Borrowing

Brace Yourselves For The Most Dramatic Shift In The Standard Of Living In All Of U.S. History

March 11, 2021 by Michael

They are assuring us that we don’t have to be concerned about “inflation” because they have everything under control. Do you believe them? The value of the U.S. dollar has been steadily declining for a long time, and most Americans have grown accustomed to having the cost of living rise at a faster pace than their paychecks do. But over the past 12 months an enormous paradigm shift has begun. Instead of devaluing our currency a little bit at a time, now our leaders are going “full Weimar”. Our money supply is growing at an exponential rate, and this is becoming a major national crisis. As I pointed out yesterday, it took from the founding of our county all the way to 2020 for M1 to reach 4 trillion dollars. But then from the start of the pandemic to today, M1 has gone from 4 trillion dollars to 18 trillion dollars. To call that “economic malpractice” would be way too kind. The truth is that it is complete and utter lunacy, and we are all going to literally pay the price for such madness.

Sadly, inflation is already starting to show up in a major way all throughout our economy.

For example, most Americans have noticed that the price of gasoline has really started to shoot up over the last several weeks…

Gas prices have been increasing at the pump for the past few weeks, reaching a national average of $2.77 a gallon as of Monday, which is 39 cents higher than the same time in 2020, according to AAA.

A lot of people are alarmed by this, but the Federal Reserve insists that this is completely normal.

Meanwhile, the price of agricultural commodities has risen by 50 percent over the past year…

The price of agricultural commodities traded on the global stage has shot up by 50 percent since the middle of 2020, according to economists at Rabobank.

In a new report, the bank pins the lift in the price of wheat, corn, soy, sugar, and a range of other commodities on the northern La Niña, a weakening US currency, market speculators, and rising demand from importing nations.

As those prices are passed along to the consumer, you will be paying more for groceries at your local supermarket, but authorities assure us that prices will stabilize once the economy returns to “normal”.

The good news is that at least the price of food is not rising as fast as the price of lumber is…

Lumber prices have increased more than 180 percent since last spring, and this price spike has caused the price of an average new single-family home to increase by $24,386 since April 17, 2020, according to the NAHB standard estimates of lumber used to build the average home.

Now that is some serious inflation!

There are so many people that have had to put their plans to build a home on hold in recent months because the price of lumber has gotten so ridiculously high.

But the experts at the Fed insist that those that are warning of hyperinflation just have wild imaginations.

Over the course of the past year, our leaders have pumped trillions and trillions and trillions of dollars into the system, and all of that money has to go somewhere.

In such a highly inflationary environment, this sort of a thing can happen…

A digital collage by American artist Beeple which exists only as a JPG file sold Thursday for a record $69.3 million at Christie’s, fetching more money than physical works by many better-known artists.

‘Everydays: The First 5,000 Days’ became the most expensive ever ‘non-fungible token’ (NFT) – a collectible digital asset that uses blockchain technology to turn virtual work into a unique item – after being listed at the start of the two-week auction for only $100.

The U.S. dollar is being transformed into “toilet paper money”, and we are rapidly approaching the point of no return.

At least if our paychecks were rising as fast as the cost of living was, American families would be able to keep up with the escalating prices.

But of course that is not happening, and more Americans are falling out of the middle class with each passing day.

In fact, vast numbers of formerly middle class Americans no longer have jobs at all. Last week another 712,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits, and the number of claims continues to hover around “four times the typical pre-crisis level”…

Weekly jobless claims have remained stubbornly high for months, hovering around four times the typical pre-crisis level, although it’s well below the peak of almost 7 million that was reached when stay-at-home orders were first issued a year ago in March.

There are roughly 10 million fewer jobs than there were last year in February before the crisis began.

This is not what an “economic recovery” looks like.

The truth is that the U.S. economy is broken, and the only solution our leaders have is to print, borrow and spend even more money.

Now Biden and his minions are about to pump another 1.9 trillion dollars into the system.

Do you think that will make the inflation crisis better or do you think that it will make it worse?

You don’t need to answer, because the answer is self-evident.

As prices soar into the stratosphere, life is going to become increasingly difficult for most Americans.

If your income does not rise as fast as prices are going up, your standard of living will go down.

Of course you will be far from alone. The vast majority of Americans are about to experience a dramatic shift in the standard of living, and most of the population doesn’t even realize what is happening.

All they know is that more government checks are on the way, and most of them are absolutely thrilled about that.

But all of this printing, borrowing and spending has put us on a path to national financial suicide.

As we continue to recklessly destroy the value of our currency, other nations will begin to realize that a move to a different reserve currency is needed.

And once the U.S. dollar is no longer the reserve currency of the world, there will never be any going back to the “good old days”.

We are so close to the economic endgame, and the word “collapse” is not nearly strong enough to describe what is eventually going to happen to us.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

About the Author: My name is Michael Snyder and my brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com. In addition to my new book, I have written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. (#CommissionsEarned) By purchasing the books you help to support the work that my wife and I are doing, and by giving it to others you help to multiply the impact that we are having on people all over the globe. I have published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and the articles that I publish on those sites are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but I also ask that they include this “About the Author” section with each article. The material contained in this article is for general information purposes only, and readers should consult licensed professionals before making any legal, business, financial or health decisions. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook, Twitter and Parler, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help. During these very challenging times, people will need hope more than ever before, and it is our goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with as many people as we possibly can.

