US Budget Disaster Ahead Will Impoverish Americans"

"US Budget Disaster Ahead Will Impoverish Americans"

by Daniel Lacalle

"The latest Congressional Budget Office (CBO) budget and economic outlook estimates show the extent of the challenges of the United States fiscal nightmare. The CBO expects a budget deficit of $1.9 trillion in 2024, a year of alleged robust economic growth and record tax receipts. They expect revenues to reach $4.9 trillion, or 17.2 percent of GDP, in 2024, which will rise to 18.0 percent by 2027 and remain at that level until 2034.

This report’s main finding is alarming. Despite expecting no recession and rising tax revenues from 2024 to 2034, the budget deficit will explode from $1.9 trillion to $2.8 trillion by 2034. Estimates place the adjusted deficit at 6.9 percent of GDP by 2034, nearly twice the average of 3.7 percent over the previous 50 years.

What is the problem when the CBO sees solid growth and rising revenues? Deficits are always a spending problem. By 2034, they expect outlays to soar from $6.8 trillion to $10.3 trillion, or 24.9% of GDP. Interestingly, one of the major reasons for the significant increase in outlays cited by the CBO is the soaring cost of debt. According to the report, debt swells from 2024 to 2034 “as increases in interest costs and mandatory spending outpace decreases in discretionary spending and growth in revenues.” Public debt rises from 99 percent of GDP in 2024 to 122 percent in 2034, or $50.6 trillion, to which we must add the public debt held by other entities, including the Fed. The CBO considers “debt held by the public” to be $28 trillion in 2024, when public debt is already $34 trillion. Thus, United States public debt will increase by $22 trillion in a decade.

The CBO projections prove without a doubt that there is no way in which the United States could balance the budget through revenue measures. There is no set of revenue measures that can collect $2 trillion per year in additional annual receipts. Increases in taxes would inevitably slow down investment and growth and reduce long-term potential receipts. Furthermore, even if the United States government was able to increase revenues, the likelihood of a recession in the next ten years, added to the promises of more “extraordinary” expenses in election years, would make the deficit soar regardless of any revenue improvement.

An economy that generates an annual deficit of 6 percent of GDP to achieve a mere 2 percent annual growth is on a dangerous path, even if that kind of growth is sustained. Inevitably, at the first sign of a recession, the government would spend even more.

Why should Americans be worried about this reckless pace of borrowing? Because it will mean three things for them: higher taxes, weaker growth, and the declining purchasing power of their salary and savings.

If you hail deficit spending, you are embracing impoverishment. If you defend this kind of deficit spending, you are actively supporting stagnation. Deficit spending is not a social policy; it is profoundly anti-social. It means passing the burden of the state on to the next generation, making the unborn poorer before they see the light of day.

The next administration is unlikely to eliminate this irresponsible borrowing path if they continue to increase taxes and entitlement programs. The only way in which this path of monetary and fiscal destruction is eliminated is with pro-growth policies that lift the GDP growth trend, incentivize productivity, and promote business growth. The combination of a sound monetary policy and pro-growth fiscal policies will help the United States maintain its leadership status and the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.

The current policy of imprudent monetary policy, disguising the rising size of government with inflationary policies, will only lead to stagnation and the loss of world reserve status. If the next administration wants the best for Americans, it must stop the deficit bleeding and subsequent monetization through central bank policies that make citizens’ lives more expensive and their dreams of prosperity vanish.

The current budget trend leads to stagnation, a bloated government, and unacceptable taxes. If you copy the policies of France, you get the lack of growth, high debt, and elevated unemployment of France. There is no magical revenue measure that will stop the borrowing bleeding in the United States. Monetizing debt will continue to erode the middle class and weaken the economy, as well as perpetuate inflation, the hidden tax.

The United States has tried the European way and failed. It has delivered a debt-bloated GDP with declining consumer confidence and the destruction of the purchasing power of the currency. Now is the time to implement sound money and responsible fiscal policies. Any other policy will fail and accelerate the decline of America."

- https://www.dlacalle.com/

"How It Really Is"

“We'll know our disinformation program is complete 

when everything the American public believes is false.”

- William Casey, former director of the CIA

Bill Bonner, "The Hinge Points of History"

Tuileries garden.

"The Hinge Points of History"

In just a few months, balanced budgets were history...

 trade surpluses turned into trade deficits... 

wage gains came to an end... 

and the foundation of a $100 trillion debt pile was laid.

by Bill Bonner

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding 

America to the point of bankruptcy."

- Osama bin Laden

Poitou, France - "The trap was obvious. But we jumped in anyway. On Sunday, a week ago, we went to a sung Latin mass at the church of St. Roch. Almost every seat was taken, with hundreds of people participating... most of whom knew the appropriate Latin responses. “Turn away from materialism,” said the priest, thundering from a pulpit in the center of the église. “Things... your Facebook... your new dresses and vacations are a distraction. You need to focus on God.” Not a very original theme. But the worshippers seemed happy with it.

