The Debt

The Debt Ceiling Deal From Hell

Is the debt ceiling deal supposed to be some sort of a cruel joke?  Is this what the American people have been waiting months and months for?  The “debt ceiling deal from hell” is a complete and total fraud.  Barack Obama will not need to worry about the debt ceiling again until after the 2012 election, and no “real” spending cuts will happen until after the 2012 election.  The way the political game in Washington D.C. is played today, if you don’t get something right now, you probably will never end up getting it.  The Republicans have traded a massive debt ceiling increase right now for the possibility of very skimpy budget cuts in the future.  Meanwhile, this deal establishes a new “Super Congress” that threatens to fundamentally alter our political system (and not in a good way).  The funny thing is that everyone is running around proclaiming that the Tea Party won this battle.  That is a complete and total lie.

So what about the $917 billion in “immediate” spending cuts that the Republicans are getting as part of this deal?

Well, they aren’t really spending cuts at all.  Rather, they are spending caps.  Basically what is happening is that future spending increases are being cancelled and our politicians are selling that to us as “spending cuts”.

What is even sadder is that the $917 billion is spread over ten years and the vast majority of the “cuts” are in the latter years.

For example, even if you consider these to be “spending cuts” (which they are not), the deal calls for only about $25 billion in “cuts” in 2012 and only about $47 billion in “cuts” in 2013.

25 billion dollars is far less than one percent of the federal budget, so needless to say these “cuts” are not very impressive at all.

Okay, so how about the second stage of the deal which will produce “spending cuts” of between 1.2 and 1.5 trillion dollars?

Well, yes, these would actually be spending cuts and they would be spread over 10 years.

Near the end of the year, the new “Super Congress” (more on that in a minute) will submit a proposal to Congress which could cut spending over the next 10 years by a total of up to 1.5 trillion dollars.

If the recommendations of the “Super Congress” are not implemented, then “automatic” spending cuts of $1.2 trillion will go into effect over the next 10 years.

However, there are some very important things to remember about these “spending cuts”.

First of all, none of these “automatic” spending cuts would even go into effect until 2013.  The face of American politics will be dramatically different by then, and there is absolutely nothing that makes these cuts binding on Congress.

As Gregg Easterbrook recently noted, Congress can cancel spending cuts at any time and for any reason….

By projecting the only tangible savings — which aren’t even specified, but are merely caps — into the future, the plan allows Congress to cancel them. In 2012 or any future year, Congress will say, “We can’t have caps this year because of the [INSERT ANY WORD CHOSEN AT RANDOM] crisis. We are postponing action till next year.” Rinse and repeat.

As I have written about so many times before, the U.S. national debt is completely and totally out of control.  This was supposed to be the moment when at least some members of Congress were finally going to get serious about our exploding debt.  Unfortunately, our politicians have sold us down the river once again.

Even if the best case scenario happens (which it never does) and Congress sticks to this deal for the full ten years (which is about as likely as hell freezing over), the “savings” that this deal would produce are quite pathetic as Peter Schiff recently explained….

The Congressional Budget Office currently projects that $9.5 trillion in new debt will have to be issued over the next 10 years. Even if all of the reductions proposed in the deal were to come to pass, which is highly unlikely, that would still leave $7.1 trillion in new debt accumulation by 2021. Our problems have not been solved by a long shot.

Keep in mind that Congress can change this deal whenever it wants.

So nobody should get excited about these “spending cuts”.  After all, when was the last time that “future spending cuts” actually materialized in Washington?

The reality is that neither political party seems to want to do much to cut government spending.

So the band will play on and the can will get kicked even farther down the road.

When Obama was inaugurated, the U.S. national debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08.

Today, it is $14,342,358,440,969.10.

But what this “debt ceiling deal” will do is it will give the congressional leadership of both parties much more power.

The new “Super Congress” that this deal establishes will be granted “extraordinary new powers” that regular members of Congress do not possess.

For example, The Huffington Post says that any new legislation produced by the “Super Congress” will not be able to be filibustered or amended….

Under the reported framework, legislation the new congressional committee writes would be fast-tracked through Congress and could not be filibustered or amended.

So who will be a part of the “Super Congress”?

The members will be chosen by the leadership of both parties.

So anyone that is not part of the “establishment” is not likely to be included.

The following is what U.S. Representative Ron Paul had to say about this new “Super Congress”….

“Nothing more than a way to disenfranchise the majority of Congress by denying them the chance for meaningful participation in the crucial areas of entitlement and tax reform. It cedes power to draft legislation to a special commission, hand-picked by the House and Senate leadership.”

It is this new “Super Congress” that will decide what will be in the package of “spending cuts” that will be voted on by the end of the year.

Regular members of Congress will be frozen out of the process.

On December 23rd, Congress will be required to vote up or down on the spending cuts proposed by the “Super Congress”.  Regular members of Congress will not be allowed to amend the legislation in any way, and no filibusters will be permitted.

Does that sound very “American” to you?

The more that one examines this “debt ceiling deal”, the worse it looks.

Meanwhile, many Democrats are running around and acting as if their lunch money was just stolen.

For example, the following is what Politico is reporting that U.S. Representative Mike Doyle said about this deal….

“We have negotiated with terrorists,” an angry Doyle said, according to sources in the room. “This small group of terrorists have made it impossible to spend any money.”

Democratic congressman Emanuel Cleaver was even more dramatic when he proclaimed that this deal “looks like a Satan sandwich“.

Well, this deal is a total nightmare, but not for the reasons that Cleaver is suggesting.

This deal opens the door for more rampant deficit spending, and nearly all of the “spending cuts” are put off until after the 2012 election.

Basically, the Republicans got taken out behind the woodshed and beaten to a pulp on this one.  Any Republican that is trying to proclaim that the debt ceiling deal is a “great victory” is a complete moron.

But in the end, it really does not matter which political party gets a “victory” out of all this.  What matters is that our federal government is still steamrolling toward a date with financial oblivion.

If this is the best that our politicians can come up with, we are absolutely doomed.

