Running 'Cause I Can't Fly 2

Wednesday, November 8, 2023

"The Only Final Sin..."

"In a closed society where everybody’s guilty, the only crime is

getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity."

- Hunter S. Thompson

"Doug Casey on the Imminent Bankruptcy of the US Government"

"Doug Casey on the Imminent

Bankruptcy of the US Government"

by International Man

"International Man: Everyone knows that the US government has been bankrupt for many years. But we thought it might be instructive to see its current cash-flow situation. The US government’s budget is the biggest in the history of the world and is growing at an uncontrollable rate. Below is a chart of the budget for the most recent fiscal year, which had a deficit of nearly $1.7 trillion.

Before we get into the specific items in the budget, what is your take on the Big Picture for the US budget?

Doug Casey: The biggest expenditure for the US government are so-called entitlements. It’s strange how the word "entitlements" has been legitimized. Are people really entitled to the government paying for their health, retirement, and welfare? In a moral society, the answer is: No. Entitlements destroy personal responsibility, legitimize theft, destroy wealth, and create antagonisms.

The fact is that once people have an "entitlement," they come to rely on it, and you can’t easily take it away. The Chinese call that breaking somebody’s rice bowl. In the case of the American welfare state, it’s more a question of breaking a whipped dog’s doggy bowl. It’s a shame because many have come to rely on their mother, the State, not entirely through their own fault. The US has become pervasively corrupt.

The World Economic Forum (WEF) - a pox upon them - isn’t entirely incorrect when it arrogantly calls most people "useless mouths." An increasing number produce absolutely nothing but only consume at the expense of others. Courtesy of the State.

There’s little doubt in my mind that the government’s expenses are going way up as people demand more. While receipts go down as the Greater Depression deepens. Which it will, as the economy is burdened by evermore taxes, regulations, and currency debasement. That’s on top of the gigantic debt the government and country are buried under.

The government reminds me of a poker player on tilt, betting more and more crazily in hope of magic or luck to bail him out. It always ends badly. We’ve watched this progression accelerate since at least the 1960’s - a slow motion train wreck. But the inevitable has finally turned into the imminent.

International Man: What are your thoughts on Social Security, Health, and Medicare? With an aging population, it seems politically impossible to make any meaningful cuts here. On the contrary, spending in these areas is likely to explode.

Doug Casey: They should be abolished. I’ve said this many times before, but it bears repeating as often as possible because everybody forgets the most basic of the basics. Namely, the government, as an instrument of force, should be limited to protecting people from physical force. And nothing else.

That implies a police system to defend people from force within, a military to defend against foreign aggressors, and a court system to allow people to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force. I’d further argue that those three things are so important to the conduct of a civil society that they shouldn’t be left to the kind of people who inevitably gravitate towards government. But that’s a different subject.

Looking at these three things you mentioned in particular, they’re complete disasters. They’re fiscally unsound, will bankrupt the US government, and, therefore, bankrupt the country itself, especially with an aging population. Social Security seemed like a good idea at the time so that poor people wouldn’t be left totally without an income in old age. But the fact is that Social Security is a classic Ponzi scheme. Its taxes have gone from a trivial percentage to 12.4%. It’s so high that people are on the bottom end of society, who it’s meant to help, are precluded from saving on their own. Social Security is both a practical and moral disaster.

As for Medicare, how is it your problem if another has failed to take care of his body? Your body is your primary possession. Should it also be your problem if somebody fails to take care of his car? Should the State fix all your property? Should the government have anything to do with health? No. It’s strictly a matter of personal responsibility. Of course, if the State believes it owns you, like a milk cow, the cattle can expect food to show up, as will medicine if they get sick.

Government entitlement schemes encourage everyone to try to live at the expense of his neighbors. They’re intrinsically dehumanizing, corrupting, and degrading. They’re a bad deal all around.