After the service, we strolled over to the nearby Tuileries garden. All of a sudden, fifty-five years vanished. A memory... almost more vivid than the present... came upon us. We recalled our first visit to the park more than a half century ago when we were a student, doing our junior year abroad. It was a winter day... in 1969. The sun, barely visible through the thin clouds, seemed to hang in the sky like the ash on a cigarette, waiting for nightfall. The park - much less frequented by tourists then than now - was still open.

Sarah, a friend from school, was with us. Tall and confident, she was fearless. When men stared at her on the subway, she would stare back, until they looked away. She had been kicked out of private schools in the US, so her parents sent her to Paris where she was supposed to be studying art history.

We were walking through the park when she saw the sculpture of an oversized lion. (A statue by Cain, 1873). Tempted, she jumped on its back like Calamity Jane on a wild horse. You weren’t supposed to walk on the grass, let alone leap onto a venerable statue. And when we heard the gendarme’s whistle, she dismounted and we continued our walk.

Sarah was a ‘free spirit’. But so were we all, Americans... young, proud, free, ambitious... and much admired, even in Paris. We were the ‘good guys’ back then. At least, we thought so. Yes, we made mistakes; the Vietnam war, for example. But it would soon be over. And we had learned our lesson; we wouldn’t do that again! Or so we thought.

Our money was good. Our credit record was unblemished. American universities were turning out more scientists and engineers than ever. China was a starving ‘Third World’ country. The Soviet Union was led by geriatric incompetents, following a playbook that was sure to fail. And for the US, it was onward and upward... and we, the Class of ’70, unbent, untempered and untested, would lead the way. But that was before two critical ‘hinge points of history’ creaked... and closed off the future we expected.

First, only two years after our initial visit to Paris, in 1971, Nixon’s new ‘credit dollar’ - a pure paper form of money, with nothing behind it save the ‘full faith and credit of the US government’ - became lawful money. Back then, the faith and the credit of the USA was unquestioned. But though it went mostly unnoticed, the money switcheroo turned the US from a country that earned its way honestly, to one that lived by printing more and more credit dollars.

In just a few months, balanced budgets were history... trade surpluses turned into trade deficits... wage gains came to an end... and the foundation of a $100 trillion debt pile was laid.

The second major hinge point came thirty years later. Once again, we were in Paris... and walking through the Tuileries garden on our way home from the office. That memory came back too... unbidden, like a recurring nightmare... and a feeling of doom. We recalled the employees gathering around a screen to watch the smoke rising from the World Trade Center... and then, unbelievably, the towers collapsed. One of our French staff members came up to us, with a gesture of solidarity and sympathy, and said: “We are all Americans now.” That was probably the last time we enjoyed the world’s sincere respect and approval.

Walking through the Tuileries garden, that September, twenty-three years ago, we had a sense that things would never be the same... that the peace and prosperity of the US-led world had come to an end.

It was not that we feared more terrorist attacks. 9/11 was the most daring and successful terrorist assault in history. It was unlikely to be repeated... and unlikely to threaten the empire of ‘the West.’ What we felt coming, like a bull driven mad by a fly, was the US response. The 9/11 attack was so successful, from the terrorists’ point of view, not just that it brought down the iconic towers of the globalized order - the World Trade Center towers. The real achievement was in provoking US policymakers to strangle themselves.

At that point, 2001, the US government had $6 trillion in debt. Still manageable. The federal budget was still more or less in balance. And our real rival - the Soviet Union - had given up ten years before. Instead of calmly pursuing the perps, at negligible cost... and otherwise sticking with the principles of a fiscally responsible, law-abiding civil society…the Bush administration, now in the grip of the neocons, the firepower industry and Israeli hard-liners, launched a pointless war against nobody in particular (aka terrorists).

US troops were soon on the march - against Iraq - which made no sense; Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was as much opposed to ‘terrorists’ as the US. And the 9/11 terrorists were almost all Saudis, not a single Iraqi among them. But Saudi Arabia had a secret pact with the US... and was also a major holder of US Treasury bonds. The resulting wars cost the US approximately $8 trillion... and as many as one million deaths. They also set the empire on a downward course, ruining itself with fruitless wars and endless deficits."

- https://www.bonnerprivateresearch.com/

Dan, I Allegedly, "Men Don’t Want to Work"

Full screen recommended.

