Government Debt

The Health Care Reform Bill: Welcome To The Biggest Tax Increase In U.S. History

Will the health care reform bill that the Democrats are trying to figure out a way to ram through Congress end up being the biggest tax increase in U.S. history?  Unfortunately, a close reading of the bill leads to the inescapable conclusion that it will be.  You see, the crafters of this legislation were smart.  They realized that if they included one huge tax increase in the health care bill it would make headlines all over the country, so they chopped up the taxes into a bunch of smaller pieces in order to make them easier to swallow.  In fact, one review of the Senate version of the health care bill identified at least 19 tax increases.  When you put all of the tax increases together they add up to the biggest tax increase in the history of the United States.  Considering the fact that the U.S. economy is already on the verge of economic collapse, the last thing that the American people need is a massive tax increase.  But that is exactly what they are about to get.

So let’s take a closer look at some of these taxes….

*In Section 5000(A) of the Senate version of the bill (which can be found here), there is a requirement for all Americans to purchase health insurance. Those who do not obtain health coverage will be hit with an annual tax penalty of $750.

*Barack Obama is trying to sneak a large Medicare tax increase for wealthy Americans into the final version of the health care bill.  Under Obama’s proposal, individuals who earn more than $200,000 and couples who earn over $250,000 would pay an additional 2.9% surtax on unearned income from interest, dividends, annuities, royalties and rents. Up until now, employers and employees have each contributed 1.45% of each paycheck to Medicare.  But if Obama’s proposal makes it into the final bill, wealthy Americans will see their Medicare taxes absolutely skyrocket.

*In Section 9008 of the Senate version of the health care bill,  a $2.3 billion excise tax would be imposed on the pharmaceutical industry.  This tax would not be based on income.  It would solely be based on market share.  So even if a company was losing hundreds of millions of dollars it would still have to pay.

*Section 9009 of the Senate version of the health care bill imposes an “annual fee” on medical device manufacturers and importers.  Once again, this $2 billion “excise tax” would be based on market share and not on income.

*Section 9010 of the Senate version of the health care bill would also impose an “annual fee” on health insurance providers.  This $6.7 billion tax would also be allocated based on market share.

So how much of these new taxes on health insurance companies, drugmakers and medical device manufacturers do you think will be passed on to consumers?

Anyone want to take a guess?

Just because a particular tax increase is not directed at you does not mean that it won’t take money out of your pocket.

Let’s look at some more (yes, there are more) of the tax increases….

*Section 9001 of the Senate version of the health care bill contains an excise tax on “Cadillac” health plans.  In other words, if you have provided your family with the very best in health coverage you get to be taxed extra.  This tax is particularly harsh.  Section 9001 imposes a 40 percent tax on the portion of insurance premiums exceeding $8,500 a year for individuals and $23,000 a year for family plans.  In order to hide the tax, it will be imposed on the health insurance companies who issue the policies.  But do you think that they will not pass that cost on to their customers?

So now the American people will be highly penalized for getting really good health care plans.

*Section 9017 of the Senate version of the health care bill imposes an excise tax on elective cosmetic medical procedures.  Any voluntary cosmetic procedures will now be subjected to a 5 percent tax.  All of those boob jobs are about to get a lot more expensive.

*The House version of the health care bill would impose a 5.4 percent income tax increase on individuals making more than $500,000 and on couples making more than $1 million.

So if you are living the American Dream you are about to pay a lot more for it if the House version of the health care bill gets adopted.

Let’s break this down a little bit.

Currently, the top income tax rate in the United States is 35 percent.

If existing Bush tax cuts expire in 2011 as Barack Obama wants them to, the top tax rate will go back up to 39.6 percent.

But this new “health care tax” would jack things up even higher.

Another 5.4 percent would take the highest tax rate in America to 45 percent.  That is before any state, local or property taxes are even paid.

Pretty soon it won’t even be worth it to work hard in America anymore.

But that is not the end of the tax increases.

A PricewaterhouseCoopers’ analysis for America’s Health Insurance Plans found that family health insurance premiums would be approximately $4,000 a year higher if the health care reform bill is passed.

Can you afford to pay over $300 a month more for health insurance for your family?

Are you starting to get the idea?

This health care reform bill will be an absolute financial disaster for America.  But considering the fact that the Senate version of the bill is 2409 pages long, hardly anyone will ever take the time to read the whole thing.

