Government Debt

Shut It Down?

If the U.S. government were to shut down for a while, would that really be such a bad thing?  Right now everyone in the mainstream media is freaking out as if the world is going to end, but the truth is that there have been government shutdowns before.  The apocalypse is not going to happen if there is another shutdown.  If Congress could find a way to get our troops and our border patrol agents paid, then what would be so bad about the government taking a “vacation” for a while?  After all, when was the last time that either the Republicans or the Democrats did anything that was actually good for America?  It has not mattered which political party has been in power – over the past couple of decades our “representatives” in Washington D.C. have passed an endless parade of bad laws and have gotten us into the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  They literally seem unable to do anything right.  So would it really be so bad if a government shutdown slows them down for a while?  If our politicians are going to act like a bunch of idiots, why not let them shut it down?

Think of it this way – if you could eliminate all of the laws passed under George W. Bush and Barack Obama would you do it?

I think that most Americans would.

Almost every single law that has been passed over the past couple of decades has been bad for America.

But many Americans seem to be going into a panic at the thought that the “almighty government” might not be operating for a few days.

Many Americans seem to have bought into the lie that the federal government is the most important institution in our country.

But this is never what our founding fathers intended.  Our founding fathers intended for the federal government to be very limited.  Unfortunately, we have turned our backs on the principles of our founding fathers.

So exactly what is this fight between the Republicans and the Democrats all about?  Why have we been brought to the brink of a government shutdown?

We keep hearing that it is all about cutting the budget.  In fact, House Speaker John Boehner says that his party is “damn serious about it”.

But that is a joke.  The federal budget deficit for this year is going to be approximately $1.6 trillion dollars.  The Republicans were asking for just $61 billion in budget cuts (3.8% of the budget deficit) and there are rumors that Republican and Democratic negotiators have agreed to a figure of $38 billion in budget cuts.

$38 billion?

Is this why the Tea Party was sent to Washington?

$38 billion would just be 2.4 percent of the $1.6 trillion dollar deficit.

Wow, that is really wielding the budget cutting axe!

Look, the U.S. government cannot spend a single penny from now on without Republicans going along with it.

The Republicans control the House of Representatives.  Barack Obama and the Senate will not have a single dime to spend unless they can get the House to go along with it.

If the Democrats want money to implement Obamacare then they have to get the Republicans to go along with it.

If the Democrats want to give money to the EPA to implement Obama’s “green agenda” then they have to get the Republicans to go along with it.

In fact, pretty much whatever the Democrats want to do, they have to get the Republicans to agree to fund it.

So if you don’t like what Obama and the Democrats are doing, don’t just blame them.

Blame the Republicans as well.

Both parties are deeply corrupt and both parties have gotten us to the point we are at.

Sadly, it looks like any deal that the Republicans and the Democrats are going to agree to is going to include virtually everything that the Democrats want.

It is going to include full funding for Obamacare.

It is going to include full funding for Planned Parenthood.

It is going to include full funding for NPR.

It is going to include full funding for the EPA.

So what are the Republicans going to get?

$38 billion in spending cuts?

Is that supposed to be a “deal”?

The truth is that Boehner is a joke and he is not serious about cutting the federal budget.

But if we don’t start seriously cutting the federal budget we are heading for complete and total disaster.

David Stockman, who served as budget director under Ronald Reagan, says that if Congress is not serious about getting our financial house in order that a government shutdown could be precisely the kind of wake up call that we need….

If the Smithsonian, the Parks Service and the Cherry Blossom Festival get delayed or canceled, it’s the wakeup call that we really needed. The fools inside the Beltway are borrowing $100 billion month in and month out, and there’s nobody left in the world buying except the central banks—the Fed and the people’s printing press of China. There’s no way that’s sustainable or viable. It’s simply building up pressure in the monetary system that’s going to blow sky-high.

Look, the United States is heading straight for financial armageddon.  This is a crisis of historic proportions.  In a previous article on U.S. government finances, I detailed some absolutely horrifying statistics about the debt crisis that the U.S. government is facing….

*If you divide the national debt up equally among all U.S. households, each one owes a staggering $125,475.18.

*The federal government has borrowed 29,660 more dollars per household since Barack Obama signed the economic stimulus law two years ago.

*During Barack Obama’s first two years in office, the U.S. government added more to the U.S. national debt than the first 100 U.S. Congresses combined.

*In the new budget that the Obama administration has proposed, the U.S. government would spend 3.7 trillion dollars in 2012 and by 2021 the U.S. government would be spending a whopping 5.6 trillion dollars per year.

*The U.S. government currently has to borrow approximately 41 cents of every single dollar that it spends.

*The total compensation that the federal government workforce earned last year came to a grand total of approximately 447 billion dollars.

*The U.S. national debt is currently rising by well over 4 billion dollars every single day.

*The U.S. government is borrowing over 2 million more dollars every single minute.

*The U.S. national debt is over 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.

*Unfunded liabilities for entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare are estimated to be well over $100 trillion, and nobody in the U.S. government seems to have any idea how we are actually even going to come close to meeting all of those obligations.

*If you were alive when Jesus was born and you spent one million dollars every single day since that point, you still would not have spent one trillion dollars by now.  But this year alone the U.S. government is going to go about 1.6 trillion dollars more into debt.

*If the federal government began right at this moment to repay the U.S. national debt at a rate of one dollar per second, it would take over 440,000 years to pay off the national debt.

But even if the Republicans got every single thing that they have been demanding it would make essentially no difference as far as our national debt crisis is concerned.  It would basically be like spitting into Niagara Falls.

So which political party has the correct position in this battle?

Neither of them.  In fact, both political parties are a joke.  They are both acting like a bunch of idiots just like they have been for decades.

So let them shut it down.  The truth is that the number one threat to our liberties and freedoms right now is our own federal government.

In a recent article, J.B. Williams talked about why he thinks that it would be a really good idea to shut the government down….

I say, shut it down! The federal government has done as much to harm the union of states as it has ever done to improve freedom and liberty in America. We will be better off without a federal government, with each state able to fund and govern itself better than the Fed ever could.

Extreme threats demand extreme measures, and nothing threatens the future freedom and prosperity of the United States more than our own federal government. Enemies beyond, we can deal with. It’s the enemy within which threatens us most today. It’s time to shut it down and reset.

