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Government Celebrates Austerity With Fourth Largest Spending Month Ever
When in April the US government reported a surplus of $112.9 billion (thanks to tax collections, Fed and GSE remittances) - the largest surplus since April 2008, many wondered if DC's profligate ways were over, and if maybe the so-called US austerity was staring to kick in. It wasn't. Because as the just released May data showed, not only did the US go right back to its deficit ways, posting a negative surplus of $138.7 billion, the largest May deficit since 2009, but the amount the US government spent, a total of $335.9 billion, was the largest May outlay in history, and only the 4th greatest spending month ever. Of course, when the most misunderstood concept in Europe - by the 17 or so "sovereign" nations that make up its disunion - for the past three years has been fauxterity, it is not surprising that US politicians are having quite a bit of trouble grasping that spending less means actually... spending less. But at least Bernanke will have something to monetize in a system in which liquid, "high-quality" collateral is becoming increasingly scarcer.
US monthly deficits:
and just US spending.
How all this ties in to the US funding picture, which is currently at the debt ceiling and where government pension funds are actively being raided to make way to fund even more spending, and which is expected to be a viable stopgap option until October, remains to be seen.
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I wish I could spend money I don't have too!
Don't buy stuff you cant afford [a Steve Martin classic]
~~~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzE76nUSjL8
Fourth largest spending month...
Thank god the Dims stopped the sequester..., oh wait.
This reckless policy of US austerity is the ruination of our economy.
Instead of these drastic cuts in spending, we need to be doing the opposite.
We need to print and spend trillions of dollars that we do not have.
---Professor Krugman
In other news, UK economy may be saved by the arrival of the royal baby.
http://apnews.myway.com//article/20130612/DA6S16D83.html
Some days, the jokes just write themselves.
Quelle surprise!
I mean of course there's a sequester... of what nobody has a clue since there's no budget against which to measure more or less, if you get my point...
Professor Crock-man,
With inflation at a 50 year low and ramping ever downward, printing and spend is exactly what the fed will do and keep doing.
Deflation will be their next concern.
One wonders how much of this was spent on flooring prices through derivates, manipulating interest rates and most intriguingly, backstopping the massive gold short placed on the 12th April...
imagine the world completely invested in petro dollar system, yet inflation is 20%, unemployment is 50% due to austerity on labor.
this is exactly what we need... not everyone can save at the same time since your savings is someone else's spending... if the government could spend another 17 trillion we will all be rich! http://tinyurl.com/n8hmfya
Read my lips...deficits dont matter
http://www.khou.com/news/texas-news/FEMA-denies-aid-to-Texas-for-blast-2...
They didn't see the need to spend any in West though.
Krugman just wet his pants...
MOAR debt!
pods
luckily I had my depends on.
So does this finally mean MSNBC, ABC, CNN, and everyone else in the MSM can now shut the fuck up about how austerity and the 'sequester' are destroying the country and forcing people to commit suicide or eat rats in flaming trash cans across America?
there will be no mention of this in MSM
When I do bother briefly watching MSNBC or glance at newspaper/magazines, they talk about the fatal and catastrophic consequences of spending less money and scaling back the military industrial complex/other government institutions via budget cuts and the 'sequester'. They pretty much talk about it all the fucking time like its the end of the world and has never been done before. I wish they'd stop embarrassing themselves.. But oh we'll. that's the CFR/Trilateral Comissioned news for ya.
Fire up them printers and it'll fix those charts....
When don't they celebrate on our dime.
1/3 trillion dollars in one month FFS.
We need moar green shoots!
A trillion here and a trillon there and you will start spending some real (fake) money.
takes a lot of debt-money to run an empire that only benefits 1000 or so people
EBT cards have to be refilled....
Please
Do
Not
Get
Me
Going
deficits don't matter
defaults don't matter
gubbermint agent under your bed bitchez
Crack does not smoke itself,neither govt spending.
"You didn't spend that yourself!, Bitchez!"
I wonder how much that million square foot NSA data mining/spying center they are building out in Utah is costing?
It should not cost anyting..with the insider information they can get with it..and if they invest wisely..they could make billions on the news
seasonality
Those soon to be NSA contractor whistleblower salaries really add up!
Things are so far gone it just doesnt matter anymore. They will keep this up until it shuts down overnight some Friday in the future. Timing is anyones guess.
Yeah but just think of where we would be.....
There is no substitute for spending less.
Unexpected.
Unprecidented.
Un-whatever.