And yes, the Democrats are likely to tweak things a little more as they try to figure out how to sneak a final version through, but there is now one thing that seems virtually certain.

This is going to be the biggest tax increase in U.S. history.

Isn’t that exciting?

All Money In The United States Comes Into Existence As Debt – So What Will Happen Now That Bank Lending In The U.S. Is Contracting At The Fastest Rate In History?

Most Americans who closely follow economics understand that all money in the United States comes into existence as debt.  Either the Federal Reserve creates it when the U.S. government borrows money, or private banks create it when they use fractional reserve banking to make loans to customers.  If lending increases, it is going to create new money and increase the money supply.  But if lending declines, it is going to take money out of the system and will decrease the money supply.  So why is this important?  It is important because without sufficient lending, the U.S. economy will seize up and grind to a standstill.  Unfortunately, we have created an economic system that is fueled by credit, and without enough credit businesses can’t expand or hire more workers, individuals can’t buy homes and cars and there will not be any hope that the U.S. economy will function at previous levels.

If you will remember, this is what happened at the beginning of the Great Depression.  The big banks severely tightened credit and it created a deflationary depression.

Unfortunately, the same thing is happening again.  In 2009 U.S. banks posted their sharpest decline in lending since 1942.  In 2010 so far, bank lending in the U.S. has contracted at the fastest rate in recorded history.  A “credit freeze” has struck the entire banking industry.  One indication of just how bad the credit freeze has gotten is to look at a graph of the M1 Money Multiplier.  It is now at the lowest point it has been in decades.  Why?  Because banks are simply not lending money….

But didn’t Bush and Obama insist that if we got cash into the hands of the bankers that they would lend it out and help all of us “Main Street” folks out?

It didn’t work out that way, did it?

Instead, the banks (especially the big banks) are reducing their lending, hoarding cash and shrinking the money supply.

If this continues, we may very well experience a 1930s-style deflationary depression, at least for a while.

Already we are seeing the effects of tighter credit hitting the economy….

*Federal regulators on Friday shuttered banks in Florida, Illinois, Maryland and Utah, boosting to 26 the number of bank failures in the United States so far in 2010.  The closing of numerous banks on Friday is almost becoming a weekly ritual now.

*The FDIC is planning to open a massive satellite office near Chicago that will house up to 500 temporary staffers and contractors to manage receiverships and liquidate assets from what they are expecting will be a gigantic wave of failed Midwest banks over the next few years.

*The U.S. Postal Service, facing a $238 billion budget deficit by 2020, is being urged to consider cutting delivery to as few as three days a week.  As money continues to get tighter, we should expect even more government services to be cut.  In fact, some local governments around the U.S. are considering bulldozing whole neighborhoods just so they don’t have to spend money on providing those neighborhoods with essential services.

So will the U.S. government come to the rescue?

Well, some would argue that the unprecedented spending by the U.S. government over the past several years is the only reason why the U.S. economy has not already plunged into a full-blown depression.

But of course all of this government debt is only going to make our long-term problems even worse.

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting that Barack Obama’s proposed budget plan would add more than $9.7 trillion to the U.S. national debt over the next decade.

That is not good news.

Especially if the Federal Reserve refuses to keep “monetizing” all of this debt.

During a recent hearing, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress that the Federal Reserve does not plan to continue to “print money” to help Congress finance the exploding U.S. national debt.

So if the Federal Reserve will not finance this gigantic pile of U.S. debt, who will?

Already China and some other major foreign powers have reduced their holdings of U.S. Treasuries.

So who is going to borrow the trillions upon trillions that the U.S. government is going to have to borrow?

Perhaps the U.S. government will decide to stop spending so much and will start cutting back and will start being more fiscally responsible.

But don’t count on it.

You see, if the U.S. government does not keep borrowing insane amounts of money to pump up the U.S. economy the whole thing could come down like a house of cards.

Of course it is all going to come down like a house of cards eventually anyway.

There are several ways that all of this could play out (deflationary depression, hyperinflationary implosion, societal collapse, etc.), but all of them are bad.

The truth is that an economic collapse is coming whether you or I like it or not.  We had all better get ready while we still can.