Just think about a few of the ways that our own federal government violates our liberties and freedoms every single day….

*If you want to get on an airplane in America today, you must either go through one of the incredibly intrusive full body scanners that are going into all U.S. airports and let airport security goons gawk at your exposed body, or you must allow airport security goons to feel you up using the new “enhanced pat down” techniques they are being instructed to employ.

*Thanks to the Patriot Act, if you are identified as a “terrorist”, you suddenly lose all of your constitutional rights.  We are told that detaining American citizens indefinitely and subjecting them to “enhanced interrogation” techniques will keep us all safer.

*The federal government controls our lives so tightly that now they even tell us what kinds of light bulbs we are allowed to buy.

*Barack Obama has been pushing a plan that would create a national database that will store the DNA of all individuals who have been arrested, even if they end up not being convicted of a crime.

*Just about anything can be used against you in court these days.  In one of the very first military commissions held under the Obama administration, a U.S. military judge ruled that confessions obtained by threatening the subject with rape are admissible in court.

*The federal government listens to our cell phones whenever they want and they require that all cell phone companies must be able to pinpoint the locations of all of their customers to within 100 meters.

*According to FBI Director Robert Mueller, “homegrown terrorists” represent just as much of a threat to American national security as al-Qaeda does.

*In Washington D.C., if you do not submit to “random bag checks” while riding the Metro there is a good chance that you could receive a follow-up visit by the FBI or by the Department of Homeland Security.

*If you make food “incorrectly” there is a good chance that you will get raided by the federal government.  In fact, the feds raided an Amish farmer at 5 AM in the morning because they claimed that he was was engaged in the interstate sale of raw milk in violation of federal law.

So in light of how extreme our federal government has become, is there anyone out there that still thinks it would be a “crisis” if the government was to shut down for a while?

If our government is going to take away our liberties and freedoms instead of protecting them, then why would it be a bad thing if it shut down for a short time?

It might just get some of the control freaks off our backs for a while.

Yes, we do need to make sure our military men and women are paid.  We also need to make sure that our border patrol agents are paid.  But if Congress could actually get that accomplished it wouldn’t be too bad at all if the government were to shut down for an extended period of time.

So what do all the rest of you think?  Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion about the possibility of a government shutdown below….

Will Financial Problems In Portugal Cause The European Debt Crisis To Spiral Out Of Control?

Most Americans have no idea just how bad the financial problems over in Europe are right now.  The truth is that the entire European financial system is teetering on the brink of disaster.  Ireland and Greece have already received bailouts and Portugal, Spain, Italy, France and Belgium are all drowning in an ocean of unsustainable debt.  Sovereign credit ratings all over Europe have being slashed in recent months.  For example, a while back Moody’s Investors Service cut Ireland’s bond rating by five levels.  Up until now Europe has weathered all of this financial instability fairly well, but now huge new financial problems in Portugal threaten to send the European debt crisis spinning out of control.

The Prime Minister of Portugal, Jose Socrates, resigned on Wednesday after the major opposition parties banded together to vote down the austerity measures that he was requesting.  The package of budget cuts and tax increases was intended to get Portugal’s horrible debt crisis under control.  Prior to the vote, the prime minister warned that  he would no longer be able to run the country if the austerity package was not passed.

Now there are all kinds of questions about what is going to happen to Portugal.  At this point most financial authorities in Europe seem to be assuming that Portugal is going to need a bailout.

Today, Standard & Poor’s reduced the credit rating of long-term Portuguese government debt from “A-” to “BBB”.  Standard & Poor’s is also warning that the credit rating may be cut further if negotiations for a bailout do not go well.

Without a bailout, it seems almost certain that Portugal will default.

Interest rates on Portuguese government debt have risen to unsustainable levels.  The yield on 10-year Portuguese bonds hit 7.78% on Friday.  That was the highest it has been since Portugal joined the euro.

Authorities in Portugal are publicly saying that they simply cannot afford to pay that kind of interest.  Unfortunately for them, it appears that Portugal is going to be forced to issue more bonds by June at the very latest.

So how much would a bailout of Portugal cost?

Well, according to one estimate, it would probably be in the neighborhood of 70 billion euros.

That isn’t going to sink Europe.

However, the concern is that the crisis in Portugal could have a domino effect.

There is increasing worry in Europe that Portugal’s neighbor, Spain, could also need a bailout.  But a bailout of Spain would potentially be so large that it would cause a financial nightmare for Europe.

The following is how a recent article in the Wall Street Journal sized up the problem….

Portugal’s admission that it will probably need a financial bailout raises a question that will shape the outcome of the euro zone’s debt crisis: Is Spain next?

The cost of saving Spain, a €1.1 trillion ($1.56 trillion) economy, would dwarf previous bailouts and could test the financial strength of Europe as a whole.

The truth is that the rest of Europe simply does not have the kind of financial muscle necessary to continue putting together huge bailouts indefinitely.  If Spain does go down, it is going to put a massive amount of strain on the rest of the continent.

There are other financial problems simmering in Europe right now as well.

According to a recent Business Insider article, the financial problems in Ireland are also creating a lot of concern at the moment….

Ireland’s banks are likely to need another $39 billion in support, which would use up 80% of its current bailout funds.

Ireland is a financial basket case right about now.  Confidence in Irish debt is rapidly evaporating.  In fact, the yield on 10-year Irish bonds recently hit 10.12%.

Ouch!

But that is nothing compared to what Greece is being forced to pay.

The yield on 10-year Greek bonds recently reached an astounding 12.58%.

There are persistent rumors that Greece is going to need yet another bailout.  The truth is that Germany and the other European nations that are coming up with the cash for these bailouts are just pouring their money into financial black holes.

Nations like Greece and Ireland are just money pits at this point.

As I have written about previously, the financial collapse of Europe has basically become inevitable.  The EU can keep coming up with bailout plan after bailout plan, but they are only putting off the crash for a while.

Eventually a point will come when all of the balls simply cannot be kept up in the air anymore.

So what is going to happen once that point is reached?

Well, many believe that we could actually see the end of the euro and potentially even the break up of the European Union.