International Man: With the most precarious geopolitical situation since World War 2, "National Defense" seems unlikely to be cut. Instead, so-called defense spending is all but certain to increase. What is your take?

Doug Casey: The United States’ "defense" spending exceeds that of the next 10 nations combined, including Russia and China. Most of that spending goes into the maw of five major defense companies. A decade or two ago, there used to be 30 or 40 defense companies. But they’ve now consolidated, the better to deal with Big Government.

They increasingly make only expensive high-tech weapons, which may prove totally useless in today’s environment. For instance, the US is currently suffering an invasion of feet people across the southern border - millions and millions of young males, of alien race, language, religion, and culture, in the last two years alone. We may yet wind up with a civil war in the US, on top of several insane foreign wars.

These high-tech weapons, in the process of bankrupting the US and enriching the defense establishment, will prove largely useless. Meanwhile, military personnel are being gutted. It’s no secret that the services can’t recruit enough people to keep their numbers where they want them. That’s in good measure because ESG and DEI have been insinuated throughout the military like slow-acting poisons. The military is no longer a meritocracy. Now, it’s critical to be the right color and gender. George Patton would quit in disgust.

On top of all that, defense spending is a provocation to other countries. It’s like waving around a giant golden hammer. They’re correctly afraid that everything has started to look like a nail to the US.

International Man: The net interest expense on the national debt was $659 billion in FY 2023, which is sure to rise. The US government needs to roll over a significant portion of its existing debt issued when interest rates were 0% in an environment of much higher and rising rates. What are your thoughts on this item?

Doug Casey: Interest on the debt is the next big thing, in addition to entitlements and out-of-control "defense" spending. They used to say, "Don’t worry about the national debt; we owe it to ourselves," which was always ridiculous because some specific people always owed it to other specific people. But the US can no longer generate adequate capital to fund the government’s debt. And I hasten to point out that the government is not "We the People." The government is a separate entity, with its own interests, as distinct as General Motors.

In the recent past, the national debt has been financed not by Americans, but by foreigners. At this point, however, foreigners no longer want to own the debt of a bankrupt entity whose currency is nothing but a floating abstraction. The government can only finance its debt by selling it to its central bank, the Fed, which creates new dollars to buy the debt.

As the dollar inevitably loses value, interest rates will rise. That’s regardless of what the Fed does or doesn’t want. The market will demand higher interest rates to finance the debt. You don’t want to own bonds.

International Man: US government expenses seem to have nowhere to go but up. Is there any chance the US government can reform and return to a sustainable basis? If not, what are the implications?

Doug Casey: The US government is bankrupt. It’s not just the official $34 trillion. The real number is several times higher, considering contingent liabilities. It’s probably more like $100 trillion. This debt will never be repaid. The US government is like Wiley Coyote after he runs off a cliff. In addition, the average American is deeply in debt—student loans, mortgage debt, credit card debt, auto debt, and much more. The country is in big trouble. Frankly, there’s no practical way out at this point except to officially declare bankruptcy. I realize serious change is impossible since the situation is so out of control. But here are six things to imagine - for a start:

1. Allow the collapse of all bankrupt entities. No bailouts, subsidies, or guarantees for banks, insurers, corporations, or anything. There will be plenty in the coming years. Bailout money is always wasted. Most of the real wealth now owned by the bankrupt entities will still exist. It will simply change ownership. But that’s not nearly enough. At this point, it would be a half-measure, a 3-foot rope over a 12-foot gap. If you allow the collapse of unprofitable enterprises without changing the conditions that created the problem, recovery is going to be even harder. So…

2. Deregulate. Contrary to what almost everyone thinks, the main purpose of regulation is not to protect consumers but to entrench the current order. Regulation prevents new institutions from arising quickly and cheaply.