Why Situps Don't Work

The 2009 Financial Report Of The U.S. Government Is Out – America’s Economic Goose Is Cooked

The 2009 Financial Report Of The U.S. Government has finally been released, and the news is not good.  It basically confirms much of what we already know – that the United States government is a complete financial mess.  The U.S. government budget deficit for 2009 was a record-setting 1.417 trillion dollars.  The total liabilities of the U.S. government rose from 12.178 trillion dollars at the end of 2008 to 14.123 trillion dollars by the end of 2009.  At their present rates of growth, the interest on the national debt and spending on entitlement programs will gobble up almost every single dollar of federal revenue by the end of the decade.  Throughout the report, the word “unsustainable” is repeatedly used.  The authors of the report understand that the U.S. government simply cannot keep spending and borrowing like it has been recently.  But if the U.S. government slows down this reckless spending even a little bit it could literally plunge the U.S. economy into a deflationary depression.  In fact, even with all of the “bailouts” and “stimulus packages” there are many who would argue that we are already in a depression.  In any event, the authors of the report make it clear that the United States government is facing a financial crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

Just consider the following chart below.  This chart comes straight out of the 2009 Financial Report Of The U.S. Government, and it shows how explosively federal deficits have grown in recent years….

The reality is that deficits of three or four hundred billion dollars per year were catastrophic enough.

But a deficit of 1.4 trillion?

That is national financial suicide.

In fact, the chart below from the White House Office of Management and Budget shows just how dire the financial position of the U.S. government has become.  The government has dramatically increased spending at a time when government revenues are actually falling….

But this was supposed to be a time when the federal government would be running surpluses to prepare for the massive growth in entitlement spending that everyone knew would come when the Baby Boomers retire.

But that is not happening.

Instead we are already running record-setting deficits.

So what is causing these deficits?

Rampant, out of control spending.  Just check out this chart of federal net outlays….

What would happen to your own personal finances if your household spending kept increasing like that?

But things are not going to get any better any time soon.

As interest on the national debt piles up and as spending on Social Security and Medicare explodes it will be extremely difficult to control the U.S. federal budget deficit.

The report projects that the rapidly growing interest costs on the national debt together with spending on major entitlement programs will absorb approximately 92 cents of every dollar of federal revenue by 2019.

That is before anything is spent on defense, education, homeland security, job creation or anything else.

In particular, the growth of interest on the national debt promises to absolutely crush U.S. government finances if something is not done.  Just consider the following chart pulled right out of the report….

Take a moment and let the implications of that chart sink in.

Are you prepared to saddle future generations with interest payments that gobble up 30 percent of GDP?

But wait, there’s more.

According to the report, the present value of projected scheduled benefits exceeds earmarked revenues for social insurance programs such as Social Security and Medicare by about $46 trillion over the next 75 years.

So either the U.S. government is going to have to radically cut back Social Security and Medicare benefits or they will have to come up with tens of trillions of extra dollars from somewhere.

And remember, the 46 trillion dollar figure is just the “present value” of those future payments.

Because of inflation, the actual value of those future payments will be far, far, far greater.

In a section about Social Security and Medicare, the authors of the report freely admitted that “it is apparent that these programs are on a fiscally unsustainable path”.

Well, can’t we just “grow” our way out of these problems?

Hardly.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is caught in an economic death spiral.

Sometimes words just cannot express how bad things have gotten.

Sometimes it takes charts.

The following chart shows changes in our national income since 1950….

This next chart shows changes in our exports of goods and services since about 1930….

Are you starting to get the picture?

America’s economic goose is cooked.

We are drowning in a sea of debt at the same time our once mighty economic machine is sputtering to a stop.

Meanwhile, the financial powers that be are not about to let a good crisis go to waste.  Just like during the Great Depression, the sharks are using hard times as an excuse to gobble up the smaller, weaker fish.  In fact, there are persistent whispers that the financial elite see this current economic crisis as the perfect opportunity to consolidate the U.S. banking industry.

In any event, it does not look like things are going to get back to “normal” for most of us any time soon.

Lastly, one interesting tidbit in the 2009 Financial Report Of The U.S. Government can be found in footnote 2 on page vii of the report.  In that footnote it tells us why the financial results for the Federal Reserve are not included in the report….

The Federal Reserve is an independent organization and not considered a part of the Federal reporting entity. As such, their financial results are not consolidated into the Government’s financial statements.

Very interesting.

Anyone have any comments?

