Suicide

The U.S. National Debt Just Hit The 23 Trillion Dollar Mark As We Continue To Steamroll Toward Financial Oblivion

November 13, 2019November 13, 2019 by Michael

This week, the U.S. national debt reached the 23 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever. There was no fanfare, there were no politicians giving speeches about fiscal responsibility, and there has been very little national outrage. We have simply come to accept that it is “normal” for our national debt to grow at an exponential rate, but the truth is that we are literally committing national suicide. Given enough time, there is no doubt that this colossal mountain of debt will kill our Republic, and yet fiscal responsibility is not even a major national issue any longer. Everyone seems to be okay with the fact that we are stealing more than 100 million dollars every single hour of every single day from future generations of Americans and destroying the bright future that they were supposed to have. What we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal, and yet very few of us seem to care.

At this point things are so bad that even Fed Chair Jerome Powell is warning Congress that the national debt is a major problem…

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned lawmakers Wednesday that the ballooning federal debt could hamper Congress’ ability to support the economy in a downturn, urging them to put the budget “on a sustainable path.”

Powell suggested such fiscal aid could be vital after the Fed has cut its benchmark interest rate three times this year, leaving the central bank less room to lower rates further in case of a recession.

When a major downturn hits the U.S. economy, the federal government is not going to be able to do much because we are already spending money at emergency levels.

Of course Powell shouldn’t exactly be criticizing Congress, because the Fed has already been using up all of their ammunition too.

So when the next recession officially arrives, the amount of intervention that will be possible will be very limited.

Since Barack Obama’s inauguration, we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars to the national debt every year. That is utter insanity, but it has helped the economy in the short-term.

When the federal government borrows money that it does not have and spends it into the economy, that boosts economic activity. But at the same time it makes our long-term financial problems even worse.

If we were to go back and remove from the economy the 12.4 trillion dollars that the federal government added to our national debt since Obama’s inauguration, we would be in the deepest economic depression in American history right now.

So all of that reckless spending has kept us from economic disaster, but it has set the stage for something even worse when this bubble finally bursts.

In October, the federal government’s budget deficit for the month was $134.5 billion. That was 34 percent higher than for the same month a year earlier.

I can’t even begin to describe how foolish this is. The extreme negligence being committed by our politicians in Washington is mind blowing.

And this is just the beginning of our problems. As our population ages, Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs are going to become rapidly more oppressive…

This is only going to get worse. According to Census Bureau projections, by 2030 each 100 working-age Americans will be supporting 35 retirees, and this could rise to 42 by 2060. Another way to think of this is to calculate the number of retirees each worker must support. In 1946, the burden of one retiree was shared between 42 workers. Today, according to the SSA, roughly three workers cover each retiree’s Social Security and Medicare benefits. By 2030, however, there will be only two workers supporting each retiree.

So where are we going to get the money that we need to support those programs?

Of course we aren’t actually going to make it to 2060. Our entire system will implode long before then.

Consumers have also been on a tremendous debt binge in recent years, and we just learned that total U.S. household debt is about to cross the 14 trillion dollar mark…

Americans increased their borrowing for the 21st straight quarter as more households took out loans to buy homes or refinance existing mortgages, according to a report released today from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Total U.S. household debt rose $92 billion, or 0.7%, to $13.95 trillion in the third quarter, the New York Fed’s quarterly household credit and debt report showed.

We are in the final stages of the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world, and most of us realize that this chapter in our history is going to end very badly.

So why do we just keep making things worse?

Of course it isn’t just the United States that is drowning in debt. According to the IMF, total global debt has now reached the 188 trillion dollar mark…

The global debt crisis has reached epic and historical proportions. It’s now $188 trillion, which is more than double the entire economic output of the entire planet.

The global debt load has surged to a new record of around 230% of the world’s output, IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said according to a report by the Daily Mail. The entire globe’s economic stability is hanging by a thread, and this news makes that thread appear just a little thinner.

Most people don’t understand that the global financial system has literally been designed to create as much debt as possible. But once you grasp this, it shouldn’t actually be a surprise that we are now 188 trillion dollars in debt. The system is simply doing what it was intended to do. For much more on this, please see my previous article entitled “Global Debt Is Up To $188,000,000,000,000 – This Is Officially The Biggest Debt Bubble The World Has Ever Seen”.

For decades, we have been ignoring the future consequences of running up so much debt, but at some point time is going to run out.

In a recent article, Ron Paul put it this way…

Even though the federal deficit is already over one trillion dollars (and growing), President Trump and Congress have no interest in cutting spending, especially in an election year. Should he win reelection, President Trump is unlikely to reverse course and champion fiscal restraint. Instead, he will likely take his victory as a sign that the people support big federal budgets and huge deficits. None of the leading Democratic candidates are even pretending to care about the deficit. Instead they are proposing increasing spending by trillions on new government programs.

Joseph Zidle, a strategist with the Blackstone investment firm, has called the government — or “sovereign” — debt bubble the “mother of all bubbles.” When the sovereign debt bubble inevitably busts, it will cause a meltdown bigger than the 2008 crash.

As usual, Ron Paul is right on the mark.

And actually “a meltdown bigger than the 2008 crash” would be a best case scenario.

