to be able to create money out of thin air?
Instead of issuing money directly, the U.S. government lets the Federal Reserve create it out of thin air and then the U.S. government borrows it.
Talk about stupid.
The designers of the Federal Reserve system intended to trap the U.S. government in a debt spiral that would expand perpetually.
So has their design worked?
Well, just look at the chart below….
Today, the U.S. national debt is more than 5000 times larger than it was when the Federal Reserve was first created.
So I guess you could say that the results have been spectacular.
The Federal Reserve system also greatly favors the big Wall Street banks that it is designed to serve.
When those big banks get into trouble, the Federal Reserve snaps into action.
According to a limited GAO audit of Fed transactions during the last financial crisis, $16.1 trillion in secret loans were made by the Federal Reserve to the big Wall Street banks between December 1, 2007 and July 21, 2010.
The following list is taken directly from page 131 of the GAO audit report and it shows which banks received money from the Fed….
Citigroup – $2.513 trillion
Morgan Stanley – $2.041 trillion
Merrill Lynch – $1.949 trillion
Bank of America – $1.344 trillion
Barclays PLC – $868 billion
Bear Sterns – $853 billion
Goldman Sachs – $814 billion
Royal Bank of Scotland – $541 billion
JP Morgan Chase – $391 billion
Deutsche Bank – $354 billion
UBS – $287 billion
Credit Suisse – $262 billion
Lehman Brothers – $183 billion
Bank of Scotland – $181 billion
BNP Paribas – $175 billion
Wells Fargo – $159 billion
Dexia – $159 billion
Wachovia – $142 billion
Dresdner Bank – $135 billion
Societe Generale – $124 billion
“All Other Borrowers” – $2.639 trillion
What about all the rest of us?
Did we get bailed out?
No, we were told that if Wall Street was rescued that the benefits would trickle down to the rest of us.
Unfortunately, that has not exactly worked out. In article, after article, after article I have detailed the horrible economic suffering that the American people are still going through.
But what Bernanke and the Fed have done is create inflation in commodities such as oil which is affecting the household finances of nearly everyone in America.
The average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States is now up to $3.87. That is an all-time record high for the month of March.
So far in 2012, the price of gasoline in the United States has risen by 17 percent.
Thanks Bernanke.
Over the past several decades, every time there has been a major spike in gasoline prices in the United States, a recession has always followed. If you doubt this, just check out this amazing chart.
So will we soon see another recession?
If we are lucky. Hopefully the next downturn will not be a full-blown depression.
The truth is that the Federal Reserve does not help us avoid booms and busts. Rather, it creates them. The Fed was at the heart of the housing bubble which helped bring on the last financial crisis when it crashed, and the current ultra-low interest rate policies of the Fed are creating more bubbles which will have devastating long-term consequences.
So Bernanke does not have anything to be proud of, and his track record has been absolutely nightmarish.
Hopefully the American people will not believe the propaganda and will take an honest look at the Federal Reserve.
When you take an honest look at the Federal Reserve, there is only one rational conclusion: Congress should shut it down, lock the doors and throw away the key.
In case you hadn’t noticed, the United States is a really weird place. Not that “weird” is always bad. Sometimes “weird” can keep life interesting. But without a doubt, the United States is one of the most unique nations in the history of the world. Some of the weird facts about the United States listed below may be difficult for you to believe. Others are likely to completely shock you. Hopefully there is a little something for everyone in this article, and hopefully you will learn some new things from reading it. I know that I certainly learned some new things as I wrote it. In general, everything tends to be larger in America. The people are larger, the cars are larger, the divorce rate is the highest on the planet and the U.S. government has piled up the largest debt in the history of the world. Whether America does something good or bad, it usually does it in a very “big” way. It is easy to love the United States and all the good that it has done, but it is also easy to be horrified by how far this nation has fallen and by the direction that this country is currently headed. So where does America go from here? That is a very good question.
The following are 40 weird facts about the United States that are almost too crazy to believe….
#1 The highest point in the state of Florida is only 345 feet (115 yards) above sea level.
#2 Today, 66 percent of all Americans are considered to be overweight.
#5 Approximately 48 percent of all Americans are currently either considered to be “low income” or are living in poverty.
#6 Alaska has a longer coastline than all of the other 49 U.S. states put together.
#7 In the UK, an average of about $3,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year. In the United States, an average of about $8,500 is spent on healthcare per person each year.
#8 Montana has three times as many cows as it does people.
#9 The average U.S. citizen drinks the equivalent of more than 600 sodas each year.
#10 The only place in the United States where coffee is grown commercially is in Hawaii.
#11 The United States has 845 motor vehicles for every 1,000 people. Japan only has 593 for every 1,000 people and Germany only has 540 for every 1,000 people.
#12 The grizzly bear is the official state animal of California. But no grizzly bears have been seen there since 1922.
#13 For many years it was the other way around, but today a majority of all Americans (including Pat Robertson) actually support the legalization of marijuana.
#14 Jimmy Carter was the first U.S. president to have been born in a hospital.
#15 In the middle of the last century, the United States was #1 in the world in GDP per capita. Today, the United States is #13 in GDP per capita.
#16 Today, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.
#17 One survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit pornography websites while they are at work.
#18 In 2011, our trade deficit with China was more than 49,000 times larger than it was back in 1985.
#32 In 1940, 68.0% of all women in the 20 to 34 year old age group in the United States were married. In 2010, only 39.2% of women in that age group were married.
#33 The United States has a teen pregnancy rate of 22 percent – the highest in the world. New Zealand is number two at 14 percent.
#34 According to the CDC, there are 19 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in the United States every single year.
#35 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin. Puerto Rico is number two. Perhaps Puerto Rico really would fit in as the 51st state.