Austin Coins

 

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Warns Congress That The Federal Reserve Will Not “Print Money” To Pay For The Exploding U.S. National Debt

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke warned Congress that the Federal Reserve does not plan to “print money” to help Congress finance the exploding U.S. national debt.  In fact, Bernanke told Congress that the U.S. could soon face a debt crisis as bad as the one in Greece if the U.S. government does not get things in order financially.  This represents a fundamental change in policy for the Federal Reserve, because they have been enabling the massive borrowing by the U.S. government over the past couple of years by “buying” the majority of new U.S. government debt that has been issued.  But now the fat cats over at the Federal Reserve have apparently changed their minds.  Using uncharacteristic bluntness, Bernanke told Congress that the Federal Reserve is “not going to monetize the debt”.

So why is the Federal Reserve changing course?

Well, there are a couple of possibilities.  One is that the Federal Reserve could legitimately be concerned that the exploding U.S. debt could actually collapse the U.S. economy and ultimately the U.S. government.

You see, the Federal Reserve is a parasite.  They make money for their owners by sucking money out of the U.S. government and out of U.S. taxpayers.  So, just like any parasite, they must strike a delicate balance.  They have to keep feeding off the host without killing off the host completely.  If the host dies it could end up killing the parasite.  So the Federal Reserve actually needs to try to keep the U.S. economy alive so that it can slowly keep draining it.

In fact, during his remarks to Congress, it certainly sounded like Bernanke honestly desires that the U.S. government will come up with a sustainable financial plan for the future….

“It is very, very important for Congress and administration to come to some kind of program, some kind of plan that will credibly show how the United States government is going to bring itself back to a sustainable position.”

The second possibility is a bit more insidious.  As we have written previously, it looks like “the financial powers that be” have decided to reduce the money supply, tighten credit and hoard cash.  All of those things reduce economic activity. 

This new public stance by Bernanke is right in line with that.  If the Federal Reserve will not finance the exploding U.S. government debt, then either the U.S. government will have to dramatically cut back on spending (which would seriously slow down the U.S. economy) or the U.S. government will have to borrow from other sources at much higher interest rates (which will have very serious negative effects on the U.S.. economy).  Either way, this new stance by the Federal Reserve is not good news for those hoping for U.S. economic growth.     

The truth is that someday the exponential growth of the U.S. national debt will basically force the Federal Reserve to “print money”, but for now it looks like the financial powers have another agenda. 

From all indications, it look like that agenda is seriously going to slow down the U.S. economy.

That is likely to seriously anger American voters.  Already, millions of Americans have lost their homes and their jobs, and things are probably only going to get worse.

The result is that there is likely to be an overwhelmingly strong anti-incumbent mood in the nation as we approach the election season of 2010.  Even now, only 10% of American voters say that Congress is doing a good or excellent job.

That is not good news for the fat cats in Washington.

Not that we should feel sorry for them when they get voted out.

Anyway, as always we welcome your comments.  If we do not publish your comment right away, don’t be discouraged, because sometimes we hold on to a comment for a bit because we want to figure out a way to feature some of the very best comments in a future article.

Also, if you enjoy the articles on this site, please consider helping us out by posting them on social media sites such as Facebook or Twitter.  There are buttons posted below each article to help you to do that.  We very much appreciate everyone who has been taking a few moments to help us get the word out about this new blog.

If you do enjoy this site, there are a couple of our other sites that you may enjoy as well.  For example, each day we post a collection of the most crucial news stories of the day on our daily news site entitled “The Most Important News”.  In fact, you can find the news for today right here.

We would also encourage you to visit our new site entitled “The American Dream” which will also focus on financial issues, but from a slightly different angle.

Thanks again for visiting our site and for helping  us get the word out.  It is only because of our readers that we are able to do what we do.

The American Economy: The Wealthy Make The Mistakes But The Hard Working Middle Class Pays The Price

This is how the U.S. economy works much of the time – the wealthy make most of the big economic mistakes but the hard working middle class ends up paying for them. This time around is no exception. The financial crisis of the past several years was caused by Wall Street, but they got bailed out and relatively few of them lost their jobs. However, even though middle class and working class Americans were not the ones who made the mess, they are paying for it dearly. This is especially true when it comes to unemployment. While it is true that jobs are being lost on every level of American society, the reality is that unemployment is hitting Americans on the lowest end of the income scale the hardest.