Ultimately, it is extremely doubtful that we are going to be able to survive what is going to happen to us once this bubble completely bursts.

The Republic that previous generations of Americans sacrificed so much to build is being systematically destroyed, and it is our own greed that is doing it.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. My name is Michael Snyder and I am the publisher of 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 have written four books 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 those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles on their own websites, but due to government regulations I need those that republish my articles to include this “About the Author” section with each article. In order to comply with those government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. 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. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of the websites where my work is republished. I encourage you to follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter, and any way that you can share these articles with others is a great help.

Guess Who Is Preparing For A Major Stock Market Crash?

November 12, 2019 by Michael

Pessimism is spreading like wildfire on Wall Street, and this is particularly true among one very important group of investors. And considering how much money they have, it may be wise to listen to what they are telling us. According to a very alarming survey that was recently conducted by UBS Wealth Management, most wealthy investors now believe that there will be a “significant” stock market decline before the end of next year. The following comes from Yahoo Finance…

Wealthy people around the globe are hunkering down for a potentially turbulent 2020, according to UBS Global Wealth Management.

A majority of rich investors expect a significant drop in markets before the end of next year, and 25% of their average assets are currently in cash, according to a survey of more than 3,400 global respondents. The U.S.-China trade conflict is their top geopolitical concern, while the upcoming American presidential election is seen as another significant threat to portfolios.

Of course this could ultimately become something of a self-fulfilling prophecy if enough wealthy investors pull their money out of stocks and start increasing their cash reserves instead. Nobody wants to be the last one out of the barn, and it isn’t going to take too much of a spark to set off a full-blown panic. Perhaps the most troubling number from the entire survey is the fact that almost 80 percent of the wealthy investors that UBS surveyed believe that “volatility is likely to increase”…

Nearly four-fifths of respondents say volatility is likely to increase, and 55% think there will be a significant market sell-off before the end of 2020, according to the report which was conducted between August and October and polled those with at least $1 million in investable assets. Sixty percent are considering increasing their cash levels further, while 62% plan to increase diversification across asset classes.

During volatile times for the market, stocks tend to go down.

And during extremely volatile times, stocks tend to go down very rapidly.

Could it be possible that many of these wealthy investors have gotten wind of some things that the general public doesn’t know about yet?

Of course the truth is that anyone with half a brain can see that stock valuations are ridiculously bloated right now and that a crash is inevitable at some point.

And as I noted yesterday, corporate insiders are currently selling off stocks at the fastest pace in about two decades.

But why is there suddenly so much concern about 2020?

A different survey of business executives that was recently conducted found that 62 percent of them believe that “a recession will happen within the next 18 months”…

A majority of respondents – 62% – believe a recession will happen within the next 18 months. Private companies are particularly worried that a recession lurks in the near term, with 39% anticipating a recession in the next 12 months. This compares with 33% of public company respondents who felt the same way. About one-quarter – 23% – of respondents do not expect a recession within the next two years.

62 percent is a very solid majority, and without a doubt we are starting to see businesses pull back on investment in a major way.

In fact, according to Axios business investment in the United States has now dropped for six months in a row…

Business investment has fallen for six months straight and declined by 3% in the third quarter, the largest drop since 2015.
The retrenchment by businesses helped turn Wednesday’s U.S. workforce productivity report — a key economic metric that compares goods-and-services output to the number of labor hours worked — negative for the first time in four years.

I know that I bombard my readers with numbers like this on an almost daily basis, but I cannot stress enough how ominous the economic outlook is at this point.

And it isn’t just the U.S. that we need to be concerned about. Two other surveys that measure the business outlook for the entire globe just fell to their lowest levels in a decade…

The IHS Markit global business outlook—which surveys 12,000 companies three times a year—fell to the worst level since 2009, when data was first collected.

The Ifo world economic outlook, which surveys 1,230 people in 117 countries, fell in the fourth quarter to the worst level since the second quarter of 2009.

Markit’s poll found optimism for activity, employment and profits in the year ahead were all at the lowest level since the financial crisis. Markit also reported a decline in planned investment spending, with inflation expectations at a three-year low.

It is really happening.

The global economy really is heading into a major downturn.

And once this crisis really gets rolling, it is going to be exceedingly painful.

All across America, big companies are already starting to go under at a pace that is absolutely frightening. For instance, on Tuesday one of the biggest dairy companies in the entire country filed for bankruptcy…

Dairy giant Dean Foods filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as declining milk sales take a toll on the industry.

Dean Foods – whose more than 50 brands include Dean’s, Land O’ Lakes and Country Fresh – said it intends to continue operating.

The company said it “is engaged in advanced discussions” for a sale to Dairy Farmers of America, a national milk cooperative representing farmers, producers and brands such as Borden cheese and Kemps Dairy.

I have quite a few relatives in Minnesota, and I have always had a soft spot for Land O’Lakes butter. So it definitely saddened me to hear that this was happening.

But a lot more major casualties are coming.

Of course the economic optimists will continue to insist that we are just experiencing a few bumps on a path that leads to a wonderful new era of American prosperity. They will continue to tell us of a great “financial harvest” that is about to happen even when things are falling apart all around us.

You can believe them if you want, but most wealthy investors and most business owners believe that hard times are dead ahead.