Dan, I Allegedly, AM 6/24/24

"Men Don’t Want to Work"

"Today, we're diving into why a staggering number of young men, aged 18-32, are opting out of the workforce. It's not about a lack of jobs but a refusal to face the stress and responsibility of employment. We're talking about the NEET phenomenon - No Education, Employment, or Training - and its alarming rise. The economy is in shambles, and our young men aren't stepping up. From declining social skills to parents coddling their adult children, this issue is snowballing. Who will defend us if the situation goes downhill? How did we get here, and what can be done? I've got the full scoop and some hard-hitting opinions on the economy, inflation, and our national debt."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"War In The Middle East, 6/24/24""

Dialogue Works, 6/24/24

"Richard D. Wolff: Israel is Losing Significantly, 

and It's Only Getting Worse"

"Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). Wolff was also a regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum in New York City."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 6/24/24

"U.S. Snubs Israel, Warns Netanyahu Against 

Attacking Hezbollah, 'Iran Will Join War...'"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 6/24/24

"'Exhausted IDF...': Hamas' Direct & Fiery Message To 

Netanyahu After Israel PM's Hostage Deal Remark"

"In the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, Hamas spokesperson Suhail al-Hindi reaffirmed the group's commitment to continue fighting until Israel withdraws its forces and agrees to a ceasefire. This stance came in response to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's suggestion of a potential partial deal involving hostage negotiations but reiterated that Israel's objective remains the destruction of Hamas."

 Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Times Of India, 6/24/24

"Lebanon's Biggest-Ever Threat To Israel;

 'Half Million Missiles Will Destroy...'"

"Lebanon’s Grand Shia Mufti Sheikh Ahmad Qabalan warned that Hezbollah would fire half a million missiles at Israel in any future conflict, claiming their arsenal could significantly set Israel back. Hezbollah, already conducting daily rocket attacks on Israeli positions, has been escalating in response to Israeli actions against Palestinians. Previous conflicts in 2000 and 2006 saw Hezbollah successfully resist Israeli advances."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The wages of sin is what, Israel? It's coming...

Jim Kunstler, "Here It Comes"

"Here It Comes"

by Jim Kunstler

“Leftism might actually be noble if their concern for the marginalized wasn’t

simply an incidental externality to their seething hatred of the normal and the good.”

- David Pivtorak on “X”

"Did you entertain feelings of doom during last week’s brain-withering heat-wave? The sheer anxious waiting and wishing for it to end was a nice analog to the stifling psycho-political miasma oppressing this nation - alternately known as the republic (for which we stand) and “our democracy,” as “Joe Biden” likes to style his regime of lawfare, warfare, and garish state-sponsored depravity. Well, rejoice and ring them bells! The political weather is breaking. The week ahead looks like an all-you-can-eat, steam-table banquet of consequence.

The Supreme Court (SCOTUS) teased last week with an opening round of lesser decisions on bump stocks for rifles, abortion pills for women inconvenienced by motherhood, and a few other interesting cases. The court’s term draws to a close with the end of June. Pending are several cases liable to rattle the windows and shake down the walls.

One is the question as to whether the government can use private company proxies to censor constitutionally protected free speech (Murthy v. Missouri). The case has been simmering for years, with lower court actions that took a dim view of the intel blob’s coercive intrusions into social media. Probably the most galling part of the story is that virtually every act of censorship and de-platforming was committed against those telling the truth about some vital public issue, whether it was the danger and ineffectiveness of the Covid vaccines, or the probity of the 2020 elections, or the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop and its dastardly contents. That is, the government’s actions were entirely in the service of lying to the American people.

This raises a greater question that redounds from the courts onto the November election: just why is the US government so deeply invested in all that lying? The answer is obvious: it has been engaged in nefarious activities that it seeks to hide and deny. And all of that has served to wreck the country. Even worse, the government has gaslit half of the public into cheerleading and rolling over for all that dishonesty, so as to keep them “safe” from hobgoblins such as “misinformation.” Considering “Joe Biden’s” cratering poll numbers, it looks like the public is tired of this incessant lying and is fixing to vote his regime out of office.

We begin to see evidence that even some hardcore regime hacks are breaking out of that consensus trance, for instance, the Cuomo brothers denouncing the lies around lawfare and Covid. Andrew, once the New York state AG himself, told the shocked studio audience on Bill Maher’s HBO gabfest, beloved by Wokesters, that the Alvin Bragg case never should have been brought to trial. His brother Chris has been telling his podcast followers that Covid policy was a fiasco and the vaccines were harmful, and he apologized for his prior shifty reporting on all that when he had a CNN show.

Also upcoming at SCOTUS: Fischer v the United States, as to whether the DOJ tortured a federal statute on shredding financial records to overcharge J-6 rioters. In 2015 the court limited the scope of that law (part of the 2002 Sarbannes-Oxley Act), but Attorney General Merrick Garland used it anyway as an all-purpose dragnet to prosecute hundreds of people who merely paraded through the US Capitol - which provided legal footing for the House J-6 committee to color that event dishonestly as “an insurrection.” A decision against the government should lead to the release of many J-6 prisoners and perhaps lawsuits for malicious prosecution under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). It would also toss out the pertinent charges in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s DC case against Donald Trump for supposedly fomenting an “insurrection.”