Of course top politicians in Europe will fight tooth and nail to keep that from happening, but the truth is that at some point we are going to see some incredibly challenging financial problems in Europe.  How the EU responds to the crisis is going to be extremely interesting to watch.

So many people talk about the death of the U.S. dollar, but the truth is that we could very easily see a financial collapse and a major currency crisis in Europe prior to the collapse of the dollar.  Europe is in really, really bad shape right now.

Of course it doesn’t help that the entire world is so incredibly unstable right now.  The disaster in Japan, the war in Libya, the revolutions across the Middle East and the surging price of oil all threaten to throw the global economy into turmoil.

As I discussed in a previous article, people need to start preparing for economic disaster.  The entire global financial system is coming apart.  The U.S. economy is crumbling, Europe is dealing with an unprecedented debt crisis and Japan has just been struck with the worst economic disaster that it has seen since World War 2.

Most Americans don’t pay much attention to what is going on in Portugal (or in the rest of Europe for that matter), but they should.  The world is more interconnected than ever, and if Europe experiences a financial meltdown it will have dramatic consequences for the United States as well.

The financial crash of 2008 swept the entire globe and virtually every nation on earth was deeply affected.  The next wave of the financial crisis is also going to be felt globally.

We live in one of the most interesting times in the history of the world.

Are you prepared for what is about to happen?

Debt Problem: Who In The World Is Going To Buy The Billions Of Dollars Of Debt The U.S. Government Is Constantly Pumping Out Now?

Is the U.S. government on the verge of a massive debt problem?  For years, the U.S. government has been able to borrow all the money that it has wanted to at extremely low interest rates.  But now many of the lending sources that the U.S. government has been depending on are drying up.  Even before this recent crisis in Japan, a number of big players were moving away from U.S. Treasuries and the U.S. Federal Reserve was having to step in to pick up the slack.  But now this debt crunch is about to get a whole lot worse.  For years, many had feared that it would be China that would start dumping U.S. government debt, but now it turns out that Japan is going to be the real problem.  Right now, Japan is the second largest foreign holder of U.S. government debt.  Japan currently holds about $882 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds and they are likely going to have to liquidate much of that in order to fund the rebuilding of their nation.  So needless to say they won’t be accumulating any more U.S. government debt.  But the U.S. government still needs to borrow a trillion and a half dollars from someone every single year.  So where in the world are they going to get it?

This is called a debt problem.  Have you ever gotten to the point where you are in debt up to your eyeballs and nobody wants to lend you any more money?

Well, the U.S. government is rapidly reaching that point.

Even before the crisis in Japan, several of the big boys had starting moving away from U.S. government debt.

PIMCO, the biggest bond fund on the entire globe, recently acknowledged that they are dumping all of their U.S. Treasuries.

So if foreign nations like Japan are not gobbling up U.S. government debt and big bond funds like PIMCO are not buying any of it, then who in the world is going to be purchasing the massive amounts of debt that the U.S. government is constantly pumping out?

Well, many of you already know that answer.

The Federal Reserve is going to step in of course.  The Federal Reserve knows that if the U.S. government cannot borrow gigantic quantities of money at super low interest rates it will go broke.  So the Federal Reserve is just going to keep buying up most new U.S. government debt.  It is just that simple.

But isn’t that a Ponzi scheme?

Of course it is.  Let’s not mince words here.  It is a total scam.

And it is a scam that cannot go on indefinitely.

The truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as PIMCO’s Bill Gross noted in his March newsletter….

“Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t.”

Gross also noted in his recent newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.

So now that Japan is out of the picture, how high will that figure go now?

80 percent?

90 percent?

Over the past several weeks there has been all kinds of speculation about whether “quantitative easing” will be extended past June or not.

Well, whether they call it “quantitative easing” or not, the truth is that the Federal Reserve is going to have to continue to “buy” most new U.S. government debt or the system will crash.

We have gotten to the point where the U.S. federal government cannot continue to function without Federal Reserve monetization of the debt.

This is a sign that we are rapidly approaching the financial endgame.

So why doesn’t the U.S. government just stop spending so much stinking money and stop getting us all into so much debt?

Well, because there isn’t enough political will in Washington D.C. to do any real budget cuts, and if our politicians did balance the budget at this point it would crash the economy.

Just the other day, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a continuing resolution to fund the federal government that would cut 6 billion dollars from U.S. government spending.

On that exact same day, the official U.S. national debt figure rose by 72 billion dollars.

Now the debt normally does not go up that much on a typical day.  But what this example does show is the losing battle that our politicians are fighting.

On Wednesday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner warned a House of Representatives appropriations subcommittee that they should not even think about not raising the debt ceiling….

“Congress has to do it. There’s no alternative.”

The truth is that the U.S. government has to keep going into more debt.  Under the current system the alternative would be to collapse the economy.

But the debt that we have already piled on to the backs of future generations is absolutely criminal.

How mad do you think future generations are going to be with us for heaping 14 trillion dollars of debt on to their shoulders?

Talk about a debt problem!

But this is what we get for allowing a private central bank to run our financial system.  This debt-based system was designed to fail from its very inception.

The man supposedly “in charge” over at the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, has a track of record of incompetence that is absolutely staggering.  It is a mystery why our representatives in Washington D.C. are not howling for his resignation.

Instead, most of our politicians continue to express blind faith in our current financial system and they continue to insist that everything is going to be okay.

Well, everything is not going to be okay.  The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be an all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars.

Of course they are also trying to convince us that budget deficits will go down in future years, but by now we should all know not to trust the rosy future projections of government officials.

After all, it was only a few short years ago that Bush administration officials were promising that we would be swimming in huge budget surpluses by now.

The truth is that the government has been lying about all of this for a long time.  For now, the Federal Reserve is just going to keep monetizing U.S. government debt for as long as it can.

This Ponzi scheme will keep on working and working and working until someday it simply doesn’t anymore.

When that day arrives, the U.S. government debt problem is going to unleash hell on world financial markets.

Should We Be Alarmed That The Biggest Bond Fund In The World Has Dumped All Of Their U.S. Treasury Bonds?