So This Is How The U.S. Dollar Dies…

March 10, 2021March 10, 2021 by Michael

Our leaders are killing the U.S. dollar, and it is being done to thunderous applause. The House and the Senate have now both passed the 1.9 trillion dollar “COVID relief bill”, and it will go to Joe Biden’s desk for his signature. Of course we don’t actually have 1.9 trillion dollars to spend on yet another “COVID relief” package. In fact, we don’t even have one dollar to spend on another “COVID relief” package. Every single dollar that is spent will have to be borrowed, and that will soon push our national debt beyond the 30 trillion dollar mark. Sadly, our politicians seem convinced that giant mountains of dollars can be printed, borrowed and spent indefinitely without any repercussions, and most Americans fully support what they are doing. In fact, one recent poll found that a whopping 78 percent of all Americans support more stimulus checks…

A huge majority of Americans, including nearly two-thirds of Republicans, support the $1,400 stimulus checks President Biden is calling for, and his full $1.9 trillion stimulus proposal also has strong public backing, according to a new poll from Quinnipiac University.

The poll found that 78 percent of Americans supported the stimulus checks, including 90 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans — suggesting that Republicans in Congress who want to reduce the checks to $1,000 are out of step with their constituents on this issue.

If you are in that 78 percent, you are wrong.

Yes, it is nice to get a big, fat government check in the mail. But in the process we are rapidly destroying our currency, and what we are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal.

Previous COVID relief bills have had wide bipartisan support, but this one passed almost entirely along party lines…

The final vote Saturday in the Senate was 50-49 with all Republicans voting against the measure and all members of the Senate Democratic caucus supporting it. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, was not present for the vote. In the House, it didn’t earn a single Republican vote in the two times the bill came to a vote.

Biden ran on his ability to broker bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill, drawing on his 36 years in the Senate and eight years as vice president. Republicans have viewed the bill as a betrayal of the bipartisanship Biden embraced and spoke of during his campaign.

This is being called a “big win” for Biden, and when Pelosi announced that the bill had passed the House she did a little “shimmy“…

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the 220-211 vote result from the chair, prompting the bill’s supporters to burst into applause. Just a single Democrat voted against it.

Her glee at the outcome was evident even though she had a mask on. She executed what her daughter Christine called a ‘shimmy’ as she gaveled down the vote in a chamber where a five-vote majority gave her very little wiggle room.

After the vote was over, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy referred to the COVID relief package as “socialism”…

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., described it as a “laundry list of leftwing priorities” that “do not meet the needs of American families.”

“It is very liberal,” he said. “They called this the most progressive piece of legislation in history. For those who are watching, progressive means socialism.”

He is right, but I just wish that he would have figured that out several COVID relief packages ago.

Because the truth is that what we have already done to our currency is absolutely nightmarish. The following is the latest M1 chart from the Federal Reserve…

Thanks to our wild spending politicians and unprecedented intervention in the financial markets by the Federal Reserve, we have now entered an era of hyperinflation.

It took from the founding of the United States to 2020 for M1 to get to 4 trillion dollars.

And then it took about one year for M1 to go from 4 trillion dollars to 18 trillion dollars.

This is utter madness.

Of course the chart above doesn’t even reflect the impact that this new COVID relief package will have. Another 1.9 trillion dollars is about to be poured into the system, and that will make things even worse.

Needless to say, most Wall Street investors are absolutely thrilled that another tsunami of money is coming. One recent poll found that “37% of Main Street investors” plan to pour stimulus money directly into the Wall Street casino…

A recent Deutsche Bank survey found that 37% of Main Street investors, some of who could be members of the Reddit community, will plow a “large chunk” of stimulus money, about $170 billion, “directly into equities.”

These small but mighty investors have gained notoriety in recent months, creating volatility and heavy volume in a number of heavily shorted stocks, such as GameStop Corp., AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. and Bed Bath & Beyond Inc.

That should be very good news for stocks, but of course a major “trigger event” could crash the market at any time.

So we will have to wait and see how all of this plays out.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden just announced that he will unveil “the next phase” of his administration’s response to the pandemic on Thursday…

Just hours after the House passed the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion stimulus package (which will unleash another wave of “stimmies” that will inevitably find their way into millions of Robinhood and other discount brokerage accounts), President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he would unveil “the next phase” of the US COVID-19 response on Thursday, which is also the one-year anniversary of the first COVID-inspired lockdowns in the US.

Even if more stimulus checks are not involved, any new programs that Biden announces will cost money, and that involve more borrowing.

We are printing, borrowing and spending our way into oblivion, and we have nobody but ourselves to blame.

As I was preparing to write this article, I just kept thinking of the scene from one of the Star Wars movies where Emperor Palpatine announces that the Republic will be reorganized as “the first Galactic Empire”, and the Senate erupts in applause.