Another biggie case pending (Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo; Relentless v. Department of Commerce) will determine whether executive agencies of the US Government (e.g., the EPA, CDC, Depts. of Energy, Education, Commerce, etc.) can issue regulations as if they have the force of law - that is, push citizens and businesses around by fiat where the law is ambiguous or nonexistent. A lot has changed since SCOTUS initially sought to define the scope of agency authority in their 1984 decision known as Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council. The federal bureaucracy has become an unaccountable behemoth, issuing sometimes arbitrary and capricious regulations that make it increasingly difficult to accomplish anything in our country. It has also enabled much of the government’s monkey business around Covid. This court appears to lean towards overturning Chevron.

Also pending this week: whether SCOTUS will stay Steve Bannon’s four-month jail sentence scheduled to begin July 1 while he appeals to the SCOTUS. Bannon was convicted for contempt of Congress when he refused to testify to the J-6 committee, basing his refusal on executive privilege. Note that SCOTUS did not keep White House advisor Peter Navarro out of prison for exactly the same charge. The DOJ must reply to SCOTUS’s request for “input” on the matter by Wednesday June 26th at 4:00 p.m. At issue is whether the government is interfering in the election by shutting up Bannon during the climax months of the campaign.

Today, Judge Aileen Cannon will ask Special Counsel Jack Smith’s lawyers to do some ‘splainin’ about how come he got to be Special Counsel without being nominated by a president or confirmed by the Senate, which is the lawful procedure. It’s therefore possible that Judge Cannon can determine that Mr. Smith is not operating lawfully. That’s not the only thing that can deflate the so-called Mar-a-Lago Documents case, but it could lead to a determination that this was a malicious political prosecution, with consequences for AG Merrick Garland.

By the way, you know what this case is really about, don’t you? I’ll tell you: the FBI went into Mar-a-Lago looking for Mr. Trump’s binder containing evidence of FBI and DOJ misconduct in the RussiaGate caper. Whether they found it or not, we don’t know, nor do we know if there are other copies of the materials. But you might surmise that a lot of officials in those agencies are a little nervous about their criminal liability, especially with the presidential election poll numbers looking how they do. In other words, the Mar-a-Lago raid was a cover-up operation.

And Thursday, of course, comes the debate to end all debates. Makes you cringe a little just to imagine it."

- https://kunstler.com/

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/24/24"

"Economic Market Snapshot 6/24/24"

○

Down the rabbit hole of psychopathic greed and insanity...

Only the consequences are real - to you!

○

"It's a Big Club, and you ain't in it. 

You and I are not in the Big Club."

- George Carlin

o

Market Data Center, Live Updates:

- https://www.marketwatch.com/market-data 

○

- https://www.asktraders.com/analysis/

○

Comprehensive, essential truth.

- http://www.shadowstats.com/

○

Financial Stress Index

"The OFR Financial Stress Index (OFR FSI) is a daily market-based snapshot of stress in global financial markets. It is constructed from 33 financial market variables, such as yield spreads, valuation measures, and interest rates. The OFR FSI is positive when stress levels are above average, and negative when stress levels are below average. The OFR FSI incorporates five categories of indicators: credit, equity valuation, funding, safe assets and volatility. The FSI shows stress contributions by three regions: United States, other advanced economies, and emerging markets."

○

- https://www.dailyjobcuts.com/

Job cuts and much more.

○

- https://www.zerohedge.com/

○

- https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/

○

- https://wallstreetonparade.com/

○

- https://www.whatreallyhappened.com/

○

- https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/

○

Commentary, highly recommended:

- https://www.theburningplatform.com/

○

"The more I see of the monied classes,

the better I understand the guillotine."

- George Bernard Shaw

○

Oh yeah... beyond words. Any I know anyway...

○

And now... The End Game...

o

'"NATO Will Pay...' Putin Roars As American ATACMS Missiles Kill Russians On Crimea Beach"

Full screen recommended.

Times of India, 6/24/24

'"NATO Will Pay...' Putin Roars As American ATACMS

 Missiles Kill Russians On Crimea Beach"

"The brutal attack in Russia's Crimea has left Vladimir Putin exasperated. The Putin government has issued an ultimatum to NATO as 'U.S. weapon was used in attack.' The Russian Defense Ministry said that NATO will pay for the killing of innocent Russians. In an open threat to NATO, Moscow said such actions won't go unanswered."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom, 6/24/24

"Larry Johnson: US Wasting Its Missiles"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

o

These continuing attacks by the United States using their Ukranian proxy are Acts Of War, and we're only still alive because of the astonishing restraint of the Russians. American missiles, guided by American satellite tracking guidance, and almost certainly operated by American "contractors". The Russians have warned repeatedly of the consequences, all of which we've ignored. We're begging for an all out pre-emptive nuclear first strike on NATO and the United States, as published Russian nuclear doctrine demands, and we'll get it much sooner than later. Russians never bluff. Enjoy your life my friends, it won't last much longer... - CP

Canadian Prepper, "Alert! 72 Hour Economic Collapse"

Canadian Prepper, 6/23/24

"Alert! 72 Hour Economic Collapse, 

When This Happens Market Shutdown, No Elections?"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

Jeremiah Babe, "The Vultures Will Pick You Apart"

Jeremiah Babe, 6/23/24

"The Vultures Will Pick You Apart, No Way The 

Financial System Survives; A New System Will Emerge"

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"Putin's Devastating Horizontal Escalation; Israel Will Lose If Fights Hezbollah"

Larry C. Johnson, 6/23/24

"Putin's Devastating Horizontal Escalation;

 Israel Will Lose If Fights Hezbollah"

"Larry C. Johnson is a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He is the founder and managing partner of BERG Associates, which was established in 1998. Larry provided training to the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years. He has been vilified by the right and the left, which means he must be doing something right."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

"I Must Not Fear..."