Bill Gross, the manager of the biggest bond fund in the world, has forgotten more about bonds than most of us will ever learn. That is why the big move that PIMCO has just made is so unsettling.  At one time PIMCO held more U.S. government debt than any other bond fund on the globe, but now news has come out that they have gotten rid of all their U.S. government-related securities.  So should we be alarmed?  For months Gross has been warning that the bull market in bonds is coming to an end, and now it looks like he is putting his words into action.s  Gross has often publicly decried the rampant government spending that has been going on over the last several years, and apparently he has seen enough.  He is taking his ball and he is going home.  This really is a stunning move by PIMCO.  Gross must really believe that something fundamental has shifted.    Gross didn’t get to where he is today by being stupid.  But so far world financial markets are taking this news in stride.  Nobody seems all that alarmed that the largest bond fund in the world has dumped all of their U.S. Treasuries.  But with world financial markets in such a state of chaos right now, shouldn’t we all take note when one of the biggest players in the game makes such a bold move?

Gross believes that interest rates on U.S. Treasuries are way too low right now and that they will start going up when the Federal Reserve ends the current round of quantitative easing in June.  Gross has indicated that if interest rates on U.S. Treasuries go up high enough, PIMCO might get back in.

But if interest rates do start going up that is going to make servicing the monolithic U.S. national debt much more expensive, and that would not be good news for U.S. government finances.

But would the Federal Reserve really allow interest rates on U.S. Treasuries to go up substantially?  Wouldn’t they just step in at some point and start buying U.S. government debt again?

Probably.

But the truth is that the Ponzi Scheme of the U.S. Treasury issuing bonds and the Federal Reserve buying them up cannot last forever as Gross noted in his March newsletter….

“Basically, the recent game plan is as simple as the Ohio State Buckeyes’ “three yards and a cloud of dust” in the 1960s. When applied to the Treasury market it translates to this: The Treasury issues bonds and the Fed buys them. What could be simpler, and who’s to worry? This Sammy Scheme as I’ve described it in recent Outlooks is as foolproof as Ponzi and Madoff until… until… well, until it isn’t.”

Gross also noted in his newsletter that the Federal Reserve is currently buying up about 70 percent of all new U.S. government debt.

So what is going to happen when that stops?

Nobody knows for certain, but it sure is going to be interesting to watch.

The market for U.S. Treasuries has not been working “normally” for quite some time now, and there is some legitimate doubt as to whether it will ever fully get back to “normal” again.

Meanwhile, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe continues to get even worse.

The yield on 10-year Portuguese bonds is now above 7 percent, the yield on 10-year Irish bonds is now above 9 percent and the yield on 10-year Greek bonds is now above 12 percent.

Most people expect European leaders to soon come to an agreement to add billions more to existing bailout funds, but there is no guarantee that is actually going to happen.

In fact, the Germans are making waves by insisting that the financially troubled nations in the EU must be willing to agree to limits on their future budget deficits.  A recent article on CNBC described the situation this way….

Before the Germans will agree to pump in extra cash from their taxpayers, backed by the French, they want each leader to agree to legislation at home that will limit the size of their future national deficits. The Greeks are already refusing point blank. Things may boil to the surface at an extraordinary summit on Friday.

So what if an agreement can’t be reached?

Could the dominoes in Europe start to fall?

Very few people actually want to see a wave of sovereign defaults in Europe, but the current situation cannot go on forever.  At some point the Germans are going to get sick and tired of bailing out other members of the EU.

The global addiction to debt is about to start having some very serious consequences.

For decades, most of the governments of the industrialized world have been running up debt as if it would never come back to haunt them.  Now the world is absolutely covered in red ink and everyone is looking for a way to solve the problem.

But there is not going to be a debt jubilee to come along and save everyone.  This debt bubble is either going to keep expanding or it is going to burst.

At one point, at least some of the debt-ridden nations will try to inflate their way out of debt by recklessly printing money.  To a certain extent that has already been going on.  But it will not work.  It will only cause a whole lot of inflation.

This is just more evidence that any economic system based on debt is destined to fall.  When we allowed a private central bank to start issuing debt-based currency in this country back in 1913 we set ourselves up to fail.  As I have written about previously, the Federal Reserve should never have been allowed to come into existence, and it should have been shut down by Congress long before now.

But now the United States is caught in the same debt trap that most of the other nations around the world are caught in.  The global addiction to debt is going to have some very, very serious consequences.  Instead of moving into a great time of peace and prosperity, everything is about to come falling apart.

Things could have been different.  Things did not have to turn out this way.  But here we are on the edge of one of the biggest financial disasters in human history and most Americans still don’t understand what is happening.

So what do you all think about all of this?  Please feel free to leave a comment with your opinion below….

Sheeple: Government Handouts = 35 Percent Of U.S. Wages But For Michael Moore That Is Not Nearly Enough

The ratio of government handouts to wages and salaries in the United States is now at an all-time high.  According to TrimTabs Investment Research, government handouts have reached a level that is equivalent to 35 percent of all wages and salaries in the United States.  Considering the fact that this figure was only 21 percent back in the year 2000 and only 10 percent back in 1960 that is very frightening.  The sad truth is that today the American people are more dependent on direct government payments than they ever have been before.  What this does is that it takes formerly independent Americans and transforms them into “sheeple” and pets of the government.  Today we have tens of millions of Americans that eagerly await the crumbs that the federal government tosses them each month.  This is one reason why our national debt is exploding, but our politicians like this system because it enables them to buy votes.  Meanwhile, the federal government and the international corporations that dominate our economy have rigged the game so that power and money are becoming increasingly centralized in their hands.  As a result of the system that the “big boys” have developed, millions of small businesses across the country are being absolutely crushed, the standard of living of the middle class is gradually being destroyed and more American families slip into poverty ever single day.  What we need to do is to dramatically reduce the power of both the federal government and the big corporations so that small businesses and individuals can thrive once again, but instead “activists” such as Michael Moore are out there demanding even more taxes and even more government handouts.

Not that a “safety net” is a bad thing.  We simply are not going to allow tens of millions of Americans to starve out in our streets.  However, it has gotten to the point where the majority of American families are now dependent on the U.S. government in one form or another and that is very, very wrong.

More government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything.  Handouts do not give people dignity.  Handouts do not teach people to be independent.  Handouts do not enable people to live the “American Dream”.  Handouts are not the path to prosperity.