 

A Bad Mood Has Descended On World Financial Markets

Have you noticed that a really bad mood seems to have descended on world financial markets?  Fear and pessimism are everywhere.  The global economy never truly recovered from the financial crisis of 2008, and right now everyone is keeping their eyes open for the next “Lehman Brothers moment” that will send world financial markets into another tailspin.  Investors have been very nervous for quite some time now, but this week things seem to be going to a whole new level.  Fears about the spread of the debt crisis in Europe and about the failure of debt ceiling talks in the United States have really hammered global financial markets.  On Monday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 151 points.  Italian stocks fared even worse.  The stock market in Italy fell more than 3 percent on Monday.  The stock markets in Germany and France fell more than 2 percent each.  On top of everything else, the fact that protesters have stormed the U.S. embassy in Syria is causing tensions to rise significantly in the Middle East.  Everywhere you turn there seems to be more bad news and large numbers of investors are getting closer to hitting the panic button.  Hopefully things will cool down soon, because if not we could soon have another full-blown financial crisis on our hands.

Even many of those that have always tried to reassure us suddenly seem to be in a really bad mood.

For example, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner admitted to “Meet the Press” that the U.S. economy is really struggling and that for many Americans “it’s going to feel very hard, harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come.”

Does Geithner know something that we don’t?

To say that what Americans are facing will be “harder than anything they’ve experienced in their lifetime now, for a long time to come” is very, very strong language.

It almost sounds like Timothy Geithner could be writing for The Economic Collapse blog.

It certainly is not helping things that the Democrats and the Republicans still have not agreed on a deal to raise the debt ceiling.  It is mid-July and Barack Obama and John Boehner continue to point fingers at each other.

Of course if they do reach a “deal” it will likely be a complete and total joke just like their last “deal” was.

But for now they are playing politics and trying to position themselves well for the 2012 election season.

Meanwhile, world financial markets are starting to get a little nervous about this situation.  The newly elected head of the IMF, Christine Lagarde, has stated that she “can’t imagine for a second” that we are going to see the U.S. default on any debt.  Most investors seem to agree with Lagarde for now, but if we get to August 2nd without a deal being reached things could change very quickly.

But it isn’t just the debt ceiling crisis that is causing apprehension in the United States.  The truth is that there are a host of indications that the U.S. economy is continuing to struggle.

Even big Wall Street banks are laying people off.  A recent Reuters article described the bad mood that has descended on Wall Street right now….

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and some other large U.S. investment banks are not just laying off weak performers and back-office employees. They are also cutting the pay of those they are keeping, scrutinizing expense reports and expecting even the most profitable workers to bring in more business for the same amount of compensation.

That is not a good sign for the U.S. economy.

If the corrupt Wall Street banks are even struggling, what does that mean for the rest of us?

But the big trouble recently has been in Europe.  The sovereign debt crisis continues to get worse and worse.

As I wrote about yesterday, the emerging financial crisis in Italy has EU officials in a bit of a tizzy.  If Italy requires a bailout it is going to be an unmitigated disaster.

One of the most respected financial journalists in Europe, Ambrose Evans Pritchard, says that financial tensions in the EU are rising to dangerous levels….

If the ECB’s Jean-Claude Trichet is right in claiming that Europe was on the brink of a 1930s financial cataclysm a year ago – and I think he is – it is hard see how the threat is any less serious right now.

Fall-out from Greece flattened Portugal and Ireland last week. It is engulfing Spain and Italy, countries with €6.3 trillion of public and private debt between them.

Last year it was just small countries like Greece and Ireland that were causing all the trouble.

Now Italy (the fourth largest economy in the EU) and Spain (the fifth largest economy in the EU) are making headlines.

Up to this point, the EU has had all kinds of nightmares just trying to bail countries like Greece out.

What is going to happen if Italy or Spain goes under?

At this point things with Greece have gone so badly that some EU officials are actually suggesting that Greece should just default on some of the debt.

Yes, you read the correctly.

There are news reports coming out of Europe that say that EU leaders are actually considering allowing the Greek government to default on some of their bonds.  According to The Telegraph, “the move would be part of a new bail-out plan for Greece that would put the country’s overall debt levels on a sustainable footing.”

All of this chaos is causing bond yields in Europe to go soaring.

Earlier today, The Calculated Risk blog detailed some of the stunning bond yields that we are now seeing in Europe….

The Greek 2 year yield is up to a record 31.1%.

The Portuguese 2 year yield is up to a record 18.3%.

The Irish 2 year yield is up to a record 18.1%.

And the big jump … the Italian 2 year yield is up to a record 4.1%. Still much lower than Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but rising.

Could you imagine paying 31.1% interest on your credit cards?

Well, imagine what officials in the Greek government must be feeling right about now.

If these bond yields do not go down, we are going to have a full-blown financial crisis on our hands in Europe.  If these bond yields keep rising, we are going to have a complete and total financial nightmare in Europe.

The only way that any of these nations that are drowning in debt can keep going is if they can borrow more money at low interest rates.  There are very few nations on earth that would be able to survive very high interest rates on government debt for an extended period of time.

Pay attention to what is happening in Europe, because it will eventually happen in the United States.  Right now we are only paying a little more than $400 billion in interest on the national debt each year because of the super low interest rates we are able to get.

When that changes, our interest costs are going to absolutely skyrocket.

Not that the United States needs any more economic problems.

Right now Americans are more pessimistic about the economy than they have been in ages.

In a recent article entitled “16 Reasons To Feel Really Depressed About The Direction That The Economy Is Headed” I noted a number of the recent surveys that seem to indicate that the American people are in a real bad mood about the economy right now….

*One of the key measures of consumer confidence in the United States has hit a seven-month low.

*According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans that lack confidence in U.S. banks is now at an all-time high of 36%.

*According to one recent poll, 39 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. economy has now entered a “permanent decline”.

*Another recent survey found that 48 percent of Americans believe that it is likely that another great Depression will begin within the next 12 months.

The American people are in a really bad mood and investors around the world are in a really bad mood.  More bad financial news seems to come out every single day now.  Everyone seems to be waiting for that one “moment” that is going to set off another financial panic.

Hopefully we can get through the rest of this summer without world financial markets falling apart.  But the truth is that the global economy is even more vulnerable today than it was back in 2008.  None of the things that caused the financial crash of 2008 have been fixed.

We will eventually have a repeat of 2008.  In fact, next time things could be even worse.

The entire world financial system is a house of cards sitting on a foundation of sand.  Eventually another storm is going to come and the crash is going to be great.