Does the Department of Agriculture really need 100,000 employees to regulate fewer than two million farms in the US? Abolish it. Has the Department of Energy, created in 1977 to somehow solve a temporary crisis, done anything of value with its 110,000 employees and contractors and $32 billion annual budget? Abolish it. How about the terminally corrupt Bureau of Indian Affairs, which has outlived whatever usefulness it might have had by 100 years. Abolish it.

The FTC, SEC, FCC, FAA, DOT, HHS, HUD, Labor, Commerce, and many more, serve little or no useful public purpose. Eliminate them, and the entire economy would blossom – except for the parasitical lobbying and legal trades. There are hundreds of agencies like these. Most aren’t just useless. They’re actively destructive.

3. Abolish the Fed. This is the actual engine of inflation. Money is just a medium of exchange and a store of value; you don’t need a central bank to have money. In fact, central banks are always destructive. They benefit only the cronies who get their money first. What would we use as money? It doesn’t matter as long as it’s a commodity that can’t be created out of thin air. Gold is the obvious choice. Bitcoin may turn out to be excellent. The whole idea of a central bank is a swindle. Massive bailouts and optional wars can’t be done without it.

4. Cut taxes by 50%… to start. The economy would boom. The money won’t be needed with all the agencies gone. Certainly not if the next two points are followed.

5. Default on the national debt. I realize this is a shocker unless you recall that the debt will never be paid anyway. Why should the next several generations have to pay for the stupidity of their parents? A default sounds dishonorable - and it is in civil society. But government is different. It hasn’t been "We the People" for a long time; it’s now a self-dealing behemoth run by cronies. It’s like a building with a rotten foundation - better to bring it down with a controlled demolition than wait for it fall unpredictably.

Governments default all the time, though most defaults are subtle, through inflation. In an outright default, however, the only people who get hurt are those who lent money to an institution that can only repay them by stealing money from others. They should be punished.

6. Disentangle and disengage. The entanglements the US needs to escape prominently include the UN and NATO. Spending could easily be cut 50%. The US combat troops now in over 100 foreign countries can come home. They’re not "defending" anything but local collaborators while picking up bad habits and antagonizing the locals. Spending on the military and its sport wars significantly adds to the economy’s problems."

- https://internationalman.com/

Bill Bonner, "The Big Loss"

"The Big Loss"

Avoiding irreparable damage as the storm clouds gather...

by Bill Bonner

Paris, France - "First up: Bloomberg, with another milestone on the road to ruin: "U.S. Debt Interest Bill Soars Past $1 Trillion a Year." The combination of high levels of debt and higher interest rates has pushed the annualized interest cost of government debt past $1 trillion, an analysis from Bloomberg showed Tuesday. The cost of servicing US debt has doubled in the last 19 months. Interest rates are up. And so is the amount of debt. Together, like a ship caught in polar ice, they crush the hull. US debt is now $33.5 trillion. And there’s a lot more where that came from. Federal deficits of $2 trillion per year are becoming ‘the norm.’ By 2030, they’ll probably be around $3 trillion per year." And that is without any emergency spending!

“The Big Loss”: But rising debt levels and soaring interest payments are bound to set off alarms somewhere – subprime debt? Stocks? Real estate? Which brings us back to yesterday’s question: where is the next Big Loss coming from? The ‘Big Loss’ is the biggest financial danger older people face. It can wipe out a whole career of earning, saving, and investing. And if you’re over 55, you’re not likely to have time to recover.

So, what threatens a big loss now? Remember, it has to come as a big surprise. So, where’s the surprise? Stocks are still expensive…by some measures they are as expensive as they’ve ever been (especially the huge, leading tech stocks). Would it surprise us if they went down? Or even crashed? It shouldn’t. And what about houses? They’re at the top of their range too; shouldn’t they go down? It seems almost inevitable that they will. The average household can no longer afford the average house; something’s gotta give. No surprise there, either.