 

Musical Interlude: 2002, "The Dreaming Tree"

Full screen recommended.

2002, "The Dreaming Tree"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"A gorgeous spiral galaxy some 100 million light-years distant, NGC 1309 lies on the banks of the constellation of the River (Eridanus). NGC 1309 spans about 30,000 light-years, making it about one third the size of our larger Milky Way galaxy. Bluish clusters of young stars and dust lanes are seen to trace out NGC 1309's spiral arms as they wind around an older yellowish star population at its core.

Not just another pretty face-on spiral galaxy, observations of NGC 1309's recent supernova and Cepheid variable stars contribute to the calibration of the expansion of the Universe. Still, after you get over this beautiful galaxy's grand design, check out the array of more distant background galaxies also recorded in this sharp, reprocessed, Hubble Space Telescope view.”

- http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap130116.html

"Why Not?"

 

"The Only Thing Necessary for Evil to Triumph Is…"

"The Only Thing Necessary for Evil to Triumph Is…"

by Paul Rosenberg

"I’m betting that most of my readers can complete this phrase. The problem is, it isn’t quite true. Edmund Burke, its supposed source, was a good man, but that doesn’t make the saying true. Here’s the complete passage, in the form most of us know: The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

Yes, there is a time when good men and women must stand up for what’s right, even when it involves risk, but that moment comes only after evil has already been well established and is powerfully on the move.

Fighting evil may be an essential thing, but it isn’t the first problem - it matters only after thousands or millions of mistakes have already been made. And if those first mistakes had not been made, great fights against evil wouldn’t be necessary.

Where Evil Comes From: Let’s begin with a crucial point: Evil is inherently weak. Here’s why that’s true: Evil does not produce. It must take advantage of healthy and effective life (aka productive men and women) if it’s to succeed. Evil, by its nature, is wasteful and destructive: It requires the production of the good in order to do its deeds.

How much territory could Caesar have conquered on his own? How many people could Joe Stalin have killed with no one to take his orders? How many people could Mao have starved to death without obedient middlemen? With duteous followers, however, evil rulers killed some 260 million people in the 20th century.

The truth is that evil survives by tricking the good into doing its will. Without thousands of basically decent people confused enough to obey, evil would fail quickly. The great tragedy of our era is the extent to which evil has been successful in convincing people to service it. Good people having yielded their wills arm evil, accommodate evil, and acquiesce to its actions. 

Hannah Arendt summarized it this way: "The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. People end up supporting evil because they don’t want to make up their minds at all. They want to avoid criticism and vulnerability, so they hold to the middle of the pack and avoid all risk. These people wouldn’t initiate murders by themselves, but in the name of duty, loyalty and/or the greater good, they cooperate with evil and give it their strength. Each plays a part, but not so large a part that they’ll have to contemplate its effects."

Sins of Obedience: People think of murder, lying, and robbery as sins, but none of those has nearly the death toll of obedience. Basically decent men and women obey agents of evil for very mundane reasons. The process often goes like this:

Confused and intimidated, they look for what’s being punished and what isn’t. They try not to make waves. They learn that they can avoid making waves best if they adopt the perspectives of their overlords. So they run the overlords’ slogans through their minds as a default program.

In the end, these people don’t make up their minds. Rather, they take on the minds of their overlords and do their will. And so, the vast majority of evil done on Earth traces back to minds and wills that have been abandoned to fear.

So…This is what the famous quote should say: 'The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to obey.' We should be painting that saying on our walls."

- https://freemansperspective.com/

o

Full screen recommended.

"Why Are People So Obedient? 

Compliance and Tyranny"

"The Life You Have Left..."

“The life you have left is a gift. Cherish it.

Enjoy it now, to the fullest. Do what matters, now.”

~ Leo Babauta

"20 Million Americans Stuck In An Endless Credit Crisis That Is Sucking The Life Out Of Them"

Full screen recommended.

Epic Economist, 6/23/24

"20 Million Americans Stuck In An Endless 

Credit Crisis That Is Sucking The Life Out Of Them"

"17 trillion dollars. This is the size of the debt load of U.S. households in 2024. As a society, we're in the midst of the greatest debt bubble in history, and it's getting bigger and bigger with each passing month. We have witnessed previous generations achieving their financial goals much earlier in life. Back then, the economy was quite different, and their standard of living was far higher than ours. Now, just in order to make ends meet Americans have been borrowing and spending like never before. But it seems that a day of reckoning is fast approaching.