I have never seen so much pessimism about a coming year as I am seeing about 2020 right now.

There is a growing national consensus that it is going to be a very chaotic year, and I would recommend using what little time you have left to get prepared for it.

If Impeachment Fails, Will The Elite Crash The Economy In Order To Prevent Four More Years Of Trump?

November 12, 2019November 12, 2019 by Michael

By now, it is exceedingly obvious that the global elite absolutely hate Donald Trump. No president in U.S. history has faced such a relentless assault by the corporate media, and there have been attempts to sabotage his presidency at every turn. Miraculously, Trump has survived all of these attacks so far, but now the specter of impeachment looms large over his administration. The Democrats have a solid majority in the U.S. House of Representatives, they are working quickly toward drafting articles of impeachment, and they actually hope to have Trump impeached by Christmas Day. But in order to have Trump removed from office, 67 votes will be needed in the Senate, and right now Democrats only control 47 of those seats. It was always going to be tough for Democrats to get 20 Republicans in the Senate to turn on Trump, but they have bungled this process so badly that they might not end up getting any at all.

That scenario will become even more likely if House Republicans stand solidly united behind Trump, and at this point even the Washington Post is admitting that there is a possibility “that not a single House Republican” will vote for the articles of impeachment…

Congressional Republicans are sticking with their party leader in the face of thousands of pages of evidence showing President Trump leveraged foreign policy for political favors, raising the possibility that not a single House Republican will vote for his impeachment.

Of course it will only take a simple majority to impeach Trump in the House, and Democrats will be able to do that with no problem, but it appears that the effort to remove Trump will be completely dead when it gets to the Senate.

Yes, things could still change and this is a very fluid situation, but as things stand today it seems that Trump is safe.

So what are the elite going to do if impeachment fails?

They are facing the prospect that Trump could actually win again in 2020, and that would mean that he would remain in the White House until January 2025.

For many among the elite, such a scenario must be avoided at all costs. And the quickest way to get the general public to turn on any president is for the economy to crumble.

This is one of the reasons why some prominent voices on the left have been openly wishing for a recession. For example, just check out what Bill Maher said not too long ago…

“I’ve been saying for about two years that I hope we have a recession and people get mad at me,” said Maher, a multimillionaire who would likely be well insulated from a financial downturn.

“I’m just saying we can survive a recession,” he continued. “We’ve had 47 of them. We’ve had one every time there’s a Republican president! They don’t last forever, You know what lasts forever? Wiping out species!”

Maher is literally wishing for economic pain for more than 300 million Americans just so that another four years of Trump can be avoided.

That is how obsessed some of these radicals are with getting rid of Trump.

And without a doubt, the performance of the economy could be Trump’s Achilles heel. Whenever any piece of good economic news comes out, he eagerly takes credit for it, and he has publicly warned that there will be an economic crash if a Democrat wins in 2020…

President Donald Trump predicted doom if he isn’t re-elected in 2020, saying that the economy would “CRASH” like it did during the Great Depression.

In a tweet Wednesday morning, the president called the crowded field of Democratic challengers “clowns” and compared the prospects of one of them winning to the stock market collapse of 1929.

Even though many Democrats on Wall Street absolutely hate Trump, it is undeniable that they have made out very well while he has been in the White House. In fact, only three presidents have seen the stock market perform better during their first three years in office…

Stock market performance in first three years since Trump’s election, then, ranks fourth among the 14 elected presidents since Herbert Hoover. That’s pretty good! It’s worth noting, though, that there’s not a whole lot separating him from John F. Kennedy, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush. A bad week or two, and he could easily fall to eighth place. On the other hand, falling to ninth would take some work, as would catching up to Dwight Eisenhower for third. Put into letter grades, I’d give the market’s performance since Trump’s election a solid B.

But what happens if the stock market crashes and the U.S. economy plunges into a deep recession in 2020?

Well, just as Trump has been getting credit for the good things that have happened in recent years, he would also get the blame if things got really bad.

Of course that wouldn’t actually be fair, because the truth is that the Federal Reserve actually has far more influence over the performance of the economy and the performance of the stock market than the president does.

But the general public does not understand these things.

When things really start to fall apart, people are going to blame whoever is in the White House, and since Trump was so eager to take credit when things were going good he won’t have any way to avoid the blame when things severely deteriorate.

So would the global elite really resort to “the nuclear option” of crashing the economy in order to prevent Trump from winning the next election?

You never know, but it is entirely possible. Today, debt is the lifeblood of our economy, and if the big banks started to tighten up the flow of credit that would begin to slow down our economy immediately. And as I noted yesterday, we are already starting to see banks deny loans to farmers in the middle of the country on a widespread basis. The tighter that lenders become with their money, the worse that our economy will do, and this is something that we should be watching closely.

The stock market is also a potential flashpoint. Right now, insiders are selling off their stocks “at the fastest pace in two decades”, and valuations are ridiculously inflated. Companies that are losing giant mountains of money every single year are supposedly worth billions of dollars, and the market has been going up for so long that most investors have completely forgotten about 2008. But at some point this entire charade is going to come crashing down, and it wouldn’t take very much of a “push” to make that happen.