And what about AI? It’s the latest tech fad that is supposed to make us all rich. Just as the internet brought the whole world’s knowledge to our fingertips, now AI will help sort it out. “Experts” say it will increase productivity so much we’ll be able to pay our debts…finance our sprawling firepower industry…and get every member of Congress re-elected. And the best thing; it’s the perfect new technology for a declining, mentally-enfeebled empire. We don’t have to think about how to ‘Make America Great Again.’ AI will figure it out for us.

The Steepest Decline: But our guess is that AI will prove to be a big flop, just like the internet itself. People will use it routinely. Will it improve productivity? Yes…and reduce it too. Users will waste their time with it…playing games and talking to sex robots. Some tasks will be easier. Others will be made more complicated by AI-enhanced thieves, incompetents and propagandists. Overall, it will make little difference. Will it make some investors rich? Surely. But most of the claims and promises made for AI will prove false…and many people will take losses. Still, the Big Loss will probably come from elsewhere.

What about the bond market? It’s just endured the longest, steepest decline in its history. That alone suggests that the worst is over. Investors expect a bounce. Or even a complete turnaround. And here is where it becomes interesting. Everybody knows, you don’t ‘fight the Fed.’ And everybody knows the Fed has completed its tightening cycle.

Barron’s: "The Fed is done raising rates. The October employment report did it. The Federal Reserve’s tightening cycle is over. After 11 rate increases since March 2022, totaling five percentage points, the Fed ought to be finished raising rates. Inflation is falling and growth is slowing… Friday’s employment report confirmed what a host of other indicators are telling us, namely that the U.S. economy is finally slowing after an 18-month onslaught of Fed rate hikes. Together with falling rates of headline and core inflation, as well as moderating wage pressures, a clearer picture has emerged. The Fed will soon accomplish its goal of reducing U.S. inflation to the 2% core rate that it defines as “price stability.”

Everybody knows, too, that the Fed will soon begin to loosen up. The Fed Funds Futures market tells us that investors expect the Fed to “Pause” until May of next year…and then begin to cut rates. There’s a time to be a lender…and a time to be a borrower. Borrowing was a lay-up for most of this century. Especially in the depths of the Covid Panic. If you’d locked in a 3% mortgage rate then, you might have made the best financial move of your entire life. Your house payments would be fixed at an extremely low interest rate…while both principal and interest payments are reduced, year after year, by inflation.

Even at an inflation rate of only 4%...you’d make a profit on your borrowed money of 1% per year. And your gains are cumulative. After inflation, both the principal and the payments on your mortgage have gone down about 20%. But while the giddy, glory days of borrowing money are over…have the happy days of lending already arrived? Is it time to buy bonds again? Or is that what ‘everybody knows’…that just ain’t so? More to come…"

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

"There Are A Lot Of People..."

"Thomas Edison said in all seriousness: "There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the labor of thinking"- if we bother with facts at all, we hunt like bird dogs after the facts that bolster up what we already think- and ignore all the others! We want only the facts that justify our acts- the facts that fit in conveniently with our wishful thinking and justify our preconceived prejudices. As Andre Maurois put it: "Everything that is in agreement with our personal desires seems true. Everything that is not puts us into a rage." Is it any wonder, then, that we find it so hard to get at the answers to our problems? Wouldn't we have the same trouble trying to solve a second-grade arithmetic problem, if we went ahead on the assumption that two plus two equals five? Yet there are a lot of people in this world who make life a hell for themselves and others by insisting that two plus two equals five - or maybe five hundred!"

- Dale Carnegie

"Don’t Fear The Reaper"

"Don’t Fear The Reaper"

by John Wilder

“No. Not like this. I haven't faced death. I've cheated death. I've tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.”

- James T. Kirk, "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan"

“Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.'”

- Carlos Castaneda, "Journey to Ixtlan"

"When The Soon To Be Mrs. and I were just dating, I was cooking something or other. I think it was eggs. I like eggs sunny side up, and don’t particularly care if they’re cooked all the way. The Soon To Be Mrs.: “Aren’t you worried about salmonella?” John Wilder: (Laughs in full Chad manifestation.) The Soon To Be Mrs.: (Swoons.)