Our Republic is dying too, and our politicians are gleefully murdering the reserve currency of the entire planet.

This is not going to end well, but you already knew that.

***Michael’s new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.***

America Is Committing Suicide: Over The Past 12 Months, The U.S. National Debt Has Increased By 1.271 Trillion Dollars

October 1, 2018October 1, 2018 by Michael

If we do not change course, our once great nation will be destroyed by a debt that has grown wildly out of control. We are facing an unprecedented debt crisis that literally threatens to bring our country to an end, and yet our politicians are almost entirely silent on this issue in 2018. In fact, Republicans and Democrats just worked together to pass another big, fat spending bill through Congress that is actually going to increase the pace at which we are going into debt. What the Republicrats are doing is not just wrong. To be honest, the truth is that they are committing crimes against humanity, and they are completely wiping out the very bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have. How in the world is America supposed to be “great again” when we are buried in so much debt that future generations can never have any possible hope of getting free from it?

The fiscal year of the federal government goes from October 1st to September 30th. During the fiscal year that just ended, the U.S. national debt increased by 1.271 trillion dollars…

The federal debt increased by $1,271,158,167,126.72 in fiscal 2018, according to data released today by the Treasury.

The total federal debt started the fiscal year at $20,244,900,016,053.51 according to the Treasury, and finished the fiscal year at $21,516,058,183,180.23.

This is one of the reasons why I wanted to go to Washington. Our current “representatives” are completely and utterly failing us.

Once upon a time, at least members of the Tea Party would stand up and say something, but these days nobody seems to care that America’s future is being systematically destroyed. Republicans have been in control of both houses of Congress, but our debt problems just continue to get worse and worse. And the truth is that the budgets that have been passed since Donald Trump became president are simply slightly revised Obama budgets. The Republicans have allowed the Democrats to have their way time after time, and it has been absolutely disgusting to watch.

In 8 of the past 11 fiscal years, the U.S. national debt has risen by more than a trillion dollars, and the U.S. national debt is now sitting at an all-time record high of 21.52 trillion dollars.

What we are doing is literally insane, and if we want our nation to survive we must change course immediately.

These days, there is a lot of discussion about the political gains that “Democratic socialists” have been making all over America, and Republicans are trying to assure us that the American people don’t actually want socialism.

But you know what?

We have already gone most of the way down the road toward socialism. I think that Ron Paul made this point very well in his most recent article…

We know socialism does not work. It is an economic system based on the use of force rather than economic freedom of choice. But while many Americans seem to be in a panic over the failures of socialism in Venezuela, they don’t seem all that concerned that right here at home President Trump just signed a massive $1.3 trillion dollar spending bill that delivers socialism on a scale that Venezuelans couldn’t even imagine. In fact this one spending bill is three times Venezuela’s entire gross domestic product!

Did I miss all the Americans protesting this warfare-welfare state socialism?

If you are really against socialism, you should be fighting for the federal government to be greatly reduced in size and scope.

But so few Americans seem to believe in true limited government these days.

It would be a great first step if we would actually try to start living within our means. But if 1.271 trillion dollars of government spending was pulled out of the economy over the past 12 months, the result would be a horrible economic depression. And politicians do not like economic downturns, because when things get bad voters tend not to vote for incumbents. So they just keep going into more debt and they keep kicking the can down the road.

But if we stay on the path that we are currently on, the CBO says that the United States will be 99 trillion dollars in debt by 2048.

Of course we will never actually ever get to 99 trillion dollars in debt. America will cease to exist long before we ever reach that mark.

If we want to save America, we must take action now, but very few people seem to even care about our exploding debt at this point.

And it isn’t just our national debt that is the problem. State and local government debt is at record levels all over the nation, corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, and U.S. consumers are more than 13 trillion dollars in debt…

If you added up the personal debt of every American — what they owe on their mortgages, credit cards, student loans, and more — the total is staggering. Collectively, we’re $13.2 trillion in the red. That’s the highest ever, according to the New York Fed.

Yet no one seems to be panicking. Maybe that’s because we can’t comprehend $13 trillion. Imagine buying every NFL team. And every NBA team. And every NHL team. And every Major League Baseball team. But that only adds up to $191 billion.

America is committing suicide in slow-motion, and it is an absolutely heartbreaking thing to witness.

It is almost as if we lack the will to survive as a nation. All we seem to care about is our comfort level at this moment, and we don’t want anyone to tell us that we have to cut back on anything. I think that Chris Martenson summed things up very well in his most recent piece…

Nothing grows forever. Cancer tries, but always defeats itself in the process. Yeast parties until all the sugar in the vat is gone or it pollutes itself out of an active existence.

Can humans do better? The jury is still out on that.

But so far, the signs say that, as a group, we lack the ability to organize effectively against big, complex challenges. Especially if doing so requires us to willingly choose to live a life of less. We’re simply too addicted to more.

We cannot continue to go down this road.

Because at the end of this road is not just economic collapse. What we are talking about is literally the end of the United States of America.