#36 More people have been diagnosed with mental disorders in the United States than in any other nation on earth.
#37 The United States has more government debt per capita than Greece, Portugal, Italy, Ireland or Spain.
#38 If Bill Gates gave every single penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for about 15 days.
#39 The U.S. national debt is now more than 22 times larger than it was when Jimmy Carter became president.
#40 It took from the founding of the nation until 1981 for the U.S. national debt to cross the one trillion dollar mark. Today, our national debt is well over 15 trillion dollars and we add more than a trillion dollars to our debt every single year.
Do you have any other weird facts that you think should be added to this list? Please feel free to leave a comment with your feedback below….
Is there one thing that Tony Robbins, Ron Paul and Ben Bernanke can all agree on? Yes, there actually is. Recently they have all come forward with warnings that the national debt crisis could destroy America if something is not done. Unfortunately, our politicians continue to spend us into oblivion as if there will never be any consequences. When Barack Obama took office, the U.S. national debt was 10.6 trillion dollars. Today, it is 15.6 trillion dollars and it is rising at the rate of about 150 million dollars an hour. During the Obama administration so far, the U.S. government has accumulated more debt than it did from 1776 to 1995. The United States now has a debt to GDP ratio of over 100 percent, and another credit rating agency downgraded U.S. debt earlier this month. Any talk of a positive economic future is utter nonsense as long as we are bleeding red ink as a nation far faster than we ever have before. It is absolutely immoral to wreck the financial future of our children and our grandchildren and to leave them with a bill for the greatest mountain of debt in the history of the world, but that is exactly what we are doing. Unless our current debt-based financial system is thrown out, there are only two ways that this game is going to play out. One would involve absolutely bitter austerity and deflation unlike anything ever seen before, and the other would involve nightmarish hyperinflation. Either path would be hellish beyond what most Americans could possibly imagine.
19 Signs Of Very Serious Economic Trouble On The Horizon
Sadly, when you attempt to end (or even slow down) a debt spiral the consequences can be extremely painful. Just look at what is happening in Greece. Several waves of austerity measures have been implemented, the Greek economy has been plunged into a full-blown depression and Greek debt is still going up.
The rest of the nations of the eurozone are also now implementing austerity measures, and most of them are also starting to fall into recession. The economic pain in Europe is just beginning and it will go on for quite a long time.
And eventually the United States is going to join the pain. Right now the U.S. government can still borrow trillions of dollars at super low interest rates thanks to games being played by the Federal Reserve. But it is simply not possible for this Ponzi scheme to last too much longer. When it ends, the pain will be extremely great.
And even in the short-term there are some extremely troubling signs for the U.S. economy.
The following are 19 signs of very serious economic trouble on the horizon….
#1 According to one new survey, approximately one-third of all Americans are not paying their bills on time at this point.
#2 The U.S. housing industry is bracing for another huge wave of foreclosures in 2012. The following is from a recent Reuters article….
#3 The Citigroup Economic Surprise Index, a key indicator watched by many economists, is on the verge of heading into negative territory.
#4 We are supposed to be in the middle of an economic recovery in the United States, but bad news just keeps pouring in from major companies. For example, Yahoo is firing thousands of workers and Best Buy is closing dozens of stores.
#5 Richard Russell says that the “big money” is starting to quietly exit from the financial markets….
#6 Goldman Sachs is projecting that the S&P 500 will fall by about 11 percent by the end of 2012.
#7 All over the country, local governments are going into default and we have not even entered the next recession yet.
#8 The U.S. government will add more to the national debt in 2012 than it did from the time that George Washington became president to the time that Ronald Reagan became president.
#9 The Federal Reserve is desperately trying to control interest rates. The Fed purchased approximately 61 percent of all government debt issued by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2011. This is the only thing that is keeping interest rates in the United States from soaring dramatically.
#10 German industrial production is falling at a pace that is far faster then expected.
#11 Italy’s debt-to-GDP ratio is now up to 120 percent.
#12 The Spanish government admitted on Tuesday that Spain’s debt-to-GDP ratio will rise by more than 11 percent this year alone.
#13 Yields on Spanish bonds are rising to dangerous levels.
#14 The Spanish government is projecting that the unemployment rate in Spain will exceed 24 percent by the end of the year.
#15 Unemployment in the eurozone as a whole has risen for 10 months in a row and is now at a 15 year high.
#16 In the aftermath of a 77-year-old retiree killing himself in front of the Greek parliament in protest over pension cuts, the economic rioting in Greece has flared back up dramatically.
#17 At this point, Greece is experiencing an economic depression with no end in sight. Some of the statistics coming out of Greece are really hard to believe. For example, one port town in Greece now has an unemployment rate of approximately 60 percent.
#18 The IMF is asking the United States to contribute more money for European bailouts.
#19 At this point, even some of our top scientists are projecting economic trouble. For example, researchers at MIT are projecting a “global economic collapse” by the year 2030 if current trends continue.
But the truth is that we will experience a “global economic collapse” long before 2030 comes rolling around.
Let us hope that we still have at least several more months of economic prosperity in the United States before things really fall apart.
The truth is that the vast majority of Americans need more time to prepare for what is coming.
Sadly, most Americans are not preparing. Most Americans have blind faith that those in positions of power are going to fix everything and set us on the path to even greater prosperity than ever before.
Unfortunately, all Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama have been doing is kicking the can down the road and making our eventual collapse much worse.
As many of us have painfully learned, you can run from debt for a while, but you can’t hide from it forever. Eventually debt catches up with you, and when it does it can be very cruel.
The 15 trillion dollar party is coming to an end, and the consequences of decades of very foolish decisions are going to fall on this generation.