Seriously, she swooned. I’ve never seen it before in my life, but in that moment I think that was what sealed the deal, the moment in time that The Soon To Be Mrs. realized that this one is different. He’s not like the others. Here is a man who has zero fear of The Current Thing, and knows that salmonella won’t be the thing that punches his ticket out of having a functioning circulatory system.

No. I’m not afraid of salmonella. I would spit in its tiny little eyes or flagellum or tentacles and say, “Not today, my bacterium friend! My Danish-Scots-Germanic blood is far too strong for the likes of you!” And then I would attack Poland. Oh, wait, that’s been done.

I know I’m not going to die like Hemingway, and I’m not going to die like the comedy greats Belushi, Twain, or Nietzsche did. Nope. I think I’m gonna go out like Elvis. On a toilet after having eaten a fried peanut butter, jelly and bacon sandwich covered in cheddar cheese and mayo. Nope, I’m gonna die on a toilet. I mean, after all, a king should spend his last moments on the throne, right?

A lot of people worry about dying. I suppose I did, in my 20s, when I was worried about carrying out my responsibilities as a dad. Those are serious responsibilities – because those kids are going to be the legacy that I leave on Earth. That and my writing, collection of PEZ® dispensers and velvet Elvis paintings.

Again, a lot of people worry about dying. I’m not sure why. Of things that are more-or-less predetermined, that’s the big one. We’re all going to die. All of us. And I’m not sure I care.

Oh, sure, I want to live. I have no particular desire to die. If given the preference, I suppose I’m in favor of my continued heartbeat. But I don’t fear death. I don’t go to sleep at night wondering if this pain or that pain or that thing might be the symptom I look up on WebMD® that seals the deal that Wilder is going up to irritate Jesus in Heaven with bad puns.

I don’t worry about some future point when I’m going to enjoy life. I’ve achieved nearly every goal I’ve ever set for my life. End. Full stop. It’s like when a baseball game goes into extra innings, “Hey, free baseball.” And me? Free life. I’ve done nearly everything I’ve ever wanted to do.

What do you give a man who has everything? I mean, besides another bottle of wine. You give that man: Today. I’ve got Today. The only moment I live in is right now. And right now isn’t all that bad. I’m sitting in the sitting room (question: is any room I sit in, by definition, a sitting room? Discuss.) with the cool night air blowing in the window, some songs I love playing on the laptop, a cold beer by the keyboard, and the knowledge that at this moment, everything is fine.

Literally, in my life, Every Single Thing Is Fine. I could go into details, but you already know how awesome I am. So, I live for today? Hell no.

That’s YOLO. The idea that “You Only Live Once” is a free pass to act in any fashion has corroded society. It’s really at the root of many of the problems we have today. It is, in many ways, the absolute inverse of the philosophy I’m trying to describe. YOLO seeks to elevate hedonism and the passions of the moment as the highest good. YOLO is Tinder® times Planned Parenthood© times SnapFaceGramInstaChat® times Rwanda®.

t’s the inversion of beauty: it consists of being positive about, well, any old thing that feels good. I could list these “pleasures”, but you know the list as well as I do. We see it every day, with vice being paraded as virtue, and the continual demand going out for people to celebrate it, because, “Can’t you see? This horrid abomination that no healthy society or people in the entire history of the world has tolerated, iS BeAuTIfUL!” No, I think living a life built on YOLO is one doomed to fail – inevitably it will fail based on two reasons: it is materialism or a faith based on the nihilism of the material world writ large, and it is based on needs, like youth, wealth, sensation, or, yes, even life. So, not YOLO.