Fresh numbers released by the New York Fed revealed that in the last quarter alone, household debt increased by a whopping 184 billion dollars, led by the jump in mortgage balances as interest rates continue to soar.

If we were able to manage this enormous debt, there wouldn't be much cause for alarm. But new data shows that we can not, and now a massive wave of delinquencies is expected to emerge. In fact, the proportion of credit card balances in serious delinquency has climbed to the highest point since the aftermath of the Great Recession.

With Americans battling with high inflation and interest rates, a growing number of cardholders are falling behind on their monthly credit card payments right now. At this point, the number of people who can't afford to pay their credit card balances in full every month has already surpassed pre-pandemic levels, and the flow of credit card debt moving into delinquency hit 8.9% in the last quarter at an annualized rate, compared with an 8.5% rate the previous quarter and 5.87% at the end of 2023."

Comments here:

- https://www.youtube.com/

The Daily "Near You?"

Wake Forest, North Carolina, USA. Thanks for stopping by!

"2023: The Year Humanity Died"

"2023: The Year Humanity Died"

By Seraj Assi

"As a Palestinian who was born two generations apart from the Nakba, I have never imagined that one day I would witness the genocide of my people unfold before my eyes in broad daylight. While I always feared the prospect of a Second Nakba, as many Palestinians do, I have never dreamed, not even in my worst nightmares, that I would live it, witness it, and write about it.

In my happy Palestinian innocence, I believed that even if Israel was keen on repeating the Nakba, or attempting to “finish the job of 1948,” as many Israeli officials have threatened over the years, the Free World would not allow it to happen. In my wishful thinking, I believed that the world had learned its lesson since the Nakba. Yes, the world failed the Palestinian people in 1948. Yes, it allowed Israel to carry out its ethnic cleansing and mass expulsion of Palestinians. Yes, it abandoned the Palestinian refugees, and rewarded Israel with a United Nations recognition and membership. But that was 75 years ago, the age of genocides and holocausts. A lot of progress had been made since, I told myself. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was adopted. The U.N. evolved. Human rights groups mushroomed. Mandela won the Nobel Peace. True, genocide would occur so often and so uncontested in the decades since, but after the horrific genocides in Rwanda and Bosnia, the leaders of the Free World seemed to have had enough! They seemed adamant not to allow another genocide to happen - Never Again! Not in Palestine, not again!

Summit after summit, they vowed that such atrocities had no place in the new century. Even when the new century in Palestine ushered in the Second Intifada and the collapse of the Oslo Accords, I still believed that the horrors of the past were in check. Even when Israel mushroomed in size, and the settlements tripled, and the apartheid system was closing in on the Palestinians in the West Bank, and the merciless siege suffocating those in Gaza, where one million children were born and raised in captivity, I still believed that that was the peak of our suffering and nothing remotely close the terrors of Rwanda or Bosnia, or indeed the First Nakba, would happen to us, because the world was watching, and it was ready to dispatch its postwar moral arsenal to stop it!

As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war.

I was dead wrong. For four bloody months since the Gaza Genocide first unfolded, the Free World has sat there watching, and cheering, and mocking us to death. During the first weeks, I still held onto my naïve optimism. True, the Free World betrayed Palestinians in Gaza; it allowed Israel to act with impunity; it tolerated its war crimes and mass atrocities; it denied the children of Gaza even the pretense of humanity. But ultimately it was bound to come to its senses and unleash its moral diplomacy to end this horror. So I persisted in my optimism. Perhaps the world needed more time to fathom what was happening. Perhaps it was waiting for a few more thousands of Palestinians to be killed before making its drastic move. Yet week after week, the world remained silent, blind to our deaths, deaf to our sufferings.

One month into the bloodshed, after Israel had killed 1,000 children, I said that’s it; the world would make its move now, if only to save the children! But the U.S. responded by vetoing a humanitarian cease-fire that could have saved thousands of innocent lives! A month after, when the death toll of children reached 10,000, I said enough is enough; it’s high time the world acted NOW, because humanity itself is at stake! U.N. officials had already sounded the alarm that Gaza was becoming a “graveyard for children,” so no one could pretend they did not know. The time to act was now or never! Yet there was another U.S. veto; another cold hand was raised to issue a new death sentence for Palestinians. Another spit in the face of humanity!

Now I’m lost for words. I have lost faith in humanity. The staggering death toll in Gaza is humanly impossible to fathom or accept without losing our sense of shared humanity. As a Palestinian, as a human being, I feel that part of me has died in this war. I know for certain that I will not emerge from this tragedy the same person I was before. None of us will.

Gaza may be annihilated, but it’s not going anywhere. When the dust of war settles, it will sit on our global conscience for generations to come. It will be a permanent stain on our humanity. The children of Gaza will not forget, if they survive. The living will remember, and the dead will haunt us forever. Gaza will be remembered not only as the crime of the century, but also as the site of our greatest shame, where humanity failed. 2023 will go down in history as the darkest in Palestine - the year humanity died."