Will Barack Obama Use The 14th Amendment As A Way To Get Around The Debt Ceiling?

As the deadline to raise the debt ceiling draws closer, many are now wondering if Barack Obama will try to go around Congress if a deal is not reached by August 2nd.  In particular, a number of voices (including U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner) are now touting the 14th Amendment as a way to get around the debt ceiling.  There are others that believe that Barack Obama should invoke “national security” in order to avoid a default.  If the Republicans and the Democrats do not reach a deal by the end of July, things are going to get really, really interesting and there is no telling what Barack Obama may do.

Section 4 of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution says the following….

“The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.”

At a breakfast hosted by Politico last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner actually pulled out a copy of the Constitution and read this clause out loud.

Geithner (and others) are now attempting to argue that the debt ceiling is actually unconstitutional.  They believe that the phrase “shall not be questioned” means that if the U.S. government refuses to make debt payments it would be directly violating the U.S. Constitution.

So what does Barack Obama think of this legal theory?

Reporters have been trying to ask him this question, but right now Obama is not answering.

Certainly Obama would very much prefer to have the Republicans and the Democrats reach a deal far before the debt ceiling deadline arrives.

So what will Obama do if a deal is not reached?

Nobody seems to know.

But this clause of the 14th Amendment brings up some deeper issues as well.

Does this clause make it unconstitutional for all future generations to renounce the national debt?

Does this clause make it illegal for all U.S. citizens to even question the validity of the U.S. national debt?

Most Americans would like to think that when it comes to constitutional questions there should always be some clear answers.  But the truth is that for many constitutional questions there are a lot of gray areas.

When there is something in the U.S. Constitution that we do not like, that does not mean that we get to ignore it.  We have way too many politicians doing that already.

Personally, I would like to see this phrase in the 14th Amendment changed.  I think that this phrase is way too vague and could potentially open up a whole can of worms.

But of much more immediate concern is raising the debt ceiling.

Yesterday, I talked about how horrible our national debt is and I also talked about how dangerous refusing to raise the debt ceiling would be.

A large number of Americans that are deeply concerned about the national debt are also completely opposed to raising the debt ceiling.

But if we default right now, it is going to make our national debt problem much, much worse.

Think of it this way – if you had friends that were drowning in debt, would you tell them to immediately start defaulting on their mortgage, their car loans and their credit cards?

Of course not.

The penalties, fees and interest rate hikes would kill them.

Well, it is the same thing with the federal government.  Right now we have a great credit rating and we are able to borrow money at extremely low interest rates.

If that suddenly changed, interest rates on our debt would go up dramatically.  Just look at Greece.  Greece is paying somewhere around 28 percent interest on 2 year bonds.  If that happened to us, it would be a complete and total nightmare.

Even if we adopted a “balanced budget” next fiscal year, we would still need to roll over gigantic amounts of debt.

If interest rates on U.S. government debt started skyrocketing, interest payments on the U.S. national debt would very quickly start eating up the majority of our tax dollars.  We would soon have very, very little money to spend on anything else.

Wrecking our credit rating just to make a point about fiscal responsibility is not going to solve anything.

What point would there be to wrecking our financial system when neither political party has a viable plan for something better?

A lot of people (including some readers of this column) are actually rooting for a financial crash so they can watch the world go down in flames.

Yes, an economic collapse is coming, but that doesn’t mean that we should wish for it and try to get it to happen faster.

Look, you are probably going to die someday.  That doesn’t mean that you should go out and run your car into the nearest tree.

If we blow out our national credit rating right now, it is going to make it 10 times worse to try to get a handle on our national debt.

Plus, if the world financial system was to crash, it would create a massive amount of economic pain for hundreds of millions of people.

Most Americans cannot even conceive of what the consequences of a complete and total financial collapse would be.  It is not something that we should be wishing for.  Life as we know it would change dramatically.

Once our economic system crashes, it is not going to be able to be put back together again so easily.  Most Americans have no idea how bad things could get.

Yes, we must do something about the national debt.  We must stop spending ourselves into oblivion.  We must dismantle the current debt-based financial system that we are operating under and we must transition to something new.

But to purposely default by refusing to raise the debt limit would bring a whole lot of future financial pain into the present and would make it almost impossible to transition to a new financial system in an orderly fashion.

The sad thing is that a whole lot of people out there actually believe that the current system can be fixed.  Many Republicans believe that if we can just cut spending enough we will be okay.  Many Democrats believe that if we can just raise taxes on the wealthy enough we will be okay.

But the truth is that the current system cannot be fixed.  It is designed to be a perpetual government debt machine from which there is no escape.  We have reached a terminal phase of the debt spiral and we get closer to a collapse every single day.

According to John Williams of Shadow Government Statistics, if the U.S. government used GAAP accounting principles the “real” U.S. government budget deficit each year would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 5 trillion dollars.  Williams believes that the U.S. government is essentially bankrupt and that our current system is not anywhere close to sustainable….

Generally, you’ll find that the accounting for unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and other programs on a net-present-value (NPV) basis indicates total federal debt and obligations of about $75 trillion. That’s 15 times the gross domestic product (GDP). The debt and obligations are increasing at a pace of about $5 trillion a year, which is neither sustainable nor containable. If the U.S. was a corporation on a parallel basis, it would be headed into bankruptcy rather quickly.

Sadly, Williams is right.  We are drowning in debt.  Something has got to be done.

But refusing to raise the debt limit is not going to help.  If we allow our credit rating to be destroyed we could quickly find ourselves paying a trillion dollars or more just in interest on the national debt every single year.

If we want to handle the national debt monster, we need to do it the right way.  One thing that we need to do is to admit how bad the situation really is.

The truth is that we are in a lot more than $14.3 trillion in debt.

For example, according to The Financial Armageddon blog, the combined total for all “U.S. government bailouts” and “U.S. government guarantees” related to the financial crisis comes to a grand total of over 20 trillion dollars.

Also, the “unfunded liabilities” of the U.S. government are estimated to be somewhere between $60 trillion and $100 trillion.

If Bill Gates gave every penny of his fortune to the U.S. government, it would only cover the U.S. budget deficit for 15 days.

There are no easy solutions to our problems.  If we refuse to raise the debt ceiling our interest costs on the national debt may end up doubling or even tripling in short order.  That is not going to help us get our fiscal house in order.