All throughout history, great societies have been done in by greed, sloth, corruption and laziness, and we are headed down the exact same path. If we want to survive, emergency surgery is necessary, but at this point nobody is even tending to the dying patient.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

The Last Days Warrior Summit is the premier online event of 2018 for Christians, Conservatives and Patriots. It is a premium-members only international event that will empower and equip you with the knowledge and tools that you need as global events begin to escalate dramatically. The speaker list includes Michael Snyder, Mike Adams, Dave Daubenmire, Ray Gano, Dr. Daniel Daves, Gary Kah, Justus Knight, Doug Krieger, Lyn Leahz, Laura Maxwell and many more. Full summit access will begin on October 25th, and if you would like to register for this unprecedented event you can do so right here.

Destroying America: It Is Being Projected That The U.S. National Debt Will Hit 99 Trillion Dollars By 2048

September 17, 2018 by Michael

Temporary prosperity that is created by exploding levels of debt is not actually prosperity at all. At this moment, the U.S. government is 21.4 trillion dollars in debt, and we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to that debt since 2009. And if we stay on the path that we are currently on, the trajectory of our debt will soon accelerate dramatically. In fact, as you will see below, the Congressional Budget Office is now projecting that the U.S. national debt will reach 99 trillion dollars by 2048 if nothing changes. Congressional Budget Office projections always tend to be overly optimistic, and so the reality will probably be much worse than that. Of course we will never actually see the day when our national debt reaches 99 trillion dollars. Our government (and our entire society along with it) will collapse long before we ever get to that point. In our endless greed, we are literally destroying America, and emergency action must be taken immediately if we are to survive.

Debt always makes things seem better in the short-term, and it is always destructive in the long-term.

When we go into debt as a nation, we are literally stealing from the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have. Through the first 11 months of this fiscal year, the official U.S. budget deficit was $895,000,000,000, which means that we continue to steal more than 100 million dollars from future generations of Americans every single hour of every single day.

And it is important to remember that not all additions to the national debt are included in the official budget deficit. One year ago, our national debt was sitting at 20.1 trillion dollars, and that means that we have added an astounding 1.3 trillion dollars to the debt over the past 12 months.

This is complete and utter insanity, and it must stop now.

Let me try to put this into perspective. Not too long ago, Venezuela was once one of the wealthiest countries in South America. These days, many Americans like to laugh at them, but we are on the exact same path that Venezuela has gone down. Eventually, the day comes when there is not enough of someone else’s money to spend, and suffocating levels of debt make the option of printing giant mountains of money too tempting to resist. At that point it is just a matter of time before the currency is destroyed and society devolves into chaos.

If current Congressional Budget Office projections area anywhere close to accurate, America’s date with destiny is rapidly approaching. The following comes from CBS News…

Under the new baseline incorporating recent changes in law, the national debt reaches $99 trillion in 2048 — equivalent to 152 percent of GDP.

And the CBO is also projecting that our yearly budget deficit will go from one trillion dollars today to 6 trillion dollars by 2048…

The federal budget deficit is expected to break through a trillion dollars in 2020 and never look back, reaching $2 trillion in 2032 and $6 trillion in 2048.

But like I said, we will never actually get there, because our society will collapse by then.

So we only have a limited amount of time to save America, and the clock is ticking.

At this point, the total amount of U.S. government debt held by the public has already surpassed all household debt…

Debt held by the public will top $127,000 per household by the end of the year, according to JPMorgan. Personal debt per household will average about $126,000.

“This is an astonishing statistic,” said David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Funds. “Americans have a lot of debt. I always feel nervous signing a mortgage or a car loan. I think, can I afford all this debt? Then you realize the government is busy borrowing even more money on your behalf.”

I wish that I could get more people to understand just how serious this is.

Do you know what the inflation rate will be in Venezuela this year?

The IMF is projecting that it will be more than a million percent.

Chaos is everywhere, crime is out of control and people are starving, and yet we refuse to learn from what has happened to them.

We just keep spending and spending, and we think that we have found the key to prosperity.

But what we have really found is an accelerated path to economic hell.

And it isn’t just the U.S. that is in deep trouble. The entire globe has been on a massive debt binge, and it is only a matter of time before this gigantic debt bubble implodes. The following comes from an excellent piece by Larry Elliott…

The BIS says in its latest annual report that there are already material risks to financial stability. “In some respects, the risks mirror the unbalanced post-crisis recovery and its excessive reliance on monetary policy. Where financial vulnerabilities exist, they have been building up, in their usual gradual and persistent way. More generally, financial markets are overstretched … and we have seen a continuous rise in the global stock of debt, private plus public, in relation to GDP. This has extended a trend that goes back to well before the crisis and that has coincided with a long-term decline in interest rates.”

Behind the dry official language, the message is clear. A recovery that is based around high and rising levels of debt is really no recovery at all. The world economy is, in all material respects, the same as it was in the run-up to the 2008 crisis. The necessary reforms to a flawed model have not taken place, which is why the BIS warning should not be ignored.