One thing I’ve tried to preach is outcome independence. Indeed, since the final outcome of life on Earth is fixed, all the intermediate steps lead there. Instead, I try to focus on virtue and faith. I write not because of YOLO, and not because it’s easy. Some nights it’s hard as hell to get the post to “close” and feel right. There are dozens of posts where, even after 1600 words, I still didn’t say exactly what I meant to say. That’s okay, it’s on me. I’m learning, and if I were perfect at this, I wouldn’t have more work to do.

For me, it’s the work. It’s getting better. It’s finding ways to add value to those people around me. There are those who pull their weight in the world, and those that don’t. I want to be one that pulls his weight, who has contributed as much as I can to helping my family and the wider world.

I don’t always do it. And I’m not always right, either. I’ve produced some stuff in my life that was really, really good, but not perfect. Thankfully, that’s not my mark, either, since just like immortality here on Earth, searching for perfection is a lonely and silly pastime. I want to make the world a better place with my family (first) and my work (now second) guided by God. And I want people to laugh hard while learning and thinking about the things I write.

The beauty of this is to win, all I have to do is the best that I can do every day. To win? All I have to do is be the best person I can be every day. See? Each night, I go to bed and sleep soundly if I know, in that day, that I gave it my all. Do I take time for me? Sure. But that’s not the goal – I serve a higher purpose.

So, what do I fear? Not death. It’s coming whether I like it or not, and, honestly, I’d rather not return my body in factory-fresh condition – I’d like all the parts to fail at once. On the toilet. I think Elvis would have wanted it that way. Oh, wait... I wonder if Elvis ate eggs sunny-side-up? Hang on, I’m sure he did. Elvis ate everything."

- https://wilderwealthywise.com/

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Full screen recommended.

Blue Oyster Cult , "Don't Fear The Reaper"

"How It Really Is"

"If only"... you don't stop because you can't stop.

If you do it's all over. It's all over anyway, you're just buying time.

Tell me I'm wrong...

"They Don't Always Do That..."

"When people pile up debts they will find difficult and perhaps even impossible to repay, they are saying several things at once. They are obviously saying that they want more than they can immediately afford. They are saying, less obviously, that their present wants are so important that, to satisfy them, it is worth some future difficulty. But in making that bargain they are implying that when the future difficulty arrives, they’ll figure it out. They don’t always do that.”

– Michael Lewis, “Boomerang”

"Americans Are Absolutely Drowning In Debt, And This Really Is The Worst Debt Crisis In All Of U.S. History"

"Americans Are Absolutely Drowning In Debt,

And This Really Is The Worst Debt Crisis In All Of U.S. History"

by Michael Snyder

"I truly wish that headline was an exaggeration. Unfortunately, for decades Americans have been extremely irresponsible with their finances. As a result, credit card debt is at an all-time high, auto loan debt is at an all-time high, mortgage debt is at an all-time high, corporate debt is at an all-time high, state and local governments all over the nation continue to get into absurd amounts of debt, and the federal government has piled up the single largest mountain of debt in the history of the world. Our whole society is absolutely drowning in debt at this stage, and the only way out is for the entire system to collapse.

On Tuesday, we learned that the total amount of credit card debt in the U.S. has now reached a new record high of 1.08 trillion dollars…"Americans now owe $1.08 trillion on their credit cards, according to a new report on household debt from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Credit card balances spiked by $154 billion year over year, notching the largest increase since 1999, the New York Fed found. “Credit card balances experienced a large jump in the third quarter, consistent with strong consumer spending and real GDP growth,” said Donghoon Lee, the New York Fed’s economic research advisor."

Credit card debt has always been one of the most insidious forms of debt, but now the banks are pushing credit card interest rates to unprecedented heights…"The rise in credit card usage and debt is particularly concerning because interest rates are astronomically high right now. The average credit card annual percentage rate, or APR, hit a new record of 20.72% last week, according to a Bankrate database that goes back to 1985. The previous record was 19% in July 1991.