There is an even bigger bubble in the bond market. Today, there is 188 trillion dollars of debt in the global financial system, and those at the very top of the economic food chain control much of that debt. Could it be possible that they would be willing to unleash a bit of chaos in order to achieve their political goals?

I don’t think that the global elite really want to go through a major crisis, but at this point for many of them just about anything is preferable to four more years of Trump.

We are less than two months away from 2020, and I truly believe that it will be the most chaotic year that any of us have seen in a very long time.

There are a lot of very powerful people that are absolutely determined to keep Trump from winning this upcoming election, and they would be willing to do just about anything in order to make that happen.

For Millions Of Americans In The Middle Of The Country, It Feels Like An Economic Depression Right Now

November 10, 2019November 10, 2019 by Michael

What do you do when you have lost all hope that things will ever turn around? It may still feel like “the economy is booming” for those at the top end of the economic food chain in big coastal cities such as New York and San Francisco, but for millions of hard working Americans in the middle of the country, talk of a “coming recession” is absolutely ludicrous because it already feels like a severe economic depression is happening right now. In America’s heartland, bankruptcies are surging, debt burdens are becoming overwhelming, and suicide rates are spiking to unprecedented levels. We have not seen economic despair this extreme since the last recession, and I am about to share a story with you that will absolutely break your heart.

At one time, South Dakota farmers Chris and Amber Dykshorn looked toward the future with great optimism. But mounting debts and several years of disastrous weather changed all that, and in June their community was shocked when Chris took his own life…

Amber Dykshorn stood at her kitchen window and watched the storm come in.

It was a very dark Saturday night in the middle of the summer in the middle of a year that is on track to be the wettest in more than a century. The wind blew over the farm, the rain came down and she heard the ominous pings on her roof – pea-sized hail, striking the still-fragile stalks of the only corn her husband, Chris Dykshorn, was able to plant before he took his own life in June.

Chris had lost all hope.

The couple was absolutely drowning in debt, and they desperately needed a good year just to keep the farm going.

But then the rain just kept on coming, and now Amber has to deal with three young kids and $300,000 in farm debt all by herself…

Did their crop insurance cover hail damage? She had no idea. That was something Chris would have taken care of, if he were here. Instead she was alone, with nearly $300,000 in farm debt, three kids ages 5 to 13 and a host of grief-fueled questions. Why hadn’t she been able to save him? What would happen to them now?

Sadly, the Dykshorns are not an isolated case.

All across the Midwest, farms are going under at a staggering rate. According to the vice president of the National Farmers Union, the state of Wisconsin is “losing two farms a day” at this point…

“You look at the weather, you look at the crops you can’t get off the field, you look at the bills you can’t pay,” Patty Edelburg, vice president of the National Farmers Union, told Yahoo Finance. “Bankruptcies are up. Wisconsin is attributed as the No. 1 bankruptcy in the nation right now, when it comes to dairy farmers. That number is up, I think, 24% from last year already. We’re losing two farms a day.”

If you can believe it, the state of Wisconsin “lost almost 1,200 dairy farms” between 2016 and 2018.

Overall, the number of dairy farms in the state has fallen by 49 percent during the last 15 years.

Just think about that.

Half of all the dairy farms in our most important dairy producing state are completely gone.

And instead of tapering off, this “farm apocalypse” just continues to pick up speed. Sadly, the bankers are contributing to this crisis in a major way by denying loans to many of these troubled farmers…

“Farming is such a stressful occupation by itself,” Edelburg said. “When you start adding financial stress on top of it, it’s just going to add more stress. Farmers can’t pay their bills, they have no extra money, they have people honing down their neck looking to pay bills. They’re going to banks and they can’t get loans. They’re literally being denied loans.”

When you are already drowning in debt and your crops are failing and the banks won’t give you any more money, it can seem like there is no way out.

This is the position that Chris Dykshorn found himself in, and we can get an idea of what his emotional state was like just before he committed suicide from the final texts that he sent to his wife…

“I’m struggling so bad today. I don’t know what to do anymore,” he texted on May 31. “I seriously don’t know how we r gonna make it.”

On June 1: “I just want to sit in the house and cry.”

And then: “What am I supposed to do. I am failing and feel like I’m gonna lose everything I’ve worked for the past how many years.”

As I have stressed over and over, suicide is never the answer. But when someone loses all hope that there will ever be an opportunity to turn things around, it can be very difficult to keep going.

Meanwhile, money is flowing like wine on Wall Street thanks to the Federal Reserve. The unelected Fed has been pumping billions upon billions of dollars into the financial markets, and this has resulted in a higher concentration of wealth among the top one percent than ever before. The following comes from Bloomberg…

The top 1% of American households have enjoyed huge returns in the stock market in the past decade, to the point that they now control more than half of the equity in U.S. public and private companies, according to data from the Federal Reserve. Those fat portfolios have America’s elite gobbling up an ever-bigger piece of the pie.

The very richest had assets of about $35.4 trillion in the second quarter, or just shy of the $36.9 trillion held by the tens of millions of people who make up the 50th percentile to the 90th percentile of Americans — much of the middle and upper-middle classes.

In essence, Wall Street is being showered by “welfare money” from the Federal Reserve, and nobody is holding the Fed accountable.