On a personal level, have you ever gotten into debt trouble?

At first, it was a lot of fun enjoying all of the new things that all of that debt bought, but the pain afterwards greatly outweighed the initial temporary prosperity.

The same principle is going to also apply on a global scale. The U.S. government is now more than 20 trillion dollars in debt, and the entire globe is now more than 250 trillion dollars in debt, and a day of reckoning is coming. The following comes from David Stockman…

And it’s that $20 trillion, built up over the last two decades, that has basically distorted everything – falsified prices, repressed interest rates, caused an explosion of debt. Twenty years ago there was $40 trillion of debt in the world today there is $250 trillion worth of debt in the world. The leverage of the world has gone from 1.3 times which is stable…to 3.3 times, which basically means the world has created a huge temporary prosperity by burying itself in debt.

It would take an unprecedented effort to turn things around, but right now hardly anyone seems concerned about bringing all of this debt under control.

So we continue to roll on toward our date with financial disaster, and most people are completely oblivious to what is about to happen to us.

We Are About To See A Great, Big Debt-Fueled GDP Number For The 2nd Quarter, But There Is A Catch…

July 26, 2018July 26, 2018 by Michael

What kind of number for GDP growth in the 2nd quarter will we get on Friday? The market consensus is somewhere around 4 percent, but there are many out there that are expecting a number above 5 percent. The last time we witnessed such a number was during the third quarter of 2014 when the U.S. economy grew by 5.2 percent. If Friday’s GDP figure is better than that, it will be the best report that we have had since 2003. But let’s keep things in perspective. In seven of the last 10 years, GDP growth was much lower than anticipated in the first quarter and much higher than anticipated in the second quarter. It looks like that pattern may play out again in 2018, and analysts are already warning us to expect a much lower number for the third quarter.

And even though we have seen good quarters before, we still have not had a full year of 3 percent growth since the middle of the Bush administration.

Last year the U.S. economy grew by only 2.3 percent, which would be a horrible figure even if the government was using honest numbers. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, GDP growth for 2017 would have actually been negative if honest numbers were being used.

So let’s not get too excited over one quarter. According to the official government numbers, the U.S. economy has not grown by at least 3 percent on an annual basis in 14 years. That is the longest stretch in all of U.S. history by a wide margin, and it is going to take a really good second half to break that string this year.

But that isn’t stopping people from hyping tomorrow’s number. According to White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow, we should see a number “in the 4 to 5 percent zone”…

“You’re going to get a GDP number on Friday that’s going to be a very impressive number. Some people are in the 4 to 5 percent zone,” Larry Kudlow, the White House economic adviser, told CBS This Morning.

And he is probably right.

In fact, we might see a number that is even better than that.

As CBS News has noted, the second quarter came after the new tax cuts were implemented but before the trade war started…

The second-quarter figure will be widely seen as a referendum on the GOP tax cuts of late 2017. This quarter benefits from a timing sweet spot, coming after the deficit-busting cuts trickled through the economy, but before the effects of the White House’s protectionist trade policies are fully felt.

If we get a really good number, it may actually be bad news for investors.

As Marketwatch has deftly observed, a high GDP growth number may affirm the Federal Reserve’s narrative that they need to keep raising rates in order to keep the economy from “overheating”…

Ultimately, a reading that comes in too hot could fuel expectations that the Federal Reserve may need to ramp up its pace of rate increases, with the possibility of a further two rate increases in September and December likely to tamp down too-hot growth. That could knock bond prices lower, conversely pushing rates up and pressuring equity markets lower as investors worry about rising borrowing costs.

Ultimately, most of the analysis that you are going to hear about this GDP number is a load of nonsense.

The only reason why the U.S. economy is showing a little bit of growth is because we are on the greatest debt binge in our history.

When Donald Trump entered the White House the U.S. government was 19.9 trillion dollars in debt, and now that figure has ballooned to 21.2 trillion dollars in debt.

If we had not added 1.3 trillion dollars to the national debt over the past year and a half, there is no way that the economy would be growing right now.

And to be honest, it wouldn’t be too difficult to ramp up GDP growth to 10 percent. All we would have to do would be to borrow and spend enough money.

So why don’t we do that?

Well, it is because we are already on a path to national suicide. It is being projected that our national debt will hit 30 trillion dollars by 2028, and neither the Republicans nor the Democrats seem concerned about doing anything to alter this trajectory.

If we do get to 30 trillion dollars in debt and interest rates return to their long-term averages, we will be paying more than 1.5 trillion dollars a year just in interest on the national debt and our nation will be financially destroyed.

Many of our largest states are absolutely drowning in debt as well. The following comes from Fox Business…

In Illinois, for instance, vendors wait months to be paid by a government that’s $30 billion in debt, and one whose bonds are just one notch above junk bond status, according to Daniels. New York’s more than $356 billion in debt; New Jersey more than $104 billion; and California more than $428 billion.

As I have explained so many times, we are living a debt-fueled standard of living that is way above what we deserve.