Hey, good thing the low-IQ, I mean information, voters put the GOP back in charge of the House a couple of years ago, eh? That whole "keep a check on King Putt's spending" thing is working out splendidly, no?
good stuff these last few days on The Hedge...this place really lights up well when it looks like there really will be a market crash. WE SHALL SEE. "obscure products massively traded" ain't oil. why you ask? "because there's just too much of it." you going on 4 decades...if not 6...of trading petro dollars "for profits" (both personal and systemically.) that time is now closing. i have posited a "rush for liquidity" as my primary investing thesis going on four years now...yet those oil prices are FALLING...don't even get me started on natural gas. "can't get more liquid than that" folks. you can trade future for delivered eletricity...or, you can buy an equity who's goal is to electrify the world and by extension make sure the US grid stays stable and "not prone to price spikes"...which can damage the economy. GENERAL electric comes to mind....but there are others in that..."field" so to speak. Is the Federal spending a huge problem both now and going forward? yep. i haven't heard much from Bruce in a while, let alone Marc Chandler. These guys were traders first and foremost...so certainly Bruce has gone out of his way to say Social Security is doomed. well, "if it is that's one way of massively reducing spending." the way i see it though "every Government is a sinner when it comes to Government spending"...and unfortunately "not all Governments are created equal" as well.
lots of Negative Surpluses
Spending less in real terms.
Hey, it can't be a cheap task to keep 1/3rd of the entire country housed, clothed, fed, and entertained and not rioting month after month!
Forwarded right to colleagues inbox who is always asserting 'things are getting moar bettar'.
and yet...White House tours are still closed. which saves like $5 grand a month.
I gotta tell ya' that's the kinda austerity hurts the poor and disadvantaged, not being able to see the disgustingly opulent splendor, the Model of the New Versailles in which the Obammies can live and not yet be proud to be Americans.
And disadvantaged children as we all know grow up to become serial killers
If it saves just one little fucking overproduced useless feeder that'll grow up to vote Democratic....
Ever heard of MAIN CORE??
http://www.activistpost.com/2013/06/main-core-list-of-millions-of-americ...
Main Core: A List Of Millions Of Americans That Will Be Subject To Detention During Martial Law
Are you on the list? Are you one of the millions of Americans that have been designated a threat to national security by the U.S. government? Will you be subject to detention when martial law is imposed during a major national emergency? As you will see below, there is actually a list that contains the names of at least 8 million Americans known as Main Core that the U.S. intelligence community has been compiling since the 1980s.
A recent article on Washington’s Blog quoted a couple of old magazine articles that mentioned this program, and I was intrigued because I didn’t know what it was. So I decided to look into Main Core, and what I found out was absolutely stunning – especially in light of what Edward Snowden has just revealed to the world.
It turns out that the U.S. government is not just gathering information on all of us. The truth is that the U.S. government has used this information to create a list of threats to national security that the government would potentially watch, question or even detain during a national crisis. If you have ever been publicly critical of the government, there is a very good chance that you are on that list.
The following is how Wikipedia describes Main Core…
Main Core is the code name of a database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the United States. Main Core contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources, is collected and stored without warrants or court orders. The database’s name derives from the fact that it contains “copies of the ‘main core’ or essence of each item of intelligence information on Americans produced by the FBI and the other agencies of the U.S. intelligence community.”
It was Christopher Ketchum of Radar Magazine that first reported on the existence of Main Core. At the time, the shocking information that he revealed did not get that much attention. That is quite a shame, because it should have sent shockwaves across the nation…
According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.
Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a “national emergency.” Executive orders issued over the last three decades define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,” while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order.” According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger.
So if that list contained 8 million names all the way back in 2008, how big might it be today?
That is a very frightening thing to think about.
According to Christopher Ketchum, the exact kind of NSA snooping that Edward Snowden has just described was being used to feed data into the Main Core database…
A host of publicly disclosed programs, sources say, now supply data to Main Core. Most notable are the NSA domestic surveillance programs, initiated in the wake of 9/11, typically referred to in press reports as “warrantless wiretapping.” In March, a front-page article in the Wall Street Journal shed further light onto the extraordinarily invasive scope of the NSA efforts: According to the Journal, the government can now electronically monitor “huge volumes of records of domestic e-mails and Internet searches, as well as bank transfers, credit card transactions, travel, and telephone records.” Authorities employ “sophisticated software programs” to sift through the data, searching for “suspicious patterns.” In effect, the program is a mass catalog of the private lives of Americans. And it’s notable that the article hints at the possibility of programs like Main Core. “The [NSA] effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called black programs whose existence is undisclosed,” the Journal reported, quoting unnamed officials. “Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach.”
The following information seems to be fair game for collection without a warrant: the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards. All of this information is archived on government supercomputers and, according to sources, also fed into the Main Core database.
As I mentioned in a previous article, the NSA gathers 2.1 million gigabytes of data on all of us every single hour.
We will have to eliminate 25 million people who can't be re-educated
~ Weather Underground led by Bill Ayers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWMIwziGrAQ
Goes without saying all ZH readers are on the list.
Double secret pass phrase to identify each other:
"Now, a question of etiquette - as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?"
The logistics of such a sweep would be nightmarish. I'm a change the system from within kinda guy. We get to that point and the hardcore folks would begin to see how well their stuff works. We would be at full on revolt by then. I see erosion as more of a worry than sweeping the streets of dissent. Our debt will collapse us well before.