Right now the state of the economy is so fragile that one really bad “shock” could cause it to totally fall apart.  The U.S. economy is like a patient that is barely hanging on in the operating room.  If we don’t show patience and discipline we could end up with a total disaster.

Look, you will probably not find many writers on the entire Internet that harp on the horror of the U.S. national debt more than I do.  It is a crisis that is so nightmarish that it is hard to even put into words.

But refusing to raise the debt ceiling is not going to solve anything.  In fact, it would only accelerate our demise.

Our economic system is in bad enough shape already.  Let’s not do any unnecessary damage to it.

According to a new poll conducted by CBS News and The New York Times, 39 percent of all Americans believe that the U.S. economy is now in a “permanent decline”.

Sadly, that is the truth.  We are in a permanent decline.  Just “tweaking” a few things is not going to work.  Doing what the Democrats are telling us to do is not going to work.  Doing what the Republicans are telling us to do is not going to work.

Our financial system is fundamentally flawed from the Federal Reserve on down.  If we continue on the path that we are on, a horrific collapse is inevitable.

We need truly dramatic changes if our way of life is going to survive.

Unfortunately, most Democrats and most Republicans believe that they can fix the current system somehow.

It is not going to work.

Shell Game

The entire U.S. financial system has become a gigantic shell game.  While it is still in motion, a shell game can be mesmerizing to watch.  But when it ends the consequences can be painful.  So exactly what is a shell game?  According to Wikipedia, a shell game “is portrayed as a gambling game, but in reality, when a wager for money is made, it is a confidence trick used to perpetrate fraud.”  Sadly, that is exactly what is happening on the global stage today.  The Federal Reserve is like a con artist that is desperately trying to stay one step ahead of everyone else.  The folks at the Fed know that the debt that the U.S. government has accumulated is not sustainable and will eventually collapse.  They also know that the U.S. dollar is eventually going to become essentially worthless.  But for now the Federal Reserve is putting on a grand show and is trying to keep everyone believing that the game is fair and legitimate.

The Federal Reserve’s much ballyhooed “QE2” program has come to an end, and most Americans still don’t even understand what “quantitative easing” is.

Basically, what the Federal Reserve did was zap hundreds of billions of dollars into existence out of thin air and used them to buy U.S. government debt.

It is kind of like if you are playing poker with someone and they reach under the table and pull out a gigantic pile of chips which they add to their own stack.

In the process, the big banks made a ton of money because they are the ones that the Federal Reserve was buying U.S. Treasuries from and the U.S. government was happy because all of the new government debt being issued was getting soaked up by the system.

Of course all of this is one giant Ponzi scheme, but up to this point the Federal Reserve has gotten away with it.

Meanwhile, average Americans were getting the short end of the stick because all of this new money has been causing the price of food and the price of gas to go up.

But now QE2 has come to an end.

So does that mean that  “quantitative easing” is going to be completely over?

No, not really.  The shell game continues.

The Federal Reserve has announced that it is going to continue to purchase U.S. government debt using the proceeds from maturing debt that it already owns.  It is being projected that the Federal Reserve will purchase 300 billion dollars in U.S. government debt over the next 12 months using this method.

This isn’t being called “quantitative easing”, but that is essentially what it is.  In fact, one CNN article is calling it “QE2.5”….

QE2 is just about done. But the Federal Reserve will still be buying massive amounts of long-term Treasuries.

In fact, the Fed’s purchases over the next year will likely be at least $300 billion. That’s half the size of QE2 — even if QE3 never takes place.

But “quantitative easing” is just one example of a shell game run by the Fed.  There have been lots more.

For example, during the financial crisis the Federal Reserve started loaning gigantic amounts of cash to the big banks for next to nothing.

The big banks took a lot of this cash and invested it in U.S. Treasuries.  U.S. Treasuries typically only pay a couple of percentage points, but when you can borrow massive amounts of nearly free money suddenly they become extremely profitable.

Instead of loaning out large amounts of money to all of us to get the economy rolling again, the big banks just parked huge amounts of cash in U.S. Treasuries and watched the risk-free profits come rolling in.

In this way, the Federal Reserve helped big banks make a ton of money and they supported the exploding federal government debt load at the same time.

The chart below shows that the amount of U.S. government securities owned by the banks has increased exponentially since the beginning of the financial crisis.  This is not an accident….

The Federal Reserve does lots of stuff like this.  They know that they will probably never get audited and they know that the American people don’t understand all of this financial stuff, so they get away with it.

But what if something came along and suddenly interrupted the shell games that the Fed is playing?

Well, that is exactly what this debt ceiling debate threatens to do.

If the U.S. defaults, even for a short time, all of the financial shell games and Ponzi schemes are going to be greatly jeopardized.

If Congress does not raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd, the U.S. government will start defaulting, and that would unleash a tremendous amount of chaos.

A recent USA Today article described some of the things that might happen if the government was not able to borrow any more money later this summer….

If Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment benefits, payments to defense contractors and interest payments on Treasury bonds were exempt, that would be all the government could afford for the month. No money for troops or veterans. No tax refunds. No food stamps or welfare. No federal salaries or benefits.

In addition, financial markets all over the world would be severely rattled.  If the default only lasted a couple of days it would not be bad, but if the U.S. ended up defaulting on debts for weeks or months it really would be cataclysmic.

The International Monetary Fund warned this week that a failure to raise the debt ceiling by August 2nd would be a “severe shock” to global financial markets.

In this case, the IMF is actually right.  In fact, a “severe shock” would be an understatement.

The managing director of Standard & Poor’s has told Reuters that if the U.S. starts defaulting, the credit rating on U.S. Treasury bonds that are supposed to mature on August 4th will go all the way down from AAA to D….

Chambers, who is also the chairman of S&P’s sovereign ratings committee, told Reuters on Tuesday that U.S. Treasury bills maturing on August 4 would be rated ‘D’ if the government fails to honor them. Unaffected Treasuries would be downgraded as well, but not as sharply, he said.

“If the U.S. government misses a payment, it goes to D,” Chambers said. “That would happen right after August 4, when the bills mature, because they don’t have a grace period.”

A lot of Americans believe that Congress should just refuse to raise the debt ceiling and let the whole system crash.  But the reality is that most Americans simply have no idea how much of a financial disaster that would be for the entire globe.