What the American people need are jobs and an environment where small businesses can thrive.  But instead, the federal government has allowed the big global corporations to ship millions of our jobs out of the country and the federal government continues to burden our small businesses with an endless array of new taxes and regulations.

Who is successful in America today?

It is the big boys.  Everyone else is being crushed.

This is what the founding fathers tried to warn us about.  They did not want the federal government to have much power at all, and they were deeply suspicious of large corporations.

But we have turned our backs on the principles of the founding fathers.

We should be figuring out how to get back to the America that our founding fathers originally tried to create, but instead all of the attention is being given to “activists” such as Michael Moore who are calling for even more taxes and even more government handouts.  The following video is of Michael Moore giving a speech to protesters in Madison, Wisconsin on March 5th, 2011.  His speech was entitled “America Is Not Broke”….

Yes, the “little guy” is being absolutely crushed in America today.  But for people like Michael Moore the solution is always to tax the middle class more and to pass out even more government handouts.

That isn’t going to solve anything.  Most of the ultra-wealthy have turned avoiding taxes into an art form.  A third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore banks“.  Many of our largest corporations don’t pay a dime in federal taxes even as they pass out multi-million dollar bonuses to their executives.

Raising taxes in most definitely not the answer.  Those that have mastered the art of avoiding taxes will continue to do so no matter how high you raise them.

The truth is that we need to shut down the IRS and scrap the current tax system entirely.  It simply does not work.

What we need to do is to get the federal government and the big corporations under control and transfer the power back to the American people.

That is what our founding fathers intended.  They intended for the common man to be empowered  to start businesses, create wealth and pursue happiness.

But instead tens of millions of Americans have become addicted to government handouts.  When large numbers of people give up and willingly become wards of the government that is not good for society.

Unfortunately, more Americans today are dependent on the U.S. government than ever before.  Just consider the following statistics….

-According to TrimTabs Investment Research, social welfare benefits in the United States have risen by $514 billion over the past two years alone.

-As 2007 began, only about 26 million Americans were on food stamps, but today over 44 million Americans are now on food stamps.

-Over 50 million Americans are now on Medicaid.

-Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.

–53 million Americans received $703 billion in Social Security benefits in 2010.

-Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States.

-It is being projected that extended unemployment benefits will cost the federal government $34 billion over the next two years.

-30 U.S. states have borrowed a total of $41.5 billion from the federal government just so that they could continue paying out unemployment benefits during the recession.

-Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare now account for 58% of all U.S. government spending.

But what else should we expect?  The federal government has been using a sledgehammer to endlessly pound away on the capacity of small businesses and individuals to create wealth and jobs and opportunities.  The business atmosphere in the United States is now so toxic that it is amazing that any small businesses have survived.

Most Americans find themselves with no other way to make a living other than to work for someone else.  But the big global corporations have discovered that they can make much larger profits by getting rid of American workers and by shipping our jobs overseas and our politicians are allowing them to get away with it.

The truth is that both political parties don’t have the answers.  Neither party seems to have any clue about how to stop millions of jobs from leaving the United States and neither party seems to have any clue about how to create a business environment inside the United States where individuals and small businesses can actually thrive.

How much longer will it be before we all finally admit that we are experiencing total system failure in this country?  Should we all just quit trying and sit on our couches waiting for the next government handout?  The truth is that there aren’t nearly enough jobs for all Americans anyway.

The middle class is dying and the establishment has us all fighting with each other.  The left and the right are busy fighting about taxes and budget cuts while the ultra-wealthy continue to enjoy massive profits and incredibly low taxes in the globalized economic system that we have allowed our politicians to create.

Yes, there are tens of millions of Americans that are deeply suffering right now and they need to be helped.

But government handouts are never a long-term solution to anything.  What we need to do is to massively reduce the power of the federal government, massively reduce the power of the big corporations and stop businesses and jobs from being shipped out of the country.  We also need to create an environment in the United States that is very favorable to small businesses.  That would give our country a chance to start creating good jobs again.

But instead, we continue to allow our politicians to destroy our economy.  We actually have 10 percent fewer middle class jobs in this country than we did just ten years ago.  The middle class is being systematically destroyed.  All of the wealth and all of the power are slowly being transferred into the hands of big government and the big corporations.

The vast majority of the rest of us are being transformed from strong, independent, prosperous Americans into dehumanized sheeple that can’t wait for the next government check to come in.

Does anyone out there actually believe that this is what our founding fathers originally intended?

QE3? Several Top Federal Reserve Officials Seem To Think That More Quantitative Easing Is Necessary

The end of QE2 is still several months away and yet quite a few top Federal Reserve officials are already hinting that more quantitative easing may be necessary.  Apparently the U.S. economy is not moving forward as rapidly as they would like.  So it looks like “QE3” could be on the way.  But did anyone out there actually believe that quantitative easing would come to a complete stop in June?  Whether they call it “QE3” or something else entirely, the reality of the matter is that we have now come to a time when the Federal Reserve is going to be continually purchasing a significant percentage of all new U.S. government debt.  This is essentially a gigantic Ponzi scheme, but sadly there is just not enough money in the rest of the world to be able to continue to feed the U.S. government’s voracious appetite for debt.  Right now Ben Bernanke and his cohorts are trying to break the news to us gently, but anyone with half a brain can see what is happening.  The only way for the game to keep going is for the Federal Reserve to print lots more money, and that is going to be incredibly bad for the U.S. economy in the long run.

The other day James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, made national headlines when he declared that Fed officials should “never say never” when it comes to QE3 and more quantitative easing.  But the truth is that other Fed officials have been dropping public hints about the “need” for QE3 for several weeks now.  Just consider the following quotes from top Federal Reserve officials….

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke in response to a question about the potential for QE3 at the National Press Club….

“In the end, we’ll just ask the same questions. Where’s the economy going, and what do various inflation indicator look like? We’ll ask those questions. If unemployment is still too low, then we may continue. If we’re moving towards full employment, then we won’t need to stimulate more.”

William Dudley, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during a recent speech at New York University….

“The economy can be allowed to grow rapidly for quite some time before there is a real risk that shrinking slack will result in a rise in underlying inflation.”

James Bullard, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis during a recent speech at the Bowling Green Area Chamber of Commerce….