Just check out the chart below.  The ten percent of Americans that have the lowest household incomes have an unemployment rate of over 30 percent, while the ten percent of Americans that have the highest household incomes have an unemployment rate just about 3 percent….

Does this seem right to you?

After all, we were promised that we needed to bail out Wall Street so that they could help “Main Street”.

But that didn’t happen, did it?

Instead, it appears that previously bailed out corporations are going back to their old ways of paying out ridiculous bonuses.

For example, the CEO of General Motors is in line to get a $9 million pay package. 

What in the world?

A company that was so flat broke that it would have likely collapsed without U.S. government intervention is handing out 9 million bucks to the CEO?

Something is very, very wrong.

And the truth is that working class Americans are getting pissed off.

For example, one Ohio man actually decided to bulldoze his own home rather than let the bank take it in foreclosure proceedings.

Now that is an incredibly destructive and vindictive act, but it just shows how angry some people are getting.

Many working class and middle class Americans feel powerless as the politicians and the wealthy recklessly destroy the U.S. economy.

Just consider the following chart.  The U.S. government has massively increased spending at a time when revenues are decreasing sharply.  Does this look like a “recovery” to you?….

The truth is that the U.S. national debt is wildly out of control.  In 2010, the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined.

In fact, it is anticipated that the U.S. national debt will climb to an unprecedented 200 percent of GDP by 2038 without a fundamental change in course.

Is this kind of reckless financial mismanagement going to cause an economic collapse?

Of course.

And Americans are starting to wake up and realize this.

In a recent ABC News poll, 87 percent of Americans said that they are concerned about the U.S. national debt.

In a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 86 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. system of government is broken.

And it is broken.

So is it still possible to repair it?

Feel free to leave a comment with your opinion….

Has China Begun Dumping U.S. Treasuries?

Has China decided that now is the time to start dumping U.S. Treasuries?  The Treasury Department announced on Tuesday that foreign holdings of U.S. Treasury securities fell by $53 billion in December, which is an all-time record decline for one month.  China alone reduced its holdings by $34.2 billion.  So is this because the U.S. doesn’t need to borrow as much money anymore?  Of course not.  In fact, the Obama administration just released a new budget which calls for a record 1.56 trillion dollar budget deficit.  Obama has publicly stated that the U.S. will be running trillion dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.  No, China is not getting rid of U.S. Treasuries because the U.S. doesn’t need to borrow anymore.  The U.S. needs to borrow from China (and from everyone else) more than ever.

So what is going on?

The truth is that China recognizes that the long-term prognosis for U.S. Treasuries is really bad.  The U.S. government had piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world, and when the U.S. dollar eventually collapses (and it will) the Chinese could end up holding a trillion dollars of worthless paper.

So they are slowly starting to slide towards the door, hoping that everyone else does not suddenly catch on that the party is over.

The Chinese know that the great U.S. economy is slowly spiralling into the toilet.  Everyone is so focused on the financial disaster in Greece right now, but Michael Pento, a senior market strategist with Delta Global Advisors, says that the financial situation in the United States is “worse than Greece”.

The Chinese don’t want to be the ones left standing when this bizarre game of musical chairs is over.  In fact, it is just not U.S. Treasuries that the Chinese are getting rid of.  There are reports that the Chinese government has ordered its reserve managers to dump all “riskier securities” and to hold on to only U.S. Treasuries and U.S. agency debt that comes with an implicit or an explicit U.S. government guarantee.

But as we have seen, the Chinese government is also reducing the size of their U.S. Treasury holdings.

For years, there have been financial analysts that have been warning of this day.  They have been warning that when the Chinese and other foreign governments start dumping Treasuries it will send interest rates skyrocketing through the roof and it will crash the U.S. economy.

Well, China is starting to dump Treasuries and the U.S. government is borrowing more money than ever, but interest rates are staying somewhat stable.

So what is happening?

Well, as we have covered previously, the truth is that the Federal Reserve is soaking up the excess borrowing.  Some analysts refer to this as “printing money”, but it is more like “printing debt”.  In fact, the Fed “bought” the vast majority of new U.S. Treasuries issued in 2009.