At the same time, tens of millions of American families are working low paying jobs and are just barely getting by from month to month. The following comes from Zero Hedge…

For instance, a new report sheds light on 53 million Americans, or about 44% of all US workers, aged 18 to 64, are considered low-wage and low-skilled.

Many of these folks are stuck in the gig economy, making approximately $10.22 per hour, and they bring home less than $20,000 per year, according to a Brookings Institution report.

Today, half of all American workers make less than $33,000 a year. As the cost of living continues to rise much faster than wages do, hard working Americans are increasingly turning to debt in order to make ends meet, and during the next recession many families will not be able to service those debts.

All over the nation, we are watching a tragedy play out in slow motion.

America’s heartland is being gutted, and the “next recession” hasn’t even officially started yet. But soon enough it will, and the deep depression that we are already witnessing in many parts of the middle of the country will get a lot worse.

America’s Financial Suicide: The Budget Deficit Rises 26% In 1 Year As Federal Spending Spirals Wildly Out Of Control

October 19, 2019October 7, 2019 by Michael

We are in the process of committing national financial suicide, and most Americans don’t seem to care. As you will see below, the federal budget deficit for the fiscal year that ended on September 30th was the largest in 7 years. In fact, it was actually 26 percent larger than last year. Federal spending is wildly out of control, and “non-discretionary spending” is projected to go through the roof in the years ahead. Under our current system, it is literally going to be impossible to turn things around. As the Baby Boomers continue to retire, the amount of resources demanded by Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs is going to continue to escalate dramatically. Meanwhile, the biggest bureaucracy in the history of the world just continues to get even larger with each passing year, and neither political party seems interested in trying to do anything about it. Our national debt will shortly hit 23 trillion dollars, but we will never actually pay it off. Instead, we will just keep piling on more debt until this entire charade comes crashing down like a house of cards.

At this point, we shouldn’t expect the Democrats to show any concern for our skyrocketing national debt. During the Obama years the national debt increased by an average of more than a trillion dollars a year, and this unprecedented spending helped to stabilize the U.S. economy following the Great Recession.

However, if we could go back and remove the 9.3 trillion dollars that was added to the national debt during Obama’s time in office, those eight years would have been the worst eight years economically in the history of our nation. We borrowed mountains of money from the future in order to make the present more pleasant, but in the process we literally destroyed the bright future our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.

Of course most Americans don’t understand any of this, and many people look back on “Obama’s economy” with great fondness.

But isn’t Trump essentially doing the same thing?

Of course he is.

Just like Obama, Trump doesn’t want to preside over “a second Great Depression”, and so he is perfectly fine with taking our national debt into the stratosphere. If we tried to live within our means and only spent the money that we actually brought in, the U.S. economy would immediately collapse. And if the U.S. economy fell to pieces, Trump would have no chance of winning again in 2020, and we all know that Trump desperately wants to win the next election.

In the old days there were at least some Republicans that actually seemed to care about our financial future. The Republican Party was supposedly “the party of fiscal responsibility”, and a big driver of the Tea Party movement was concern about the size of our national debt.

But these days very, very few Republican leaders are making a peep about our rapidly growing mountain of debt. Instead, most of them seem absolutely fine with the fact that we are literally destroying ourselves financially.

This is yet another example that shows that there really is not that much of a difference between the two political parties at this point. One may want to take us down the tubes a little faster than the other one, but the final destination is still the same.

I would love to hear any Republican voter make a rational defense for what we are witnessing right now. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal budget deficit was 984 billion dollars during the fiscal year which just ended on September 30th…

The federal budget deficit for 2019 is estimated at $984 billion, a hefty 4.7 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and the highest since 2012, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said on Monday.

The deficit was 205 billion dollars bigger than the previous fiscal year, and overall that represented an increase of 26 percent in just one year.

Of course the official “budget deficit” is a bit misleading, because it actually understates the amount by which our national debt increases.

According to official U.S. Treasury numbers, our national debt actually increased by 1.113 trillion dollars during the fiscal year that just ended.

Adding more than a trillion dollars to the national debt in a single year is certainly not “conservative”.

Can anybody out there possibly defend such recklessness?

If you think you can, please feel free to give it a shot. Sadly, the truth is that all of our politicians that have supported such irresponsible spending should be completely and utterly ashamed of themselves. What they are doing to future generations of Americans is beyond criminal, and if future generations of Americans get the chance they will look back and curse us for what we have done to them.

As our founders understood very well, government debt is a way for one generation to literally steal money from future generations. And as Jason Pye has noted, our “unsustainable situation is only going to get worse”…

“Democrats and Republicans must be held responsible for the outrageous deficit reported today by the CBO,” said Jason Pye, vice president of legislative affairs at the conservative advocacy group FreedomWorks.

“This unsustainable situation is only going to get worse,” he added.

Unfortunately, there really isn’t anything to be done at this point. Now that fiscal irresponsibility has become the official position of both major political parties, all that we can really hope for is that the coming financial implosion will be put off for as long as possible.

In the short-term, the Federal Reserve will undoubtedly attempt to stabilize things. In recent days they have begun to start wildly printing money once again. They aren’t calling it “quantitative easing”, but that is essentially what is going on. The Fed balance sheet is beginning to rise at an exponential pace, and this “emergency intervention” that they are conducting is starting to look more permanent with each passing day.