If people are carrying debt to compensate for steeper prices, they could end up paying more for items in the long run. For instance, if you owe $5,000 in debt — which the average American does — current APR levels would mean it would take about 279 months and $8,124 in interest to pay off the debt making the minimum payments. It should be illegal to issue a credit card that has an interest rate higher than 20 percent. But banks are going to keep doing it because our politicians will not stop them. So don’t fall into their trap.

Other forms of debt are rapidly growing as well…"Auto loan balances also contributed to the uptick, climbing by $13 billion over the course of the third quarter to $1.6 trillion. Student loan debt, meanwhile, increased by $30 billion while mortgage balances jumped by $126 billion to $12.14 trillion."

Overall, U.S. households are now more than 17 trillion dollars in debt. I can’t even begin to describe how foolish we have been. The only way to keep the party going is to borrow even more money, but thanks to higher interest rates we are not going to be able to purchase as much. This is something that Kevin O’Leary pointed out in a recent interview…

“We’re looking at a downsized America. I tell it like it is,” O’Leary said on “The Big Money Show.” “Three years ago, even 24 months ago, you get a mortgage at 4.5%. You’re lucky to get one at eight today. So that means the size of the house you’re going to buy is 20 to 25% smaller. That’s a downsize. You want to borrow for a car? Sorry, that’s 8 to 9%. Used to be five,” the O’Leary Ventures chairman added. “So, smaller, less expensive car. That’s happening at the same time.”

He is right. But we just can’t help ourselves, and so we are going to continue to borrow more money. The same thing is true for our corporations. Today, corporate debt is at the highest level ever recorded. And state and local governments continue to borrow money as if tomorrow will never come. But the biggest offender of all is the federal government. The national debt is currently sitting at 33.6 trillion dollars, and it is constantly going higher. You can watch the national debt clock race upwards right here. To me, that debt clock is actually a countdown to the financial destruction of America.

Once upon a time, I warned that the U.S. would be paying a trillion dollars in interest on the national debt by the year 2030. Well, guess what? We got there early. According to Bloomberg, we have already crossed that ominous threshold…"Estimated annualized interest payments on the US government debt pile climbed past $1 trillion at the end of last month, Bloomberg analysis shows. That projected amount has doubled in the past 19 months from the equivalent figure forecast around the time. The estimated interest expense is calculated using US Treasury data which state the government’s monthly outstanding debt balances and the average interest it pays.

Wow. As usual, things are even worse than many of us were originally projecting. Before I end this article, there is one more thing that I wanted to mention. The “glitch” that affected the direct deposit of so many paychecks all over the nation still has not been resolved five days later…"Federal Reserve officials are urging banks to work with customers hurt by ongoing deposit delays that have prevented some people from accessing their paychecks and other funds.

A number of customers still haven’t received their direct deposit paychecks following a “human error” that damaged the plumbing of America’s banking system. The deposit delays are linked to a problem that emerged on Friday with the Automated Clearing House (ACH) payments system, causing headaches for consumers and employers. “The Federal Reserve encourages banks to work quickly to resolve issues for customers experiencing delays in receiving direct deposit payments as a result of operational issues at a private sector payments provider,” a Fed spokesman told CNN in a statement."

Was it really a “human error” that caused this? If someone just hit a wrong button, you would think that would be relatively easy to fix. Keep a close eye on the banks. As I discuss in my new book entitled “Chaos”, the banks are the beating heart of our economy and enormous trouble is brewing.

Without healthy banks, our entire system will go haywire very rapidly. We need to borrow money for just about every major purchase that we make, and it is the banks that make the vast majority of those loans. If the flow of credit starts to dry up, so will our standard of living. Unfortunately, a credit crunch has now begun, and that is going to have very serious implications for all of us."

- https://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/

Col. Douglas Macgregor, "Major Events Occurring This Week"

Col. Douglas Macgregor, 11/8/23

"Major Events Occurring This Week"

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