This would actually be much scairer to me if the list only had, for instance, 10,000 names, becuase it is concievable that the government can round up that many people. 8,000,000? This is just a buerocratic fantasy, can't happpen.
Well it can happen over several years... like Stalin did.
I think I'll be safe enough, raising pigs on one of the outer islands.
Austerity doesn't and can't work. That's not how the monetary system works. It never fails to amaze me, the naivety of Austrians. When the entire monetary system, every single dollar or other currency in exitence in the world, is made from debt, Austrians somehow have managed to convince themselves that the government should run no debt. What?! It makes absolutely no sense.
Just like the drunk who celebrates his decision to go sober with another shot...
Can someone explain the difference between Tyler's $138.7B deficit here and the $90.0B surplus at the debt to the penny treasury website?
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/debt/search?startMonth=04&startDay=30&startYear=2013&endMonth=05&endDay=31&endYear=2013
from here: http://www.treasurydirect.gov/RI/OFNtebnd
2's and 5's were 35 billion
7's were 29 billion
and 9 year 8 month TIPS were 13 billion
for a total of 122 billion that is incurred but not posted on the debt to the penny website on Friday 31 May 2013.
the rest is probably late receipts of tax payments
you make a good point though..reconciliation is important..just remember you are dealing with federal employees that work no over time and always work a 40 hour week (productivity is simply volume of statistics/employees)
let's keep an eye on the debt to the penny numbers for june 2013 in a few weeks and check back...my money is on massive worsening in debt
http://www.treasurydirect.gov/images/ri/ul_corner2.gif); background-position: 0% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">Security Term Type IssueDate Maturity
Date Interest
Rate % Yield
% Price
Per $100 http://www.treasurydirect.gov/images/ri/ur_corner2.gif); background-position: 100% 0%; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat;">CUSIP 2-YEAR NOTE 05-31-2013 05-31-2015 0.250 0.283 99.934233 912828VD9 5-YEAR NOTE 05-31-2013 05-31-2018 1.000 1.045 99.781333 912828VE7 7-YEAR NOTE 05-31-2013 05-31-2020 1.375 1.496 99.198680 912828VF4 9-YEAR 8-MONTH TIPS 05-31-2013 01-15-2023 0.125 -0.225 104.272695 912828UH1
Gotta keep the welfare crowd happy. After all, they are now the majority. Is Benny gonna taper? Ha, ha ha...not in this decade. Is Congress going to grow a conscience and make some hard choices? Not in this decade or next. Is the deficit going to go down? Only if Buffoon and Gates feel more guilty and send in a contribution.
I've heard that there are two signs that a society is collapsing. One is when it becomes obsessed with sex. Two is when it starts blaming the most vulnerable people for the problems. Seems we're there. So now it's the unemployed and homeless people's fault that finacial terrorists have taken control of the country, is it?
What was the second sign again? I was daydreaming Kate Upton and lost my train of thought....
don't worry, the government is not spending your money (taxes).
these are just numbers on a spreadsheet and don't need to be accounted for, by anyone...ever
its not your money, its theirs..
BE HAPPY..take bennies (benefits and fed printed dollars)
Why does the dickhead government even need to collect taxes when the ponzi masters can just print?
exactly..
therein lies the lie of communsim
economists like krugman believe that money never has to be paid back
"austerity" is honoring your debts vy converting undated banknotes to dated coupon bearing debt and giving savers the money they thought they had
And if debt doesn't matter, why not print millions for every citizen, not just the welfare crowd? That would ensure perpetual power.
Government spending has been going down for 40 years (by about 30%) when you account for inflation. As a percentage of GDP, it maintained 35% for 30 years up until the 2008 crash. It then increased to 43% where it's been since.
The assertion that government spending is out of control is simply false and is not consistent with the data. It's definitely not going down, but it's not out of control either. What's actually happening is that the monetary system is collapsing, it's hyperinflation. The currency is being debased which gives the illusion of runaway government spending, but it's only nominal values. I would have hoped that Austrian Economists should be able to understand this, since they're the ones constantly wailing about how inflation is officialy understated.
So, government expenditures are merely steady, the .001% are doing very well indeed, and it's just the private sector lumpen who are falling into penury.
Somehow, that doesn't make me feel much better.
Bullshit.
By every metric available - spending as %GDP, spending per capita, spending per Krugman column - government spending is completely, fully, and entirely out of control, as is the size and growth of government (the 2 are directly related). And current demographics and entitlement obligations guarantee the problem gets even more out of control.
Government, and all government-related industries and contractors, is now larger than it has ever been.
Somebody find Krugman, strangle him with piano wire, and shove the second graph up his ass.
For additional effect, shove a copy down his throat after he stops breathing.
Wow, Japans going for some sort of Austerity Prize...approaching -5%...lol.
We could have had a record biggest month
but couldn't agree on the sequester
I am positive we will break the record soon though
I mean we are number one right !
if i find out i'm on that agitator list . . i'll. . .i'll kill myself.