“The natural debate now is whether to complete the program, or to taper off to a somewhat lower level of asset purchases. Quantitative easing has been an effective tool, even while the policy rate is near zero. The economic outlook has improved since the program was announced.”

Charles Evans, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago during a recent interview with The Financial Times….

“The message that comes out of what I think of as high-quality research on this subject is that policy ought to remain accommodative for really quite a while, even a while after conditions start to improve.”

So how in the world did things get to the point where the Federal Reserve feels forced to recklessly print gigantic piles of money?

Well, it didn’t happen overnight.  Back during the 1980s and 1990s there were many people that desperately tried to warn about what would happen if U.S. government debt was not brought under control.

Unfortunately, our politicians did not heed those warnings.

Today, the U.S. national debt has reached a grand total of $14,137,541,098,872.71.  It is 14 times larger than it was just 30 years ago.  It is the largest single debt in the history of the world.

So why don’t our politicians just balance the budget now so that we don’t keep having to borrow so much money?

Well, there are some huge problems.  First of all, when you combine entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare with interest on the national debt, it comes to approximately 64 percent of all federal government spending.

But that is not the bad news.

In the years ahead, entitlement spending and interest on the national debt are both projected to absolutely explode.

We are rapidly approaching a time when spending on entitlement programs and interest on the national debt will be significantly greater than all of the revenue that the federal government brings in each year.  All federal revenues will be spoken for even before a single penny is spent on defense, education, running the government or anything else.

Either entitlement programs are going to have to be seriously reformed or the U.S. government is going to have to come up with a massive amount of extra money from somewhere or the U.S. government is going to have to borrow increasingly large piles of money from someone.

Unfortunately, there are no easy solutions and most of our politicians are scared to death to touch entitlement programs because it will mean that they will lose votes.

But our entitlement programs were never meant to be as massive as they are today.  Back in 1965, only one out of every 50 Americans was on Medicaid.  Today, one out of every 6 American is on Medicaid.

Obviously something has to be done, because the debt that we are passing on to future generations is absolutely criminal.

For example, every single child born in America today inherits $45,000 in U.S. government debt.

Isn’t that lovely?

Of course our liberal friends believe that the answer is just to raise taxes.

Oh really?

The truth is that our taxation system is deeply broken.

Small business owners and middle class Americans are being taxed into oblivion while those at the top of the food chain often pay no federal taxes whatsoever.

For example, did you know that Citigroup did not pay a dime of federal taxes in the third quarter?  Meanwhile, their executives continue to bring in bonus packages worth millions.

Did you know that even though Boeing receives billions in federal subsidies every year and even though it has a bunch of juicy government contracts it did not pay a single penny in federal corporate income taxes from 2008 to 2010?

Did you know that while Exxon-Mobil did pay $15 billion in taxes in 2009, not a single penny went to the U.S. government?  Meanwhile, their CEO brought in over 29 million dollars in total compensation that year.

You can find a lot more examples of this phenomenon right here.

Those at the top of the food chain are experts at avoiding federal taxes.  So liberals can raise rates all they want but it won’t do much good.

As I have written about previously, the truth is that approximately a third of all the wealth in the world is now held in “offshore” banks.  The ultra-wealthy and the monolithic predator corporations that dominate the global economy don’t mess around when it comes to paying taxes.  They don’t care if they aren’t paying their “fair share”.  They simply know how to play the game and they laugh at all the rest of us.

Our entire system is broken beyond repair and needs to be reconstructed from the ground up.

But of course that simply is not going to happen.

So what can be done?

Not a whole heck of a lot.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is on the verge of a major collapse.

Marc Faber, the author of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report recently gave a speech in which he declared that the U.S. financial system is in such disastrous shape that only a “reboot” will be able to save it….

I think we are all doomed. I think what will happen is that we are in the midst of a kind of a crack-up boom that is not sustainable, that eventually the economy will deteriorate, that there will be more money-printing, and then you have inflation, and a poor economy, an extreme form of stagflation, and, eventually, in that situation, countries go to war, and, as a whole, derivatives, the market, and everything will collapse, and like a computer when it crashes, you will have to reboot it.

But can we just “reboot” the system and expect things to go back to normal?

Of course not.

The truth is that when the rest of the world completely loses faith in the U.S. dollar and in U.S. Treasuries the dominoes are going to start to fall.  Eventually we are going to see a financial panic that is going to make 2008 look like a Sunday picnic.  Our economic system will massively implode as all of the gigantic mountains of debt and paper money collapse like a house of cards.

Right now the Federal Reserve is desperately trying to hold the system together by “papering over” all of the mistakes.  But in the end it is not going to work.  In fact, what we are witnessing now are the very early stages of hyperinflation.  A lot of other nations in the past have thought that they could just print their way out of trouble, but many of those “experiments” ended in total disaster.

Marc Faber is certainly right about one thing – all of this money printing is going to give us substantial inflation to go along with the high unemployment that we already have.  This is called “stagflation” and anyone that remembers the 1970s knows that it is not a lot of fun.

But the Federal Reserve seems absolutely determined to print more money.  Fed officials are doing the same thing now that they did right before QE2.  They are dropping hints about QE3 and they are trying to break it to us gently.

Well, it is about time that someone told the American people the truth.  All of this money printing is going to end in disaster and so you had better get prepared.

What Is Wrong With The U.S. Economy? Here Are 10 Economic Charts That Will Blow Your Mind

The 10 economic charts that you are about to see are completely and totally shocking.  If you know anyone that still does not believe that the United States is in the midst of a long-term economic decline, just show them these charts.  Sometimes you can quote economic statistics to people until you are blue in the face and it won’t do any good, but when those same people see charts and pictures suddenly it all sinks in.  What is great about charts is that you can very easily demonstrate what has been happening to the economy over an extended period of time.  As you examine the economic charts below, pay special attention to what has been happening to the U.S. economy over the last 30 or 40 years.  The truth is that what is wrong with the U.S. economy is not a great mystery.  All of the economic problems that we are experiencing now have taken decades to develop.  Hopefully the charts in this article will help people realize just how nightmarish our economic problems have become, because until people start realizing how incredibly bad things have gotten they will never be willing to accept the dramatic solutions that are necessary to fix our financial system.