Sadly, it is just another indication that our financial sins are starting to catch up with us. Previous generations handed us the keys to the most powerful economy in the history of the planet, but that wasn’t good enough for us. We always had to have more, and in our endless greed we have created the largest debt bubble in the history of the world.

Now we stand on the brink of oblivion, and yet our addiction to debt is so strong that we just can’t help ourselves.

There is no way that this story is going to end well, but even at this late hour most Americans still don’t realize what is coming.

About the Author: I am a voice crying out for change in a society that generally seems content to stay asleep. I am the publisher of 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 have written four books 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 those books you help to support my work. I always freely and happily allow others to republish my articles in written form on their own websites as long as this “About the Author” section is included. In order to comply with government regulations, I need to tell you that the controversial opinions in this article are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of the websites where my work is republished. This article may contain opinions on political matters, but it is not intended to promote the candidacy of any particular political candidate. You can follow me on social media on Facebook and Twitter. 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. Those responding to this article by making comments are solely responsible for their viewpoints, and those viewpoints do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of Michael Snyder or the operators of this website.

The Suicide Rate In The U.S. Has Hit The Highest Level In 50 Years, And There Is Concern That It Will Go Much Higher

September 11, 2019 by Michael

Despite the fact that more money is being spent on suicide prevention efforts than ever before in our history, the suicide rate in the United States continues to rise dramatically. As you will see below, one new study has discovered that our suicide rate actually increased by 41 percent between 1999 and 2016. Even though we have the highest standard of living that any generation of Americans has ever enjoyed, we are an exceedingly unhappy nation and we are killing ourselves in unprecedented numbers. This shouldn’t be happening, but unfortunately the forces that have taken over our culture have convinced multitudes of Americans that their lives are not worth living any longer. In a culture where truth has been abandoned, it is easy for lies to run rampant, and it takes a great deal of deception to get someone to willingly choose to embrace suicide. No matter what you are going through right now, there is always a way to turn things around, and we all have been given lives worth living.

Sadly, the suicide rate in this country has continued to escalate year after year. According to the Los Angeles Times, 2017 is “the latest year for which reliable statistics are available”, and in that year the U.S. suicide rate hit a 50 year high…

Whether they are densely populated or deeply rural, few communities in the United States have escaped a shocking increase in suicides over the last two decades. From 1999 to 2016, suicide claimed the lives of 453,577 adults between the ages of 25 and 64 — enough to fill more than 1,000 jumbo jets.

Suicides reached a 50-year peak in 2017, the latest year for which reliable statistics are available.

These numbers come from a new study that was just released, and it claims that our suicide rate actually increased by 41 percent between 1999 and 2016…

The researchers evaluated national suicide data collected between 1999 and 2016, then created a county-by-county estimation of suicide rates among all adults between the ages of 25-64. In that time period, suicide rates rose an astonishing 41%; from a median of 15 suicides per 100,000 county residents in 1999 to 21.2 in the last three years of analysis.

And suicide is also a rapidly growing problem among our teens and young adults as well.

In fact, suicide is now the second leading cause of death for Americans from age 10 to age 24.

Everyone goes through very low times, and for many people it can seem like those low times will never end. But when I was at my lowest points many years ago, I always had faith that better days were coming, even though at the time I couldn’t even imagine the absolutely amazing things that were ahead for me. The point that I am trying to make is that we simply do not know what the future will hold. No matter how dark things may seem to you right now, a miracle could literally be right around the corner.

This new study that just came out also discovered that suicide rates are significantly higher in rural parts of the country…

It was noted that suicide rates were at their highest in less-populous counties and in areas where people have lower incomes and diminished access to resources. For example, between 2014 and 2016, there were 17.6 suicides per 100,000 people in large metropolitan counties, noticeably lower than the 22 suicides per 100,000 people recorded in rural counties.

The quality of life in rural areas is so much nicer in so many ways, but there is also a lot of isolation and poverty as well. Humans are meant to be social creatures, and when there aren’t a lot of people around that can feed feelings of depression. And if someone is deeply struggling with poverty, it can be difficult to see a way out in an area with few economic opportunities. According to Brookings Institution research analyst Carol Graham, many Americans living in such areas “see no optimism for the future”…

“These are the places that used to be thriving rural places, near enough to cities and manufacturing hubs,” she said. “They’re places that accord with a stereotypical picture of stable blue-collar existence — and a quite nice existence — for whites in the heartland.”

With the collapse of extractive industries such as coal mining, the departure of manufacturing jobs, and a strapped agricultural economy, “these communities just got flipped on their head,” Graham observed. “And the people in those places became unhinged. You’d have a sense of places where everything has left. And among those who stay, you see no optimism for the future.”

If this is happening now, while economic conditions are still relatively stable, what is going to happen to the suicide rate during the next major U.S. economic downturn?

There is never, ever, ever a good reason for someone to commit suicide, but unfortunately during the next recession we are likely to see the suicide rate rise substantially higher.

Another factor that is resulting in a higher rate of suicide in rural areas is a lack of health insurance…

Last but certainly not least, a lack of health insurance coverage is significantly associated with rising suicide rates in rural US counties.

