National Debt

Moments ago, Boehner voted to enact "Obama's tax cuts", which is the new de facto Bush tax cuts (which expired yesterday), and which will raise the budget deficit over the next decade by $4 trillion, yet which at the same time paradoxically also hiked taxes on nearly three quarters of Americans with an emphasis on the wealthiest 1%. Now, Boehner also issues a statement to advise his constituency just what issue he will cave on next: spending.

Econophile's take on the 7 most important economic events of 2012 and why they will impact 2013 and beyond. This is not what the MSM will tell you.

The problem with democracy. 

Despite the fact that myself and everyone else acting like they know what lays ahead are proven wrong time and time again, we continue to make predictions about the future. It makes us feel like we have some control, when we don’t. The world is too complex, too big, too corrupt, too lost in theories and delusions, and too dependent upon too many leaders with too few brains to be able to predict what will happen next. This is the time of year when all the “experts” will be making their 2013 predictions - but few will address where they were wrong in previous predictions. I’m more interested in why I was wrong. It seems I always underestimate the ability of sociopathic central bankers and their willingness to destroy the lives of hundreds of millions to benefit their oligarch masters. I always underestimate the rampant corruption that permeates Washington DC and the executive suites in mega-corporations across the land. And I always overestimate the intelligence, civic mindedness, and ability to understand math of the ignorant masses that pass for citizens in this country. It seems that issuing trillions of new debt to pay off trillions of bad debt, government sanctioned accounting fraud, mainstream media propaganda, government data manipulation and a populace blinded by mass delusion can stave off the inevitable consequences of an unsustainable economic system. Will 2013 be the year it all collapses in a flaming heap of rubble? I don’t know. Maybe you should ask an “expert”.

The beginning of the year has traditionally been a time of optimism when we all look forward to the exciting things that are going to happen over the next 12 months. Unfortunately, there are a whole bunch of things about 2013 that we already know are going to stink. Taxes are going to go up, good paying jobs will continue to leave the country, small businesses will continue to be destroyed, the number of Americans living in poverty will continue to soar, our infrastructure will continue to decay, global food supplies will likely continue to dwindle and the U.S. national debt will continue to explode. Our politicians continue to pursue the same policies that got us into this mess, and yet they continue to expect things to magically turn around. But that is not the way that things work in the real world. Bad decisions lead to bad outcomes. Sticking our heads in the sand and pretending that everything will be “okay” somehow is not going to help anyone.

The U.S. federal deficit is now exceeding $1 trillion dollars every year —up from $161 billion in 2007, the last year before the financial crisis. Spending is up some $1 trillion, as outlays for Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other entitlements have increased by an amount equal to the entire 2013 military budget – a budget which may again surpass the combined military expenditure of every other nation in the world. U.S. unfunded liabilities are now estimated at between $50 trillion and $100 trillion and by the end of the decade (in less than just 7 years), runaway entitlement spending will require shutting down the military or crippling many other vital domestic spending programs to head off massive deficits that will likely lead to a dollar crisis and significant inflation. No matter what deal is eventually agreed, whether before or after the new year, it will at best nibble at the edges of the trillion dollar annual deficits that are being piled up. While all the focus has been on the so called U.S. ‘fiscal cliff’, amnesia has taken hold and many market participants have forgotten about the far from resolved Eurozone debt crisis – not to mention looming debt crisis in the UK and Japan.

To understand this endgame, we need to start with the financial and political basics of wealth and power in the U.S. Put these nine structural dynamics together and the endgame becomes clearly visible: Politically, a Tyranny of the Majority comprised of those who draw direct transfers/benefits from the Federal government, is ruled by the top half-of-1% financial aristocracy who own the majority of income-generating assets.  The minority, who pay most of the taxes (the 24.5% between the majority and aristocracy), will see their taxes rise as the aristocracy buys loopholes and exclusions while the bottom 50% pay no income tax. Financially, the Federal government’s spending has outrun the tax revenues being collected.  Structurally, Federal expenditures for entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans Administration, etc.) will rise as Baby Boomers retire en masse over the next 15 years, while tax revenues will stagnate along with earned income. There is no way to square these circles. What few dare admit, much less state publicly, is that the Constitutional limits on the financial Aristocracy and the Tyranny of the Majority have failed.