The sad fact of the matter is that we have been living in the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world over the last 40 years.  All of this debt has purchased a wonderful standard of living for the vast majority of us, but all of this debt has also destroyed the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.  Someday future generations will look back on what we have done in absolute horror.

The 10 economic charts posted below are meant to shock you.  Most Americans today need to be shocked before they will be motivated to take action.  Please share these charts with as many people as you can.  Hopefully we can wake enough people up that something will be done about all of these problems while there is still time.

1 – Government spending is expanding at an exponential rate.  As you can see from the chart below, federal spending is almost 18 times higher than it was back in 1970.  Now Barack Obama has proposed a budget that would increase U.S. government spending to 5.6 trillion dollars in 2021.  Just imagine what the following chart would look like if that happens….

2 – U.S. government debt is absolutely exploding.  The U.S. national debt is currently $14,081,561,324,681.83.  It is more than 14 times larger than it was back in 1980.  Unfortunately, the national debt continues to grow at breathtaking speed.  In fact, the Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this year will be an all-time record 1.6 trillion dollars.  Can we afford to continue to accumulate debt at this rate?….

3 – Unless something changes right now, the outlook for U.S. government finances in future years is downright apocalyptic.  The chart posted below is from an official U.S. government report to Congress.  As you can see, it is projected that interest on our exploding national debt is absolutely going to spiral out of control if we continue on the path that we are currently on….

4 – Household debt has soared to almost unbelievable levels over the last 30 years.  The sad truth is that it is not just the U.S. government that has a massive debt problem.  U.S. households have also been accumulating debt at a staggering rate.  Total U.S. household debt did not pass the 2 trillion dollar mark until the mid-1980s, but now total U.S. household debt is well over 13 trillion dollars….

5 – The total of all debt (government, business and consumer) in the United States is now well over 50 trillion dollars.  For the past couple of years this figure has been hovering around a level that is equivalent to approximately 360 percent of GDP.  This is a debt bubble that is absolutely unprecedented in U.S. history….

6 – As tens of thousands of U.S. factories get shut down and as millions of our jobs get shipped overseas, the number of unemployed Americans continues to go up and up and up.  As you can see from the chart below, there has been a long-term trend of increasing unemployment in the United States.  In fact, there are about 3 and a half times as many unemployed workers in the United States today as there were when 1970 began.  These jobs losses are going to continue as long as we allow our corporations to pay slave labor wages to workers on the other side of the globe.  All of the major trends in global trade are very bad for the U.S. middle class.  For example, the U.S. trade deficit with China for 2010 was 27 times larger than it was back in 1990.  How long will our politicians stand by as our nation bleeds jobs?….

7 – The median duration of unemployment in the United States is in unprecedented territory.  For most of the post-World War 2 era, when the median duration of unemployment in America reached 10 weeks that was considered a national crisis.  Well, today competition for jobs is so intense that the median duration of unemployment is now well over 20 weeks….

8 – Since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913, the value of the U.S. dollar has declined by over 95 percent.  One of the reasons given for the existence of the Federal Reserve is that the Fed helps control inflation.  But that is a huge lie.  The truth is that the United States never had consistently rampant inflation until the Federal Reserve took control.  In particular, once the U.S. totally went off the gold standard in the 1970s inflation really started escalating out of control….

9 – Now the Federal Reserve says that the solution to our current economic problems is to print even more money out of thin air.  The games that the Federal Reserve is playing with our money supply are simply inexcusable.  Just look at what the Federal Reserve has done to the monetary base since the beginning of the recession….

10 – All of this new money is creating tremendous inflation.  In particular, the price of oil is now ridiculously high.  A high price for oil is very, very bad for the U.S. economy.  Our entire economic system is based on being able to use massive quantities of very cheap oil.  Unfortunately, that paradigm is starting to break down and the consequences will be very bitter.  Back in mid-2008, the price of oil hit an all-time record of $147 a barrel and subsequently the world financial system imploded a few months later.  Well, the price of oil is on the march again and that is very bad news for the U.S. economy….

Needless to say, if the economic trends documented by the charts above continue the U.S. economy will be totally wiped out.  The U.S. economy as it currently exists is unsustainable by definition.  It is only a matter of time before we slam into an economic brick wall.

We have developed an economy that cannot function without debt, and at this point it seems like almost everyone is drowning in red ink.  The federal government is massively overextended, most of our state and local governments are massively overextended, most of our major corporations are massively overextended and the majority of U.S. consumers are massively overextended.

The only way that the game can continue is for the Federal Reserve to print increasingly larger amounts of paper money out of thin air and for everyone in the economic food chain to go into increasingly larger amounts of debt.

But no debt spiral can go on forever.  At some point this entire house of cards is going to collapse.

When that happens, there is going to be economic pain that is greater than anything that this country has ever seen before.

Someday we will all desperately wish that we could go back to the “good times” of 2011.  A great economic collapse is coming, and all of us had better get ready.

Barack Obama’s Budget For 2012: A Complete And Total Joke

Is Barack Obama trying to play a joke on all of us?  The budget that the Obama administration has submitted for fiscal 2012 is so out of touch with reality that it may as well be a budget for “Narnia”, “Fantasy Island”, “Atlantis” or some other mythical land.  You can view the hard numbers for Barack Obama’s 2012 budget right here.  Obama’s budget assumes that the U.S. will experience economic growth of over 5 percent for most of the coming decade.  That is so far-fetched that “optimistic” is not the right word for it.  It also assumes that U.S. government income (primarily made up of taxes on all of us) will more than double over the next ten years.  For 2011, the budget projects that the U.S. government will take in a total of 2.1 trillion dollars, and for 2021 the budget projects that the U.S. government will take in a total of 4.9 trillion dollars.  For the Obama administration to assume that the federal government will be able to drain an extra 2.8 trillion dollars per year out of the American people by the year 2021 is ridicul0us beyond belief.  In his new budget Barack Obama does propose some very, very modest spending cuts that he knows have no chance of getting through Congress.  Barack Obama’s budget for 2012 also does not even attempt to make any cuts to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.  In essence, you can sum up Barack Obama’s budget proposal for 2012 by saying that it is a complete and total joke.  This budget is so delusional and so out of touch with reality that it is hard to imagine anyone taking it seriously.