If we only spent what we had, the economy would immediately plunge into a depression and our standard of living would collapse. The only way to keep the party going is to borrow and spend increasingly larger amounts of money, but everyone knows that this is simply not sustainable.

And it isn’t just government debt that is the problem.

Since the last financial crisis, corporate debt has doubled.

A massive consumer debt binge has pushed credit card debt to an all-time record high, and at this point the average American household is nearly $140,000 in debt.

When you add all forms of debt together, Americans are nearly 70 trillion dollars in the hole right now. For much more on all of this, please see my previous article entitled “Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History”.

So enjoy the debt-fueled GDP numbers for now, because the truth is that they aren’t going to last for long.

Our endless appetite for debt is literally destroying the bright future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have, and someday they will look back and curse us for what we have done to their country.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Why America Is Heading Straight Toward The Worst Debt Crisis In History

May 24, 2018 by Michael

Today, America is nearly 70 trillion dollars in debt, and that debt is shooting higher at an exponential rate. Usually most of the focus in on the national debt, which is now 21 trillion dollars and rising, but when you total all forms of debt in our society together it comes to a grand total just short of 70 trillion dollars. Many people seem to believe that the debt imbalances that existed prior to the great financial crisis of 2008 have been solved, but that is not the case at all. We are living in the terminal phase of the greatest debt bubble in history, and with each passing day that mountain of debt just keeps on getting bigger and bigger. It simply is not mathematically possible for debt to keep on growing at a pace that is many times greater than GDP growth, and at some point this absurd bubble will come to an abrupt end. So those that are forecasting many years of prosperity to come are simply being delusional. Our current standard of living is very heavily fueled by debt, and at some point we are going to hit a wall.

Let’s talk about consumer debt first. Excluding mortgage debt, consumer debt is projected to hit the 4 trillion dollar mark by the end of the year…

Americans are in a borrowing mood, and their total tab for consumer debt could reach a record $4 trillion by the end of 2018.

That’s according to LendingTree, a loan comparison website, which analyzed data from the Federal Reserve on nonmortgage debts including credit cards, and auto, personal and student loans.

Americans owe more than 26 percent of their annual income to this debt. That’s up from 22 percent in 2010. It’s also higher than debt levels during the mid-2000s when credit availability soared.

We have never seen this level of consumer debt before in all of U.S. history. Just a few days ago I wrote about how tens of millions of Americans are living on the edge financially, and this is yet more evidence to back up that claim.

Right now, Americans owe more than a trillion dollars on auto loans, and we are clearly in the greatest auto loan debt bubble that we have ever seen.

Americans also owe more than a trillion dollars on their credit cards, and credit card delinquency rates are rising. In fact, in some ways what we witnessed during the first quarter of 2018 was quite reminiscent of the peak of the last financial crisis…

In the first quarter, the delinquency rate on credit-card loan balances at commercial banks other than the largest 100 – so at the 4,788 smaller banks in the US – spiked in to 5.9%. This exceeds the peak during the Financial Crisis. The credit-card charge-off rate at these banks spiked to 8%. This is approaching the peak during the Financial Crisis.

The student loan debt bubble has also surpassed a trillion dollars, and the average young adult with student loan debt has a negative net worth…

Despite economic and stock market gains over the past nine years, many young adults are still struggling to get ahead in their financial lives and, in some ways, things may have actually gotten worse.

Americans age 25 to 34 with college degrees and student debt have a median net wealth of negative $1,900, according to a report analyzing 2016 Federal Reserve data released Thursday by Young Invincibles, a young adult advocacy group. That’s a drop of $9,000 from 2013, YI’s analysis found.

Meanwhile, corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis. Thousands of companies are so highly leveraged that even a slight economic downturn could completely wipe them out.

State and local government debt levels are also at record highs, but nobody seems to care. And if we never have another recession everything might work out okay.

The biggest offender of all, of course, is the United States federal government. We have been adding about a trillion dollars a year to the national debt since Barack Obama first entered the White House, and Goldman Sachs is projecting that number will surpass 2 trillion dollars by 2028…

The fiscal outlook for the United States “is not good,” according to Goldman Sachs, and could pose a threat to the country’s economic security during the next recession.

According to forecasts from the bank’s chief economist, the federal deficit will increase from $825 billion (or 4.1 percent of gross domestic product) to $1.25 trillion (5.5 percent of GDP) by 2021. And by 2028, the bank expects the number to balloon to $2.05 trillion (7 percent of GDP).

Our national debt has been growing at an exponential rate for decades, and because total disaster has not struck yet many people seem to believe that we can keep on doing this.

But the truth is that it simply is not possible. There is only so much debt that a society can take on before the entire system implodes.

So how close are we to that point?

The following chart comes from Charles Hugh Smith, and it shows the exponential rise in overall debt levels that has taken us to the brink of nearly 70 trillion dollars in debt…

And this next chart from the SRSrocco Report shows how our rate of overall debt growth has compared to our rate of GDP growth…

We are literally on a path to national suicide.

Whether it happens next month, next year or five years from now, it is inevitable that we are going to slam into a brick wall of financial reality.