Specifically, the researchers observed that the more people in a county who didn’t have health insurance coverage, the higher that county’s suicide rate was.

When you are buried in medical bills that you know that you will never be able to pay, it can be exceedingly difficult to envision brighter days ahead. Our healthcare system is deeply, deeply broken, and this is something that I wrote about on Tuesday.

It is such a tragedy when people choose to end their lives because of financial circumstances, because financial circumstances are always temporary.

No matter how bad things are in your life right now, there is always a way to turn them around. The best days of your life could still be ahead for you, but you have got to be willing to believe that this is true.

Life is an absolutely incredible gift, and don’t let anyone ever convince you that you should end it.

It has been said that life is like a coin. You can spend it any way that you want, but you can only spend it once. I would encourage you to spend it loving others greatly, enjoying each day to the fullest, and doing something that truly matters.

About the author: Michael Snyder is a nationally-syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of four books including Get Prepared Now, The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters. His articles are originally published on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News. From there, his articles are republished on dozens of other prominent websites. If you would like to republish his articles, please feel free to do so. The more people that see this information the better, and we need to wake more people up while there is still time.

‘Deaths Of Despair’ In The U.S. Hit Record High – So How Bad Will Things Get When Society Starts To Completely Collapse?

June 12, 2019 by Michael

According to a shocking new report from the Commonwealth Fund, the suicide rate in the United States is the highest that it has ever been before. Sadly, the same thing can be said about the death rates from drug overdoses and alcohol. All three death rates are at an all-time record high, and yet our society is still fairly stable at the moment. So if we are seeing this many “deaths of despair” right now, what in the world are things going to look like when our society really begins to start crumbling? Today, Americans have literally thousands of different ways to entertain themselves, and yet we have never been unhappier. One out of every six Americans is taking psychiatric drugs, we are currently dealing with “the worst drug crisis in American history”, and people are killing themselves in record numbers. Nobody likes to be told that they are a failure, but it certainly appears that our nation has been on an extremely self-destructive path for a very long time.

Even though “deaths of despair” have reached record levels, the researchers at the Commonwealth Fund found that there are major regional differences. The following comes from NBC News…

Rates of deaths from suicides, drug overdoses and alcohol have reached an all-time high in the United States, but some states have been hit far harder than others, according to a report released Wednesday by the Commonwealth Fund.

As far as drug overdose deaths are concerned, researchers discovered that the states with the highest death rates were all in northern Appalachia…

“When we look at what’s going on in mid-Atlantic states — West Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania — those are the states that have the highest rates of drug overdose deaths in the country,” David Radley, a senior scientist for the Commonwealth Fund, said. Rates in those states are at least double the national average of fatal drug overdose rates.

West Virginia had the highest drug overdose death rates, fueled mostly by the opioid epidemic. What’s more, those rates rose by 450 percent from 2005 to 2017, according to the report.

In addition, the New England states also have extremely high drug overdose death rates.

Nationally, the number of Americans that die from an opioid overdose each year now exceeds the number that die in car accidents.

Talk about a depressing fact.

Meanwhile, for suicide and alcohol deaths it is a completely different story. In both cases, researchers found that the highest rates are out west…

Death rates from suicide and alcohol also showed regional disparities. People died at higher rates by suicide or from alcohol than from drugs in Montana, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Oregon and Wyoming.

In particular, the suicide rate is disturbingly high in rural western areas, and this agrees with a previously published CDC study which discovered that the suicide rate in rural areas is actually 45 percent higher than in “large urban areas”…

The suicide rate in rural America is 45% greater than in large urban areas, according to a study released last fall by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A more recent CDC report said Montana’s suicide rate leads the nation, coming in at nearly twice the national average. A third long-touted CDC study, currently under review, listed farming in the occupational group, along with fishing and forestry, with the highest rate of suicide deaths.

That occupational study was based on 2012 data, when farming was strong and approaching its peak in 2013, says Jennifer Fahy, communications director for the nonprofit Farm Aid. Farmers’ net income has fallen 50% since 2013 and is expected to drop to a 12-year low this year, the US Department of Agriculture reports.

Sadly, U.S. farmers are currently having their worst year in a generation, and they desperately need our support right now.

Overall, the new report from the Commonwealth Fund found that since 2005 drug overdose deaths in the United States are up 115 percent, alcohol deaths are up 37 percent, and suicides are up 28 percent.

Thanks in large part to those numbers, life expectancy in the United States has now fallen for three years in a row.

Despite all of our advanced technology, and despite our massively bloated debt-fueled standard of living, many Americans are desperately unhappy. In an attempt to “cure” our unhappiness, many of us have turned to the medical system for answers, and as a result more Americans are on antidepressants than ever before. In fact, NBC News has reported that one out of every six Americans is currently on at least one psychiatric drug…

One in six Americans take some kind of psychiatric drugs — mostly antidepressants, researchers reported Monday.

They also found that twice as many white people take those drugs as do African-Americans or other minorities, and fewer than 5 percent of Asian-Americans do. And most people who take them are taking them long-term, Thomas Moore of the Institute for Safe Medication Practices in Alexandria, Virginia and colleagues found.