Oh, but Obama is really trying to sell it hard.  When Obama unveiled this new  $3.7 trillion budget for 2012 at a middle school in Baltimore, he insisted that his plan will make it “so that every American is equipped to compete with any worker anywhere in the world.”

Well, that is a nice sound bite, but as I have written about previously, unless Barack Obama suddenly finds a way to stop multinational corporations from paying slave labor wages to their workers on the other side of the globe the job losses in America are going to continue.

But that is a topic for another day.  Getting back to the 2012 budget, Obama is proposing to cut more than a trillion dollars from federal budget deficits over the next ten years.

That sounds really good until you figure out that means that the cuts only amount to about $100 billion a year.  Considering the fact that Obama’s budget is projecting that we will have a $1.6 trillion budget deficit this year alone, that really is not a whole heck of a lot to be cutting.

The truth is that Barack Obama should be proposing spending cuts that are at least ten times as large if he was actually serious about addressing our budget woes.

But at least Obama is not proposing an increase in spending.

Oh wait, he actually is.

In fact, under Obama’s budget, U.S. government spending will soar from 3.8 trillion dollars this year to 5.6 trillion dollars in 2021.

But the mainstream media is solely focusing on the budget cuts that Obama is proposing.

Apparently they are trying to cast him as some sort of “fiscal conservative”.

Try not to laugh.

But the modest cuts that Obama is proposing are at least some place to start.

Under Obama’s budget, approximately half of all government agencies will have their funding decreased from 2010 levels.

In fact, approximately 33 billion dollars would be saved by scaling back or shutting down 200 federal programs.

Of course Obama’s fellow Democrats in Congress will never go along with many of these cuts, but at least it is something.

However, this is where most in the mainstream media stop their analysis.

They don’t take a closer look at the numbers in Obama’s budget.

They don’t question the wacky economic growth assumptions.

They don’t question the bizarre government income projections.

But even with the Obama administration’s crooked numbers, the federal deficit still never drops below 600 billion dollars over the next decade and a total of 7.2 trillion dollars is still added to the national debt over the next decade.

If economic growth ends up being much lower, or if the U.S. government is not able to get twice as much money out of the American people by the end of the decade then the projections would look much, much different.

So where does the Obama administration assume all of that extra money for the government is going to come from?

Oh, from raising taxes of course.

The Obama budget assumes that there will be significant tax increases starting in the year 2013.

A recent article on CNBC summarized some of the tax increases that the Obama budget calls for….

The plan unveiled Monday includes tax increases for oil, gas and coal producers, investment managers and U.S.-based multinational corporations. The plan would allow Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of 2012 for individuals making more than $200,000 and married couples making more than $250,000.

Wealthy taxpayers would have their itemized deductions limited, including deductions for mortgage interest, charitable contributions and state and local taxes.

There are many liberals (such as my friend Gary) that would love to see these tax increases go into effect, but Obama knows that there is no chance that they will ever see the light of day unless the Democrats retake the House of Representatives.

But most of Obama’s budget for 2012 is based on things that simply never even have a chance of happening.

The reality is that Obama’s budget for 2012 is a great work of fiction.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government continues to accumulate staggering amounts of debt.

In fact, Obama’s budget admits that we will witness the biggest one year debt increase in history this year.

In 2011, the gross federal debt with surpass 15 trillion dollars.  In fact, it is being projected by some analysts that this will be the year when the debt finally becomes larger than the size of the entire U.S. economy.

Ouch.

But Obama insists that he is taking this debt problem very seriously.

Obama insists that he is committed to making “deep” cuts.

In fact, as he announced this new budget Obama stated that these budget cuts hit “many programs whose mission I care deeply about, but meeting our fiscal targets while investing in our future demands no less.”

Do any of you actually believe him?

Not that the Obama administration is in an easy position.  The truth is that the U.S. government (both Republicans and Democrats) have been horribly irresponsible with our money for decades.

The 14 trillion dollar national debt problem that we have now did not develop overnight.

Neither will it be solved overnight.

But Obama is not even trying to address the tough issues such as Social Security and Medicare.

The truth is that the federal debt problem cannot be solved without addressing our out of control entitlement programs.

So why didn’t Obama address them in his budget?

Well, the reality is that Obama is not stupid.  Social Security and Medicare are political sacred cows.  Obama is not going to do anything at this point that would cost him millions of votes in 2012.

So Barack Obama ignored most of the $4 trillion in budget cuts recommended by the White House-appointed deficit commission.

It kind of makes you wonder why Obama ever appointed a “deficit commission” in the first place.

One area that Obama does attempt to cut in his new budget is military spending.  Obama’s budget for 2012 sets military spending at 5 percent below what the Pentagon requested for 2011.

In fact, Obama’s defense budget would slash military spending by $78 billion over the next five years.

His budget also assumes that we are not going to get involved in any more wars, which is not necessarily a safe assumption.

So will these military spending cuts actually get through Congress?

Not likely.

The Republicans control the House of Representatives, and they are not likely to take too kindly to large cuts to the defense budget.

In fact, the truth is that not too many of Barack Obama’s spending cuts are likely to survive in Congress.

As a recent article on CNN explained, Barack Obama’s budget plan must navigate a vast array of congressional committees in the coming months and by the time it emerges it is likely to be radically changed from its current form….

Before it gets back to Obama’s desk for a signature, the spending blueprint will go through no less than 40 congressional committees, 24 subcommittees, countless hearings and a number of floor votes in the House and Senate.

As our Congress critters have demonstrated over and over and over, they love to spend our money on some of the most wasteful things imaginable.

For example, a total of $3 million has already been granted to researchers at the University of California at Irvine so that they can play video games such as World of Warcraft.

Something seems to happen to people who get elected to Congress.  Almost all of them seem to develop an addiction to spending our hard-earned money.

Let us hope that something changes in that regard, because right now government debt is completely and totally out of control.

In fact, the U.S. national debt is currently increasing by approximately 4 billion dollars every single day.

In the end, if something is not done about all this debt it will destroy the entire U.S. financial system.

But our politicians just keep putting it off and putting it off.

Eventually we will reap what we have sown.  Debt is a very cruel master, and nobody can run from it forever – not even the U.S. government.

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