For the moment, the only way that we can continue to enjoy our current debt-fueled standard of living is to continue increasing our debt bubble at an exponential rate.

But that can only go on for so long, and when the party ends we are going to experience the greatest debt crisis in history.

Today, the average American household is nearly $140,000 in debt, and that is more than double median household income. And if we were to include each household’s share of corporate debt, local government debt, state government debt and federal government debt, that number would be many times higher.

All of this debt will never be repaid. Ultimately there will come a day when the system will completely collapse under the weight of so much debt, and most Americans are completely unaware that such a day of reckoning is rapidly approaching.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Federal Reserve: More Than 4 Out Of 10 Americans Do Not Even Have Enough Money To Cover An Unexpected $400 Expense

May 22, 2018 by Michael

The U.S. economy is not doing nearly as well as the mainstream media would have you believe. A few days ago I wrote about a new study that discovered that nearly 51 million U.S. households “can’t afford basics like rent and food”, and just yesterday I discussed the fact that we are on pace for the worst year for retail store closings ever. Now we have just gotten new numbers from the Federal Reserve which are absolutely staggering. According to the Fed’s latest study, more than 4 out of every 10 Americans do not even have enough money to cover an unexpected $400 expense without borrowing the funds or selling something. In essence, nearly half the country has no significant financial cushion whatsoever. So what are all of those people going to do when the next economic crisis hits?

Sadly, living on the edge has become a daily reality for tens of millions of Americans. The following is from a CNN article about the Fed’s new report…

Can you cover an unexpected $400 expense?

Four in ten Americans can’t, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Board. Those who don’t have the cash on hand say they’d have to cover it by borrowing or selling something.

According to the report, the exact figure is 41 percent.

41 percent of all U.S. adults cannot cover an unexpected $400 expense.

Let that number sink in for a moment.

I am sorry – if you can’t come up with $400 right now without borrowing it, you are broke. And as of right now that is the financial condition of 41 percent of all Americans.

Amazingly, the Federal Reserve is actually trying to spin this report as good news…

“This year’s survey finds that rising levels of employment are translating into improved financial conditions for many but not all Americans,” Fed Governor Lael Brainard said.

Really?

Fortunately, there are others that are seeing right through the spin and are telling it like it is…

“The finding that four-in-ten adults couldn’t cover an unexpected $400 expense without selling something or borrowing money is troubling,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at Bankrate.com. “Nothing is more fundamental to achieving financial stability than having savings that can be drawn upon when the unexpected occurs.”

And that wasn’t the only bad news in the report.

Here are some more incredible facts from the report as summarized by Zero Hedge…

One-third of those with varying income, or 10 percent of all adults, say they struggled to pay their bills at least once in the past year due to varying income
Over three-fourths of whites were at least doing okay financially in 2017 versus less than two-thirds of blacks and Hispanics.
Over a quarter of young adults ages 25 to 29, and slightly more than 1 in 10 in their 30s, live with their parents.
Over two-fifths of young adults in their late 20s provide financial assistance to their parents
Nearly 25 percent of young adults under age 30, and 10 percent of all adults, receive some form of financial support from someone living outside their home.
While 8 in 10 adults living in middle- and upper-income neighborhoods are satisfied with the overall quality of their community, only 6 in 10 living in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods are satisfied
Seven in 10 low-income renters spend more than 30 percent of their monthly income on rent

And on top of all of that, here is one more really alarming number to chew on…

Even without an unexpected expense, the report reveals, 22% of adults expected to forgo payment on some of their bills in the month of the survey. “One-third of those who are not able to pay all their bills say that their rent, mortgage, or utility bills will be left at least partially unpaid.”

When 22 percent of the people in your country cannot pay their bills this month, that is called a crisis.

Yes, we are hopeful for better things for the U.S. economy under President Trump. But the current blind optimism that we are witnessing out there right now is simply absurd…

A new poll shows an overwhelming number of Americans believe President Trump is playing a positive role in the current state of the economy.

The CBS survey reveals almost 70% of respondents think the president is –either mostly or somewhat– responsible for the current economic climate.

Additionally, around 65% of Americans believe the economy is doing well, compared to under 10% who think it’s doing ‘very poorly.’

Ladies and gentlemen, the U.S. economy has not had a full year of 3 percent GDP growth since the middle of the Bush administration.

This is the longest stretch of below 3 percent growth in all of U.S. history by a very wide margin.

So please don’t try to tell me that the U.S. economy is “doing well” until we can get back above that 3 percent number.

The sad truth is that we have been in a very long period of economic stagnation, and during this period wealth is being increasingly concentrated at the very top of the pyramid and the middle class is being systematically eviscerated.

Tens of millions of families are just barely scraping by from month to month, and when an unexpected emergency happens that is often enough to push a lot of families completely over the edge.

In fact, my good friend Daisy Luther recently wrote about how this actually happened to her own family…

Before my daughter’s illness, I was doing everything “right.”

I had enough money in my emergency fund to carry me through 3 lean months

I had numerous credit cards with zero balances

My only debt was my car

My kids are going to school without student loans

I opted out of health insurance because it was more financially practical to pay cash (and I still agree with that decision)

Everything was great.