So that is how the U.S. government can continue to borrow obscene amounts of money when the rest of the world won’t lend it to us.  But this can’t continue forever and it is obviously a recipe for hyperinflation in the long-term.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are trying to make a smooth move towards the “exit” sign.  Whether they will be able to successfully pull it off is another matter.

Extreme Food Storage

14 Fun Facts About The U.S. Government’s Massive Debt Problem

The U.S. government is currently creating one of the most colossal monuments in the history of the world.  It is the U.S. national debt, and it threatens to literally destroy the American way of life.  For decades now, this generation has been recklessly spending the money of future generations and has been convinced that they have been getting away with it.  Americans have been enjoying an obscenely high standard of living, but the party is almost over and the day of reckoning is fast approaching.  It has been a great party, but it was fueled by the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world.  As many of us know, it can be extremely fun running up a huge credit card bill, but it can be even more painful to pay it off.  Now our national “credit card bills” are starting to arrive and nobody really seems to know what to do.  The U.S. national debt will forever be a lasting reminder of the greed and recklessness of this generation.  The truth is that the United States is NOT the “richest and most powerful nation” in the world.  Rather, we are a spoiled, bloated, greedy nation that has run up a debt so big that words simply do not do it justice.

In fact, the U.S. national debt is so bizarre that it is hard to know whether to laugh about it or cry about it.  For today at least, we will have some fun with it.  The following are 14 fun facts about the U.S. government’s massive debt problem….

#1) As of December 1st, 2009, the official debt of the United States government was approximately 12.1 trillion dollars.

#2) To pay this 12.1 trillion dollar debt would require approximately $40,000 from every single person living in the United States.

#3) Now the U.S. Congress has approved an increase in the U.S. government debt cap to 14.3 trillion dollars.  to pay this increase off would require approximately $6,000 more from every man, woman and child in the United States.

#4) The U.S. government’s debt ceiling has been raised six times since the beginning of 2006.

#5) So how hard is it to spend a trillion dollars?  If you spent one dollar every second, you would have spent a million dollars in twelve days.  At that same rate, it would take you 32 years to spend a billion dollars.  But it would take you more than 31,000 years to spend a trillion dollars.

#6) When Ronald Reagan took office, the U.S. national debt was only about 1 trillion dollars.

#7) The U.S. national debt has more than doubled since the year 2000.

#8) Barack Obama’s most recently proposed budget anticipates $5.08 trillion in deficits over the next 5 years.

#9) The U.S. national debt on January 1st, 1791 was just $75 million dollars. Today, the U.S. national debt rises by that amount about once an hour.

#10) The U.S. national debt rises at an average of approximately $3.8 billion per day.

#11) In 2010, the U.S. government is projected to issue almost as much new debt as the rest of the governments of the world combined.

#12) The U.S. government has such a voracious appetite for debt that the rest of the world simply doesn’t have enough money to lend us.  So now the Federal Reserve is buying most U.S. debt, and the only reason they can do that is because they basically create the money to lend us out of thin air.

#13) A trillion $10 bills, if they were taped end to end, would wrap around the globe more than 380 times.  That amount of money would still not be enough to pay off the U.S. national debt.

#14) As if all of the above was not bad enough, according to the 2008 Financial Report of the United States Government, which is an official United States government report, the total liabilities of the United States government, including future social security and medicare payments that the U.S. government is already committed to pay out, now exceed 65 TRILLION dollars.

Mountain House Sale

Are We On The Verge Of An Economic War With Russia And China?

Has our exploding national debt become an economic weapon of mass destruction in the hands of the Russians and the Chinese? Have increasing tensions between East and West put us on the verge of an economic war with those two superpowers? Those who are convinced that the Russians and Chinese would never work together to collapse the U.S. economy should really consider what former U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson is saying in his new book. Paulson’s new book is entitled “On The Brink“, and in it he claims that the Russians contacted the Chinese in 2008 and proposed that both nations dump their Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds at the same time in a bid to force a bailout of the largest U.S. mortgage-finance companies by the U.S. government.  Fortunately, China declined to go along with Russia’s proposal at the time, but this revelation just underscores the economic danger that the United States has gotten itself into.

You see, if the Chinese and the Russians had done that, it would have set off mass panic in the financial markets.  It would have been an unmitigated economic disaster.

Due to our greed and our reckless spending, we have gotten ourselves into a situation where China and Russia have a tremendous amount of leverage on us.