- https://www.commondreams.org/

o

Palestinians transport the bodies of loved ones killed during Israeli 

bombardment for burial in Tuffah neighborhood in Gaza City on June 22, 2024.

June 22, 2024: Now 37,551 innocent men, old people, women and 16,000 children killed, 85,911 wounded, and another 8,000 missing and buried under the rubble by US supplied 2,000 lb bombs, which WE to our eternal shame and disgrace allow and support! And, except for the Houthis and Hezbollah, the world sits silently watching this horror and does nothing! Shakespeare wrote, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here." Sartre said, "This is Hell, cleverly disguised just enough to keep us from escaping." I believe them... - CP

- https://www.aljazeera.com/news/l

"This Is Really Starting To Look A Lot Like Ancient Rome"

"This Is Really Starting To Look 

A Lot Like Ancient Rome"

by Simon Black

"In the late summer of 408 AD, a barbarian army under the command of Alaric, king of the Visigoths, set out on a leisurely march across the Italian countryside towards the city of Rome…so that he could burn it to the ground. Alaric had been promised money by the Roman government in exchange for a military alliance between Rome and the Visigoths; but just before the money was supposed to have been paid, the Romans canceled the deal. Talk about a bonehead move.

Alaric was a decorated warrior at the head of a powerful army. And the Western Roman Empire, by comparison, was barely even functional anymore. The government was bankrupt, the currency was a joke, the economy was in the dumps, the military was weak, the borders were nonexistent…and there was no sense of unity in Roman society.

So it clearly made no sense to turn Alaric into an enemy. But then again, the emperor in the west was a weak, incompetent stooge named Honorius, whose legacy is so horrendous that he consistently ranks among the worst emperors in Roman history. And there’s some pretty stiff competition on that list. Alaric, to his credit, actually tried to avoid conflict with the Romans and work out a resolution. But Honorius refused to negotiate…so Alaric gathered his troops and marched towards Rome.

Now, at that point in history, the city of Rome itself wasn’t even the capital of the western empire anymore; it had been moved to Milan, and then to Ravenna. But Rome was still among the largest and most prominent cities in the world, even in the early fifth century. And Alaric knew that sacking it would send shockwaves across the empire.

Alaric and his barbarian army were practically unopposed on their way to Rome; according to the ancient historian Zosimus, in fact, their march was so leisurely it was as if they were “at some festival” rather than heading to war. They arrived in the fall of 408 AD and encircled the city, cutting it off from any resupply…meaning it would only be a matter of time before residents all starved to death and the Visigoths plundered the city.

The destruction of Rome was an unthinkable cataclysm. And so, with the barbarians literally at the gates, Honorius finally agreed to negotiate a deal. And it was a costly one - many times more expensive than their original agreement. That should have been the end of the story… and yet Honorius found a way to screw it all up again.

Early the following year in 409 AD, Honorius tried to double-cross Alaric by sending troops to ambush the Visigoths. The attack failed, and Alaric was infuriated by this violation of their treaty. Again, to his credit, Alaric tried negotiate a peaceful solution, and he asked for lands, titles, and tribute as compensation. But Honorius-- who at that point was a highly experienced diplomat-- instead sent an insulting letter back to Alaric. Talks quickly broke down, and Alaric turned back towards Rome in late 409.

Once again - and only after the barbarians were at the gate -  the government finally agreed to Alaric’s demands… and the destruction of Rome was narrowly avoided for a second time. Yet then Honorius managed to screw it up for the third time in a row. The following year, in 410 AD, Alaric and Honorius were set to meet near the capital city of Ravenna to discuss peace and cooperation. But Alaric and his men were ambushed just prior to the meeting by Roman troops. He survived. And, completely fed up with Honorius, Alaric took his troops back to Rome for the third (and final) time in two years.

The Visigoths entered the city on August 24, 410 AD through Rome’s Salarian Gate, about 3 kilometers north of the Colosseum. Alaric and his men spent three full days sacking the city. Almost everything of value was stolen or destroyed. Cultural treasures were defaced, monuments were ripped down, buildings were burned to the ground, and the city’s residents were killed or enslaved.

It was difficult to not think of this story when news broke about the debt ceiling ‘resolution’ late last week, because the two situations share many parallels. The sack of Rome in 410 AD was a crisis of their own making. Decades of terrible strategic and financial decisions had reduced Rome to a shell of its former greatness, weakening the western empire considerably. Their enemies noticed.

The United States is in a similar position; decades of terrible decisions have led to a $37.4 trillion national debt that grows by leaps and bounds every single year. Through its completely irresponsible addiction to spending, the government has weakened the country considerably… and America’s adversaries have noticed.

In the early 400s, Rome was led by a complete buffoon who, despite all of his years in government service, engineered a crisis by refusing to negotiate or to take an obvious risk seriously…only to ultimately cave and narrowly avoid an earth-shattering catastrophe.