Yes, the U.S. national debt is completely and totally out of control.  Yes, something must be done about it urgently.

But defaulting on our debts and wrecking global financial markets is not going to solve much of anything.

Sadly, even if we do not default on our debts this year, the reality is that the U.S. government debt bubble is going to collapse one way or another eventually.

The path that we are currently on is not even close to sustainable.

Even as our debt expands exponentially, the U.S. economy is being systematically dismantled and we are becoming poorer as a nation.

As I have written about previously, jobs and businesses are leaving the United States at a staggering rate because of cheap labor overseas and because of ridiculous regulations.  The business environment in this country has become incredibly toxic.

Stanford University’s David Cheriton was instrumental in helping Sergey Brin and Larry Brin develop Google.  Now he is warning that the anti-business policies of Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress are wrecking the economy….

“When you look at, say, Larry and Sergey of Google, they made billions of dollars, but they contributed many more billions of dollars to the US economy. And so we should be empowering these people; we should be cultivating more of the next generation of those types. And yet, I think there’s almost a hostile attitude towards people who have been successful in this country.”

As I wrote about the other day, the rate of new business creation in the United States has been declining steadily since the 1980s.  We won’t have a chance at a real economic recovery until the creation of small businesses is encouraged once again.

But today businesses of all sizes are trying to avoid U.S. taxation.  Right now, the United States has the highest corporate tax rate in the entire world.  Sadly, all businesses have a great deal of incentive to avoid incorporating in the United States.

A recent article in The Wall Street Journal talked about this phenomenon….

As savvy investors and entrepreneurs search for ways to minimize the impact of the U.S. tax system, with its relatively high rates and global reach, they are increasingly incorporating overseas, tax experts say. Some private-equity firms have relocated U.S. companies or divisions to tax-haven countries. U.S. multinational companies have spun off foreign subsidiaries in tax havens. U.S. start-ups are even beginning life offshore.

Large numbers of really good companies are fleeing the United States.

What we are doing is not working.

So what is the answer?

Well, as I have said before, we need to entirely scrap the current tax system and come up with something that works in the 21st century.

But we all know that is not going to happen.

Meanwhile, our economy continues to unravel.  According to the Department of Labor, the unemployment rate rose in 210 metro areas during the month of May, and it only declined in 131 metro areas.

Consumer confidence in this country has hit a seven-month low, and average Americans are becoming increasingly anxious about the state of the economy.

Unfortunately, most of our politicians don’t seem to have any answers and the Federal Reserve is just trying to keep their shell games going.

Every single day the U.S. economy is getting weaker.  Every single day we are going into more debt.  Every single day we get closer to the collapse of the entire system.

Time is running out.

I hope you are making good use of the time you still have left.

The Coming Economic Hell For American Families

Tens of millions of American families are about to go through economic hell and most of them don’t even realize it. Most Americans don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about things like “monetary policy” or “economic cycles”.  The vast majority of people just want to be able to get up in the morning, go to work and provide for their families.  Most Americans realize that things seem “harder” these days, but most of them also have faith that things will eventually get better.  Unfortunately, things aren’t going to get any better.  The number of good jobs continues to decline, the number of Americans losing their homes continues to go up, people are having a much more difficult time paying their bills and our federal government is drowning in debt.  Sadly, this is only just the beginning.

Since the financial collapse of 2008, the Federal Reserve and the U.S. government have taken unprecedented steps to stimulate the economy.  But even with all of those efforts, we are still living in an economic wasteland.

So what is going to happen when the next wave of the economic crisis hits?

During one recent interview, Peter Schiff made the following statement….

If you look at the economic relapse that’s going on right now, look at Friday’s abysmal job numbers, look at the housing numbers, understand that all of this is taking place with record monetary and fiscal stimulus. What happens if we remove those supports?

At the end of June, the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing program is slated to end.  The U.S. Congress and state legislatures from coast to coast are talking about budget cuts.  The amount of borrowing and spending that has been going on is clearly unsustainable, but will the U.S. economy start shrinking again once the current “financial sugar high” has worn off?

Already, all sorts of bad economic news has been coming out and all kinds of economic indicators are turning south.  The American people are becoming increasingly restless.  One new poll has found that 59 percent of the American people disapprove of Barack Obama’s handling of the economy (which is a new high).  According to another recent poll, 63% of Americans say that they feel “not good” or “bad” about how the U.S. economy is performing.

If most Americans had good jobs, could afford their mortgages and could pay their bills, the economy would not be such a big issue.

Unfortunately, times are really tough for American families right now and they are about to get a lot tougher.

*Jobs*

The official unemployment rate just went up to 9.1 percent, but that figure only tells part of the picture.

There are some areas of the country where it seems nearly impossible to find a decent job.  Millions of Americans have fallen into depression as they find themselves unable to provide for their families.

According to CBS News, 45.1 percent of all unemployed Americans have been out of work for at least six months.  That is a higher percentage than at any point during the Great Depression.

Just two years ago, the number of “long-term unemployed” in the United States was only 2.6 million.  Today, that number is up to 6.2 million.

Can you imagine being out of work for 6 months or more?

How would you survive?

Just look at the chart below.  What we are going through now is really unprecedented.  The average duration of unemployment in this country is now close to 40 weeks….

So will things get any better soon?  Well, there were only about 3 million job openings in the United States during the month of April.  Normally there should be about 4.5 million job openings.  The economy is slowing down once again.  Good jobs are going to become even more rare.

There are millions of other Americans that are “underemployed”.  All over the United States you will find hard working Americans that are flipping burgers or working in retail stores because that is all they can get right now.

Most temp jobs and most part-time jobs don’t pay enough to be able to provide for a family.  But there are not nearly enough full-time jobs for everyone.

Sadly, the number of “middle class jobs” is about 10 percent lower than a decade ago.  There are simply less tickets to the “good life” than there used to be.

*Homes*

But without good jobs, the American people cannot afford to buy homes.

Without good jobs, the American people cannot even afford the homes that they are in now.

U.S. home prices have fallen 33 percent since the peak of the housing bubble.  That is more than they fell during the Great Depression.

This decline in housing prices has caused a lot of problems.

28 percent of all homes with a mortgage in the United States are in negative equity at this point.  There are millions of American families that are now paying on mortgages that are for far more than their homes are worth.