Near the end of 2009, China owned U.S. Treasuries worth approximately $789 billion, and Russia owned U.S. Treasuries worth approximately $128 billion.

If China and Russia decided to dump their Treasuries in unison it could literally devastate the U.S. economy.  Already the Federal Reserve is having to “purchase” the vast majority of all new U.S. Treasuries.  The talking heads on the cable networks claim that this kind of “Ponzi scheme” by the Fed cannot continue indefinitely, but the U.S. government is continuing to spend recklessly and nobody else is stepping up to buy our new debt.  So what would happen if China and Russia suddenly decided to dump nearly a trillion in U.S. Treasuries on the market?

Don’t think that it can’t happen.

Already, the Chinese government has reportedly ordered its reserve managers to dump all “riskier securities” and to hold on to only U.S. Treasuries and U.S. agency debt that comes with an implicit or an explicit U.S. government guarantee.

So is this a prelude to even more dumping to come?

The truth is that tensions between the United States and China are escalating rapidly….

*Barack Obama recently promised to get “tough on trade” with China, and the Chinese government responded to that notion very angrily.

*Senior Chinese military officers have suggested that the Chinese government should sell some U.S. bonds to punish the U.S. government for the latest round of arms sales to Taiwan.

*Barack Obama has attempted to pressure Chinese President Hu Jintao to raise the value of the Yuan, but the Chinese are not giving an inch.  In fact, there are reports that the Chinese regard Obama as weak.

*The Chinese government is reportedly extremely upset that the White House has announced that Obama will meet with the Dalai Lama in the next few weeks.

The vast majority of the American people have no idea what is going on, but the truth is that the Chinese people, and especially the Chinese military and the Chinese government, are very pissed at us.  Just consider the following quotes….

Luo Yuan, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Military Sciences:

“Our retaliation should not be restricted to merely military matters, and we should adopt a strategic package of counter-punches covering politics, military affairs, diplomacy and economics to treat both the symptoms and root cause of this disease.”

Chinese Major-General Yang Yi:

“This time China must punish the U.S.”

Huang Xiangyang, a commentator in the China Daily newspaper:

“When someone spits on you, you have to get back.”

Nationalism is surging right now in China, and attitudes toward the West and toward the United States are taking a turn for the worse.

In facat, one new poll taken in China recently has revealed that more than half of Chinese citizens now believe that China and America are heading for a new cold war.

But China was so weak a few decades ago.

How could this happen?

That sad thing is that we have done this to ourselves.

It was us who allowed the Chinese to artificially keep their currency so low for so long.

It was us who struck highly imbalanced trade agreements with them.

It was us who allowed our corporations to shut down factories in the U.S. and open them up in China.

It was us who insisted on “free trade” with China even as the human rights abuses over there continued to get worse.

It was us who kept running out to the big box stores to keep buying cheap Chinese-made products when we could have bought more American-made products.

It was us who kept voting for politicians who promoted “globalism” and “free trade agreements” when we should have known that globalism would ultimately have some very painful consequences.

It was us who kept giving China access to advanced military technology and allowed Chinese generals to sleep over at the White House.

It was us who kept pumping money into China and then asking them for loans when we knew all along that they were one of our biggest strategic enemies.

It was us that has allowed China to become the second-largest economy and the number one exporter in the entire world.

If it was not for the stupidity of the United States, the biggest Communist nation on earth, China, would not be an economic and military powerhouse today.

But it is.

And we did it.

In addition, most analysts in the United States seriously underestimate Russia.

Russia (not Saudi Arabia) is now the number one oil exporter in the world.  Their economy has been humming like a machine for most of the past decade, and they are rapidly modernizing and expanding their military.  Russia has made it known that they intend to play a major role in world affairs and that they do not intend to be pushed around by someone like Barack Obama.

The sad thing is that the majority of economic talking heads on the cable channels are still convinced that Russia and China will never use the economic time bombs that we have put into their hands.

They are convinced that they would be “shooting themselves in the feet” by taking us down.

While that may be true, the truth is that there comes a time when other matters become much more important than losing money on some investments.

For both Russia and China, the United States is still the number one strategic enemy out there.  They do not look at the United States as a true friend.  If it comes to a point where it suits their purposes to pull the trigger on an economic war with us, then that is exactly what they will do.

For more on the potential for economic war with Russia and China, check out the excellent video below….

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