Until it wasn’t.

I am sure that many of you can identify with Daisy.

Most of us have had a life-altering event cause serious financial stress at some point. And close to half the country is completely unprepared for such an event.

For years, I have been strongly encouraging my readers to build up their emergency funds, because one thing that you can count on in life is that the unexpected will happen. Having a good financial cushion is one of the best things that you can possibly do for yourself and your family financially, and if you haven’t gotten started on that yet, I would urge you to do so as soon as possible.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

Debt Cancer: More Than 80 Percent Of American Adults Owe Somebody Else Money

February 18, 2018February 18, 2018 by Michael

How long can our debt levels keep growing much, much faster than the overall economy? We haven’t had a year of 3 percent growth for the U.S. economy since the middle of the Bush administration, but we keep borrowing money as if there is no tomorrow. Much of the focus has been on the exploding debt of the federal government, and that is definitely something I plan to address once I get to Washington. But on an individual level, U.S. consumers have been extremely irresponsible as well. In fact, one new survey has found that more than 80 percent of all American adults are currently in debt…

It’s no secret that America is a nation that runs on debt, but it may surprise you to learn that the overwhelming majority of U.S. adults owe money in some way, shape, or form. According to new data from Comet, here’s how many Americans have debt at present:

80.9% of Baby Boomers

79.9% of Gen Xers

81.5% of Millennials

For most of us, it starts very early. We were told that going into debt to get a college education would not be a problem because we would be able to pay those loans off with the good jobs we would get after graduation.

Unfortunately, those good jobs never really materialized for many of us, and now millions of former college students are absolutely drowning in debt…

A study released Friday by the Brookings Institution finds that most borrowers who left school owing at least $50,000 in student loans in 2010 had failed to pay down any of their debt four years later. Instead, their balances had on average risen by 5% as interest accrued on their debt.

As of 2014 there were about 5 million borrowers with such large loan balances, out of 40 million Americans total with student debt. Large-balance borrowers represented 17% of student borrowers leaving college or grad school in 2014, up from 2% of all borrowers in 1990 after adjusting for inflation. Large-balance borrowers now owe 58% of the nation’s $1.4 trillion in outstanding student debt.

In addition to owing more than a trillion dollars on student loans, Americans are also now carrying more than a trillion dollars of auto loan debt and more than a trillion dollars of credit card debt.

Corporations have been incredibly irresponsible as well. Corporate debt has doubled since the last financial crisis, and corporate bankruptcies have been rising steadily in recent years. All it would take for the dominoes to really start falling is some sort of a major economic downturn.

Local, state and federal government debt levels are all at record highs as well. It is now being projected that our national debt will hit 30 trillion dollars by 2028, and those projections are probably too optimistic.

My guess is that we will almost certainly hit the 30 trillion dollar mark far sooner than that.

We can’t keep doing this to ourselves. Our incessant greed is literally destroying the future, but anyone that tries to warn about the collective insanity that has descended upon our society is mocked and ridiculed.

Let me ask you a question.

Would you willingly choose to give yourself cancer?

Of course not, but that is essentially what we are doing to ourselves as a society.

Debt is economic cancer, and as Lance Roberts has pointed out, if we continue to allow debt levels to grow like this eventually it will kill our entire economy…

Debt is, by its very nature, a cancer on economic growth. As debt levels rise it consumes more capital by diverting it from productive investments into debt service. As debt levels spread through the system it consumes greater amounts of capital until it eventually kills the host.

Debt is addictive, because it does boost our standard of living in the short-term. It is so easy to keep going back for one more “hit”, but every time we do it just makes our long-term crisis even worse.

Most people out there seem to think that our economic problems have been “solved”, but that is not true at all.

The truth is that our long-term problems just continue to grow with each passing day, and that is one of the reasons why I am so determined to go to Washington. We are at such a critical juncture right now, and if something is not done the prognosis is extremely negative.

If we stay on this current path, the very best that we can hope for is a “soft landing” and a greatly reduced standard of living for future generations of Americans. Here is more from Lance Roberts…

The processes that fueled the economic growth over the last 30 years are now beginning to run in reverse, and when combined with the demographic shifts in the U.S., the impact could be far more immediate and prolonged than the media, economists, and analysts are currently expecting. Sacrifices will have to be made, the economy will drag on at subpar rates of growth, individuals will be working far longer into their retirement years and the next generation of Americans will lead a far different life than what the currently retiring generation enjoyed.

It is simply a function of the math.

I am sorry for not writing more lately. I have been working night and day to get ready for May 15th. With Donald Trump in the White House, this is our opportunity to take our government back. If we miss this window, we may never have this sort of opportunity ever again.

America is drowning in debt, but of course our problems go far beyond that. Our economic, political, cultural and spiritual problems go very deep, and we desperately need to change course as a nation.

Unfortunately, most of the population is in a deep state of sleep, and my hope is that we can wake them up while there is still time to turn things around.

Michael Snyder is a pro-Trump candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

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