Millions of American families literally feel trapped in their homes.  They can’t afford to sell their homes, and if they simply walk away nobody will approve them for new home loans for many years to come.

Many Americans are sticking it out and are staying in their homes until they simply can’t pay for them anymore.

As the number of good jobs continues to decline, the number of Americans that are losing their homes continues to rise.

For the first time ever, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure in a single year during 2010.

If the economy slows down once again and millions more Americans lose their jobs this problem is going to get a lot worse.

*Bills*

Even if they aren’t losing their homes yet, millions of other Americans families are finding it increasingly difficult to pay the bills.

Wages have been very flat over the past few years and yet the cost of most of the basics just seems to keep going up and up.

According to Brent Meyer, a senior economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, the cost of food and the cost of energy have risen at an annualized rate of 17 percent over the past six months.

Have your wages gone up by 17 percent over the past six months?

As 2009 began, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States was $1.83.  Today it is $3.77.

American families are finding that their paychecks are going a lot less farther than they used to, but Ben Bernanke keeps insisting that we have very little inflation in 2011.

Most Americans don’t care much about economic statistics – they just want to be able to do basic things like take their children to the doctor.

According to one recent survey, 26 percent of Americans have put off doctor visits because of the economy.

Sadly, soon a lot more American families will not be able to afford to go to the doctor.

According to one recent survey, 30 percent of all U.S. employers will “definitely or probably” quit offering employer-sponsored health coverage once Obamacare is fully implemented in 2014.

As the economic situation has unraveled, an increasing number of people are being forced to turn to the federal government for assistance.

One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

Some of the hardest hit members of our society have been our children.  Today, one out of every four American children is on food stamps.

Back in the old days, a large percentage of American families were self-sufficient, but that is no longer the case.

Back in 1850, approximately 50 percent of all Americans worked on farms.

Today, less than 2 percent of Americans do.

So these days when American families can’t feed themselves what do they do?

They turn to the federal government of course.

At the moment, approximately 44 million Americans are on food stamps.

But our federal government cannot afford to spend money like this forever.

According to a recent USA Today analysis, the U.S. federal government took on $5.3 trillion in new financial obligations during 2010.  USA Today says that the U.S. government now has $61.6 trillion in financial obligations that have not been paid for yet.

Wow!

Who is going to end up paying that bill?

So with so much bad news, are our leaders alarmed?

Not really.

According to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, “growth seems likely to pick up somewhat in the second half of the year.”

Yeah, we’ll see how that prediction works out.

Others are not so sure that everything is going to turn out okay.

Recently, James Carville warned that we could literally see rioting in the streets if the economic situation does not turn around soon.  Just check out the last part of the video below….

The truth is that America is in decline.  Just like with all of the great empires of the past, our empire is starting to crumble too.

A recent article in the Guardian touched on some of the reasons for America’s decline….

The experience of both Rome and Britain suggests that it is hard to stop the rot once it has set in, so here are the a few of the warning signs of trouble ahead: military overstretch, a widening gulf between rich and poor, a hollowed-out economy, citizens using debt to live beyond their means, and once-effective policies no longer working. The high levels of violent crime, epidemic of obesity, addiction to pornography and excessive use of energy may be telling us something: the US is in an advanced state of cultural decadence.

The economic news is only part of the puzzle.  This country has rejected the ancient wisdom that was passed down to us and we have rejected the principles of our founding fathers.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and yet somehow we expected that everything would turn out okay.

Well, everything is not going to turn out okay.

All of this debt is going to come down on us like a ton of bricks and the U.S. economy is going to continue to fall apart.  Millions of American families are going to lose their jobs and their homes.

Economic hell is coming.

You better get ready.

Global Financial Markets Tremble As Bad Economic News Continues To Pour In

As the U.S. economy starts to slow down once again, global financial markets are beginning to tremble.  Over the past couple of weeks, all kinds of bad economic news has been pouring in.  The ADP jobs report was a “disaster”, the housing numbers are dismal, manufacturing has slowed way down and consumer confidence is dropping like a rock.  The Democrats and the Republicans are bickering over the debt ceiling and this is causing a lot of uncertainty as well.  All of this bad news is starting to spook investors.  On Wednesday, the Dow was down 279 points and the NASDAQ was down 65 points. It was the worst day of the year for the Dow, and many are wondering what is going to happen next if we see even more bad economic data.  QE2 is slated to end at the end of the month, and already the bond markets seem to be anticipating QE3.  If the U.S. economy enters another significant downturn during the second half of 2011, it seems quite likely that the Federal Reserve would attempt to do something to stimulate the economy and that would probably mean more money printing.

This article is essentially the second part to an article I wrote yesterday about how we are seeing warnings about the next financial collapse all over the place right now.  Panic is building and a lot of investors are trying to figure out where to put their money.  Suddenly everyone seems a whole lot less optimistic than they were a couple of months ago.

Michael Sheldon, the chief market strategist at RDM Financial, believes that all of the bad economic news we are seeing right now is clear evidence that we are entering an “economic slump”….

“Initially, we just had bad news from the weekly jobless claims data, but now we’re starting to see a broad-based economic slump.”

So what are some of the numbers that have investors so concerned?

Mike Riddell, a fund manager at M&G Investments in London, recently explained to CNBC why he is so alarmed right now….

“US house prices have fallen by more than 5 percent year on year, pending home sales have collapsed and existing home sales disappointed, the trend of improving jobless claims has arrested, first quarter GDP wasn’t revised upwards by the 0.4 percent forecast, durables goods orders shrank, manufacturing surveys from Philadelphia Fed, Richmond Fed and Chicago Fed were all very disappointing.”

The bad economic news just keeps rolling in.  It is almost as if someone has slammed on the economic brakes.

The following are a few more examples of the bad economic numbers that have come out over the past couple of days….

*According to the latest ADP Employment Services report, private employers in the United States only added 38,000 jobs last month.  That number had been expected to be somewhere around 175,000.  This jobs report is being called a “disaster“.

*Manufacturing activity in May was much lower than most economists were projecting.  The following is how CNBC described the newest numbers from ISM….

The Institute for Supply Management (ISM) said its index of national factory activity fell to 53.5 in May from 60.4 the month before. The reading missed economists’ expectations for 57.7.