But no matter how powerful a drug is, it can never give you hope. One of the reasons why I wrote “Living A Life That Really Matters” was to give people hope. Life really can be filled with meaning and purpose, but most Americans are searching for those things in all the wrong places.

Today, we like to think that our approach to life is superior to the way that previous generations of Americans did things, but the numbers say that they were actually far happier than we are.

Could it be possible that they were right and we are wrong?

If we stay on the current path that we are on as a nation, it isn’t going to lead anywhere good. Perhaps we should change our ways while we still can.

Americans Had To Borrow 88 BILLION Dollars To Cover Their Medical Bills Last Year

April 2, 2019 by Michael

I know that the headline sounds outrageous, but it is actually true. According to a brand new report that was just released, Americans had to borrow 88 billion dollars to cover their medical bills last year. That is a truly astounding number, and it shows just how dramatically our current health care system has failed. And even though the vast majority of Americans are covered by “health insurance”, millions of us are deathly afraid to go to the hospital because of what it might cost. Today, two-thirds of all personal bankruptcies in the United States are caused by medical bills, and most of the people going bankrupt actually had health insurance. Overall, more than half a million American families are financially ruined by medical bills each year, and meanwhile our “representatives” in Washington are doing absolutely nothing to fix the problem.

Surveys have shown that up to two-thirds of the country is living paycheck to paycheck at least part of the time, and an unexpected medical bill can be absolutely devastating for those that are just barely scraping by.

Without much of a financial cushion to fall back on, many families must borrow money when confronted with a large medical expense, and the scale at which this is happening is absolutely stunning…

Health care costs in the United States are generally measured as the highest in the world. Last year, many Americans could not afford their health care costs and so borrowed $88 billion to pay for that portion they could not afford.

According to a new West Health and Gallup poll, in a new report titled “The U.S. Healthcare Cost Crisis,” the $88 billion was borrowed in the year before the survey, which was done from January 14 to February 20. The poll was conducted via a random group of 3,537 adults over 18 living in the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

How in the world is this possible?

After all, more than 90 percent of all Americans have some form of health coverage. So why did Americans need to borrow 88 billion dollars to cover their unpaid medical bills last year alone?

Well, first of all it is important to remember that health insurance deductibles have gotten obscenely huge. The following numbers come from a CNN article about Obamacare…

The law sets a ceiling on how much consumers have to spend on health care. In 2019, it’s $7,900 for a single person and double that for a family. Some bronze plans peg their deductibles to those levels.

The average deductible for a 2019 bronze policy — which have higher deductibles, but lower premiums than other tiers of Obamacare plans — is nearly $5,900, while the average maximum of out-of-pocket limit is just under $7,000, according to Health Pocket, an online health insurance shopping tool. Family bronze plans have an average deductible of just under $12,200 and an average out-of-pocket maximum of nearly $14,000.

Secondly, even if you have surpassed your deductible, there is still no guarantee that your health insurance company will cover your medical bills. If you do not jump through every single little hoop they want you to jump through, in many instances they will leave you high and dry. When I was running for Congress I had personal conversations with so many people that had been screwed over by the health insurance companies. The more claims they deny, the more money they make, and they have become masters at finding even the smallest loophole that will enable them to wiggle off the hook.

Of course there are some health insurance companies out there that are doing a good job, but the bad apples give the entire industry a very bad name.

We have a system that is deeply broken, and it greatly frustrates me that both political parties seem so uninterested in getting a solution through Congress.

Here are some more numbers that show the current state of the U.S. health care system…

–3.7 trillion dollars was spent on health care in the United States in 2018. That breaks down to $10,739 per person.

-If our health care system was a country, it would have the fifth largest GDP on the entire planet.

–76 percent of Americans believe that they pay too much for the quality of health care that they receive.

-Out of the 36 counties in the OECD, the U.S. ranks 31st in infant mortality.

-Prescription drugs are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States today.

-Pharmaceutical companies spend approximately 30 billion dollars a year to market their drugs to all of us.

–Nearly half of all U.S. doctors are considering leaving the field of medicine, and health insurance companies are the primary reason.

-The median charge for visiting an emergency room in the United States is well over a thousand dollars.

When I was growing up, my mother took me and my siblings to the doctor constantly. But I don’t know anyone that does that today, because it would be ridiculously expensive in most cases.

And one recent survey actually found that 41 percent of all Americans decided against an emergency room visit last year “due to cost”…

Another major personal financial concern among Americans is that 45% worry that a “major health care event” would leave them bankrupt, the West Health-Gallup survey found. Additionally, in the past year, 41% said they did not visit an emergency room due to cost.

Fifteen million Americans “deferred” purchasing prescription drugs in the past year because of costs as well. Finally, 76% believe the problem will become worse because health care costs will rise more over the next two years.

Fixing our horribly broken health care system needs to be a top national priority, but earlier today Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it abundantly clear that nothing will be done about Obamacare in the Senate until the 2020 election. And of course the Democrats are not going to make any major moves on health care until the 2020 election either.

Unfortunately, we are stuck with what we have got for the moment.

Our health care crisis is a national nightmare that never seems to end, and it gets worse with each passing year.

So for now, just hope that nobody in your family becomes seriously ill, because if that happens there is a good chance you might go bankrupt.

+ More