This is a clear similarity to the debt ceiling fiasco that we see playing out now. The risk was obvious…and yet the guy who shakes hands with thin air refused to negotiate until the last minute, just barely averting disaster. Waiting until the last minute to just barely avoid a major catastrophe is not a viable problem solving strategy. Neither is kicking the can down the road.

Yet every few years the debt ceiling becomes a major crisis. They consistently wait until the last minute, hastily negotiate a short-term patch, and kick the can down the road for another few years while they take the country even deeper into debt, until the whole cycle begins anew.

The Romans tried to do the same thing with the Visigoths: negotiate a terrible, last minute solution. Make the problem worse. Repeat. This approach didn’t work in the early 400s, and it won’t work today. As the sack of Rome demonstrated, when you’re constantly taking things to the brink of disaster, eventually someone is going to go too far.

A worldwide financial meltdown triggered by the United States defaulting on its debt was very narrowly avoided. This time. Who’s to say that when this comes up again in 2025 that some idiot politician won’t take things too far? The really ridiculous thing about the debt ceiling crisis was that it shows the inability of the US government to negotiate responsibly…with itself! This was literally a case of American politicians trying to resolve their differences with other American politicians. How is this going to work out when the people on the other side of the table aren’t from another US political party…but from the Chinese Communist Party?

It’s worth thinking about given how the specter of conflict continues rising; just over the weekend, a Chinese naval vessel intentionally maneuvered to within 150 meters of US and Canadian ships in the Taiwan Strait. And this was just one of many obvious escalations in recent months.

The last point worth mentioning is that the sack of Rome illustrates how dangerous complacency can be. When Alaric showed up in 408 AD for the first time, the city’s destruction was avoided. When he showed up the second time in 409 AD, the city’s destruction was avoided again. So you can probably imagine that when Alaric and his barbarian army were on the way to Rome for the third time in 410 AD, the city’s residents probably felt confident that their leaders would once again figure out a last minute solution. That misplaced confidence in their incompetent leaders cost Romans dearly."

- https://www.sovereignman.com/

"The Only Consequence..."

"What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end,

of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do."

- John Ruskin

Greg Hunter, "No Way Financial System Survives"

"No Way Financial System Survives"

by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com

"Financial writer and precious metals broker Bill Holter has been documenting all the unpayable debt that has been building up in the financial system like cancer. The latest black hole of default is coming from a big bank in Japan. Norinchukin Bank is selling $63 billion in Treasuries and other sovereign bonds to stay afloat. Then there is recent news announced by the FDIC that 63 US banks (the names are being kept secret) have more than $500 billion in losses, and let’s not forget about the trillions in losses sitting on the books of European banks ready to suck the world into a black debt hole. This is just a few of many on a long list of destabilizing problems that can tank the entire over-indebted financial system. 

Holter warns, “The list is so long, it could be a banking problem. It could be a derivatives problem. It could be a derivatives problem in the stock market, the bond market and you could see a failure to deliver in silver. Some type of warfare could crash the system. You could see warfare in Ukraine, Israel or Tiawan. The system is so unstable, at this point, it could be anything that could bring it down. Unpayable debt is not just a US problem. This is all over the world. Central banks are having to issue huge amounts of debt because we are in the exponential decay phase. We are exactly where Richard Russell said we would be 20 years ago. It’s inflate or die, and the only way to inflate is to create more money supply.”

Add to that the $10 trillion in debt the US Government has to roll over by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the US government piles on $1 trillion in new debt every 100 days. What could go wrong?

Holter said the last time he was on USAW that there was a little less than a 50% chance we would even have an election. Now, he predicts it is more likely there will be no 2024 Presidential Election. Holter says, “There is no way the system, as it is now, survives. It’s mathematically impossible. So, if it is mathematically impossible, are they going to blow smoke up until the day it blows up? Or are they going to do something to blow it up and then say our programs and policies were working except for XYZ this or whatever. They have to kick the table over. They cannot allow the table to fall over on its own because then there is going to be finger pointing. To avoid the finger pointing, they have got to kick the table over.”

Holter also thinks gold is going to exponential numbers to back all the debt the USA has. If you go with the 8,030 tons of gold the government claims is in Fort Knox, you will need a dollar price of gold at “$125,000 per ounce for 100% gold backing of the dollar.”

Holter also says, “The dollar is being pushed out of the global financial system. Demand for dollars is shrinking at a time when borrowing demand is rising.” This is a going to be a disaster for America and anyone holding dollars in the future.

In closing, Holter says, “The financial collapse that is coming will be worse than anything we have ever experienced. This is going to be far worse than the Great Depression simply because society itself is far worse. Back in the Great Depression, you had neighbors helping neighbors. Today you will have neighbors picking on other neighbors like vultures.” There is much more in the 51-minute interview.

- https://usawatchdog.com/

Join Greg Hunter on Rumble as he goes One-on-One 

with financial writer and precious metals expert Bill Holter:

- https://rumble.com/