*Moody’s downgraded Greek debt again on Wednesday, and stated that they believe that there is a 50/50 chance that Greece will default.  This time Moody’s downgraded Greek debt by three levels all the way down to Caa1, and that caused the euro to fall like a rock.

To get an idea of just how imbalanced the European financial system has become at this point, just check out this article.

*Earlier this week it was announced that U.S. home prices have declined 5.1% from a year ago.  Sadly, U.S. home prices have now fallen more than they did during the entire Great Depression.

*As I mentioned yesterday, the consumer confidence index fell from 66 in April to 60.8 in May.

So what is causing all of this?

Well, the truth is that the “sugar high” that the U.S. economy has been enjoying is coming to an end.

QE2 is almost over and the vast majority of the federal “stimulus money” has been spent.  Now the federal government is talking about getting spending under control and we are seeing austerity programs being implemented on the state and local level from coast to coast.

But without massive intervention by the Federal Reserve and by the U.S. government will the U.S. economy be able to stand?

Douglas Borthwick, a managing director with Faros Trading in Stamford, Connecticut is not optimistic….

“The sugar high that has buoyed the U.S. economy over the past six months is wearing out, and there is little in economic growth or foundation to show for it.”

The truth is that the Fed and the U.S. government went all-out in an attempt to keep the economy from falling into a total depression.  The U.S. government has been running budget deficits well in excess of a trillion dollars and the Fed has been printing money like mad.  If these measures are removed, the economic crisis we are experiencing might just get a whole lot worse.

How much worse?

Well, just check out what Peter Yastrow, a market strategist for Yastrow Origer, recently told CNBC….

“Interest rates are amazingly low and that, thanks to Ben Bernanke, is driving everything,” Yastrow said. “We’re on the verge of a great, great depression. The [Federal Reserve] knows it.”

Ben Bernanke and Barack Obama keep talking about the “economic recovery” but most Americans know better.

According to one new poll, 66% of Americans believe that we are still in a recession.

Perhaps this is a sign that the American people are starting to wake up to the new economic realities that we are facing.

The U.S. economy is being ripped apart and shredded.  Thanks to our short-sighted trade policies, the Chinese economy has roared to life while the U.S. economy continues to ship jobs and factories overseas.

But instead of facing up to our economic problems and coming up with some solutions, our nation has been on a horrific debt binge over the last couple of decades in a desperate attempt to maintain our standard of living.

One of the reasons why I pound on the economic news day after day is so that more people will really understand what is going on and will start to wake up.

In fact, if you have a family member of a friend that just doesn’t get it, the following is a great article to share with that person: “50 Things Every American Should Know About The Collapse Of The Economy“.

Look, even Barack Obama says that the present state of affairs is “unsustainable” and that changes have to be made.

But if the U.S. government decided that it was going to go to a balanced budget tomorrow, that would suck approximately a trillion and a half dollars out of the economy.

What do you think would happen if that came to pass?

Of course by going into even more debt we are destroying the economic future of our children and our grandchildren.

We have piled up the biggest mountain of debt in the history of the world and we expect future generations to pay it off.

It is absolutely disgusting what we have done and it is thievery on the highest level.

Everyone knows that we are living in the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world and that at some point it is going to pop.

Perhaps the best we can hope for at this point is for a little bit more time before economic disaster strikes.

Unfortunately, all of the latest economic news seems to be pointing toward another economic slowdown.

Hold on to your seats.

The Greek Debt Crisis Escalates: Is Greece Threatening To Leave The Euro?

Is the Greek debt crisis about to explode out of control?  According to Der Spiegel, the government of Greece is considering leaving the Euro and reestablishing its own currency.  If that happened, it would throw global financial markets into chaos and it might mean the end of the euro as a pan-European currency.  But the Greek government has to do something about all of these debts.  At this point Greece is literally drowning in debt.  The yield on 10-year Greek bonds has now reached an astounding 15.51%.  There is no way that is sustainable even for the short-term.  Greece is rapidly going bankrupt.  Even with absolutely brutal austerity measures in place, the debt just continues to explode.  There are protests against the government almost daily and Greece is in a state of chaos.  Unfortunately, because Greece is part of the euro they can’t just start printing lots of money as a way to get out of this crisis.  Now there are persistent rumors that Greece really is thinking about leaving the euro, and that could potentially mean big trouble for the world financial system.

It was a new article in Der Spiegel that brought these rumors to the forefront again.  Der Spiegel says that it possesses secret Greek government documents that discuss plans to leave the euro.  Der Spiegel also claims that a secret crisis meeting was held in Luxembourg on Friday night to discuss this crisis.

The following is a brief excerpt from the Der Spiegel article that caused the financial community in Europe to be in such an uproar today….

“The debt crisis in Greece has taken on a dramatic new twist. Sources with information about the government’s actions have informed SPIEGEL ONLINE that Athens is considering withdrawing from the euro zone. The common currency area’s finance ministers and representatives of the European Commission are holding a secret crisis meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night.”

So was there such a meeting in Luxembourg on Friday night?

Well, it turns out that there was a meeting of a small group of European finance ministers.  But according to German government spokesman Steffen Seibert, this meeting was planned well in advance and had nothing to do with Greece leaving the euro….

“There is a meeting of some finance ministers that has long been planned. Greece exiting the Eurozone is not on the agenda of that meeting, and it has never been.”

So is Greece actually thinking about leaving the euro?  All over Europe this notion is being denied.

Perhaps the strongest denial was issued by the Greek Finance Ministry….

“The report on an imminent Greek exit from the eurozone, as well as being untrue, has been written with incomprehensible levity despite the fact that this has been repeatedly denied by the Greek government, and the governments of other EU member states.”

What was probably being discussed at this meeting of European finance ministers is a restructuring of Greek debt.  This is something that Germany has apparently wanted for quite some time according to a recent article posted on Business Insider….

For weeks, German officials have been hinting that they want a Greek restructuring to happen. German economic advisor Lars Feld recently said that the restructuring should happen “sooner than later.” He’s previously also said “restructuring is the only road to take.”

So what would a restructuring of this debt look like?  A recent article on CNBC gives us some clues….

More importantly, tonight’s finance ministers meeting might lay the groundwork for “extending the maturities” on those loans — giving Athens a little more oxygen until it probably ends up restructuring its $470 billion existing debt by either extending maturities or exchanging Greek bonds, at a discount, for EU-guaranteed bonds, Brady Bond-style from the 1980s.