Presenting Dave Collum's now ubiquitous and all-encompassing annual review of markets and much, much more. From Baptists, Bankers, and Bootleggers to Capitalism, Corporate Debt, Government Corruption, and the Constitution, Dave provides a one-stop-shop summary of everything relevant this year (and how it will affect next year and beyond).

What a year 2012 has been!  The mainstream media continues to tell us what a “great job” the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are doing of managing the economy, but meanwhile things just continue to get even worse for the poor and the middle class. Right now we are living in a bubble of debt-fueled false prosperity that allows us to continue to consume far more wealth than we produce, but when that bubble bursts we are going to experience the most painful economic “adjustment” that America has ever gone through.  We need to be able to explain to our fellow Americans what is coming, why it is coming and what needs to be done.  Hopefully the crazy economic numbers that we have included in this article will be shocking enough to wake some people up.

Ministry of Finance official: “That’s why the MoF is trying to gain control over the Bank of Japan.”

I attempt to craft something that has a chance of working.

As Monti, Grilli, and Berlusconi jockey for the headlines, the nation of Italy will surely be celebrating. Since debt is apparently wealth, the Italian nation has just joined an exclusive club of 'wealthy' nations as its total national debt blows through EUR 2 Trillion. With the trend now growing beyond exponential, having gathered pace since the crisis began in 2008, we suspect it won't be long before we see EUR 3 Trillion (of course entirely backstopped by FT's man-of-the-year Mario Draghi). It appears that it's not 'greed-is-good' but 'debt-is-good' that is the idiom of today's sovereign financiers.

Gold fell nearly 1% in illiquid markets in Asia overnight. Some traders may have decided to take profits on the short term long the FOMC announcement trade. Gold bullion prices had already ran up to $1,723 in the 2 weeks prior to the policy statement. Overnight, as prices fell below the 100-day moving average at $1,705, stop-loss selling was triggered which pushed prices lower quickly. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve took the bold, some would say reckless step, of linking its monetary policy to unemployment, creating concerns that the U.S. dollar will be debased even more in the coming months.  The US Federal Reserve will keep interest rates at close to zero until unemployment falls below 6.5%. This is a historic and very radical change to monetary policy. It is the first time a large central bank has ever tied its interest rate policy directly to one facet of the economy – unemployment.

To the point of causing intestinal convulsions, there has been no shortage of analysis on the elections of 2012. The word “journalist” has today become synonymous with “whore”, simply because success in the field makes whoredom essential. One meme that is being spread widely in the mainstream that I do actually agree with is that the Republican Party is “dying”. During the 2010 mid-term elections, there was a mass resurgence in conservative voting based almost entirely on Tea Party optimism. That changed, though, when Neo-Con elites began weaseling their way into the club, gushing about how they loved freedom. What these vermin do not understand, though, is that it takes more than rhetoric to hold onto Liberty Movement voters. Those of us in the movement who have deeply considered the election aftermath have predominantly concluded that it is WE who have taken the mojo out of the GOP. Let’s take a look at just a few of the mainstream media and GOP leadership arguments and propaganda initiatives and why they are shameless fabrications meant to hide Liberty Movement influence... The GOP is dying and we are thriving.  Whether or not the two are related, I leave for you to decide...

"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies... That is money that we have borrowed from the Social Security trust fund, borrowed from China and Japan, borrowed from American taxpayers. This rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy, robbing our cities and States of critical investments in infrastructure like bridges, ports, and levees; robbing our families and our children of critical investments in education and health care reform; robbing our seniors of the retirement and health security they have counted on. Every dollar we pay in interest is a dollar that is not going to investment in America’s priorities."