What Germany does not want is for Greece to even think about leaving the euro.  According to the article on Der Spiegel, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is ready to play hardball with the Greeks.  Der Spiegel says that a report has been prepared that would lay out for the Greeks the severe consequences of leaving the euro….

“It would lead to a considerable devaluation of the new (Greek) domestic currency against the euro,” the paper states. According to German Finance Ministry estimates, the currency could lose as much as 50 percent of its value, leading to a drastic increase in Greek national debt. Schäuble’s staff have calculated that Greece’s national deficit would rise to 200 percent of gross domestic product after such a devaluation. “A debt restructuring would be inevitable,” his experts warn in the paper. In other words: Greece would go bankrupt.

Greece is really in a tough position.  They are going to go bankrupt if they stay with the euro and they are going to go bankrupt if they leave the euro.

Meanwhile, the anti-government protests continue.  The Greek people are not happy.  The Greek economy is coming apart like a 20 dollar suit.  Greece could end up being the spark that sets off a massive financial panic in Europe.

As I have written about previously, the European debt crisis is on the verge of spinning wildly out of control.  It is not just Greece that is facing a horrific debt crisis.  The financial problems in Europe literally span the entire continent.

A lot of Americans are obsessed with the death of the U.S. dollar, but the truth is that there is a strong possibility that the euro could end up collapsing before the dollar does.

Keep an eye on Europe.  The European debt crisis could plunge the entire global financial system into chaos at any time.  Things are not nearly as stable as they seem.

20 Shocking New Economic Records That Were Set In 2010

2010 was quite a year, wasn’t it?  2010 will be remembered for a lot of things, but for those living in the United States, one of the main things that last year will be remembered for is economic decline.  The number of foreclosure filings set a new record, the number of home repossessions set a new record, the number of bankruptcies went up again, the number of Americans that became so discouraged that they simply quit looking for work reached a new all-time high and the number of Americans on food stamps kept setting a brand new record every single month.  Meanwhile, U.S. government debt reached record highs, state government debt reached record highs and local government debt reached record highs.  What a mess!  In fact, even many of the “good” economic records that were set during 2010 were indications of underlying economic weakness.  For example, the price of gold set an all-time record during 2010, but one of the primary reasons for the increase in the price of gold was that the U.S. dollar was rapidly losing value.  Most Americans had been hoping that 2010 would be the beginning of better times, but unfortunately economic conditions just kept getting worse.

So will things improve in 2011?  That would be nice, but at this point there are not a whole lot of reasons to be optimistic about the economy.  The truth is that we are trapped in a period of long-term economic decline and we are now paying the price for decades of horrible decisions.

Amazingly, many of our politicians and many in the mainstream media have declared that “the recession is over” and that the U.S. economy is steadily improving now.

Well, if anyone tries to tell you that the economy got better in 2010, just show them the statistics below.  That should shut them up for a while.

The following are 20 new economic records that were set during 2010….

#1 An all-time record of 2.87 million U.S. households received a foreclosure filing in 2010.

#2 The number of homes that were actually repossessed reached the 1 million mark for the first time ever during 2010.

#3 The price of gold moved above $1400 an ounce for the first time ever during 2010.

#4 According to the American Bankruptcy Institute, approximately 1.53 million consumer bankruptcy petitions were filed in 2010, which was up 9 percent from 1.41 million in 2009.  This was the highest number of personal bankruptcies we have seen since the U.S. Congress substantially tightened U.S. bankruptcy law several years ago.

#5 At one point during 2010, the average time needed to find a job in the United States had risen to an all-time record of 35.2 weeks.

#6 Back in 1970, 25 percent of all jobs in the United States were manufacturing jobs. Today, only 9 percent of the jobs in the United States are manufacturing jobs, which is believed to be a new record low.

#7 The number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” was the highest it has been in at least five decades during 2010.

#8 The number of American workers that are so discouraged that they have given up searching for work reached an all-time high near the end of 2010.

#9 Government spending continues to set new all-time records.  In fact, at the moment the U.S. government is spending approximately 6.85 million dollars every single minute.

#10 The number of Americans on food stamps surpassed 43 million by the end of 2010.  This was a new all-time record, and government officials fully expect the number of Americans enrolled in the program to continue to increase throughout 2011.

#11 The number of Americans on Medicaid surpassed 50 million for the first time ever in 2010.

#12 The U.S. Census Bureau originally announced that 43.6 million Americans are now living in poverty and according to them that was the highest number of Americans living in poverty that they had ever recorded in 51 years of record-keeping.  But now the Census Bureau says that they miscalculated and that the real number of poor Americans is actually 47.8 million.

#13 According to the FDIC, 157 banks failed during 2010.  That was the highest number of bank failures that the United States has experienced in any single year during the past decade.

#14 The Federal Reserve brought in a record $80.9 billion in profits during 2010.  They returned $78.4 billion of that to the U.S. Treasury, but the real story is that thanks to the Federal Reserve’s continual debasement of our currency, the U.S. dollar was worth less in 2010 than it ever had been before.

#15 It is projected that the major financial firms on Wall Street will pay out an all-time record of $144 billion in compensation for 2010.

#16 Americans now owe more than $881 billion on student loans, which is a new all-time record.

#17 In July, sales of new homes in the United States declined to the lowest level ever recorded.

#18 According to Zillow, U.S. housing prices have now declined a whopping 26 percent since their peak in June 2006.  Amazingly, this is even farther than house prices fell during the Great Depression.  From 1928 to 1933, U.S. housing prices only fell 25.9 percent.

#19 State and local government debt reached at an all-time record of 22 percent of U.S. GDP during 2010.

#20 The U.S. national debt has surpassed the 14 trillion dollar mark for the first time ever and it is being projected that it will soar well past 15 trillion during 2011.

There are some people that have a hard time really grasping what statistics actually mean.  For people like that, often pictures and charts are much more effective.  Well, that is one reason I like to include pictures and graphs in many of my articles, and below I have posted my favorite chart from this past year.  It shows the growth of the U.S. national debt from 1940 until today.  I honestly don’t know how anyone can look at this chart and still be convinced that our nation is not headed for a complete financial meltdown….

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