Category Government Spending now out of control

May 11 2024

Why Does the Government Borrow Its Own Currency?


Posted May 11, 2024 By Martin Armstrong  

The problem with people’s attitudes toward the national debt is that everyone has forgotten why we borrowed in the first place. The theory was that if you borrowed rather than printed money, you were NOT increasing the existing money supply, and therefore, in theory, it would not be inflationary.

US Debt accumulated Interest as Percent of total

However, the Democrats forgot how to run for government without their Marxist agenda of bribing the people to vote for them. This led to always creating deficits. Add to this the NEOCONS who have done nothing but wage wars ever since World War II to defeat Communism and have spent money lavishly on trying to conquer the world.

Kennedy_Nixon_Debat_(1960)

October 13, 1960 Debate Transcript

During the Presidential Third Debate of 1960, the question about the outflow of gold from the USA reserves arose. This sparked a Gold Panic in the London gold market, whereby gold rallied to $40 for the first time, showing that the Bretton Woods System was beginning to collapse. The United States’ outflow of gold was not really from a trade deficit but from the fact that the USA was defending the world with its military establishing bases everywhere. That meant capital was leaving. Gold rallied again to $40 in the late 1960s, and finally, it forced the collapse of the convertibility of gold under the Bretton Woods System in 1971. Kennedy’s words were:

“Now, on the question of gold. The difficulty, of course, is that we do have heavy obligations abroad, that we therefore have to maintain not only a favorable balance of trade but also send a good deal of our dollars overseas to pay our troops, maintain our bases, and sustain other economies. In other words, if we’re going to continue to maintain our position in the sixties, we have to maintain a sound monetary and fiscal policy. We have to have control over inflation, and we also have to have a favorable balance of trade. We have to be able to compete in the world market.” 

The dollars were being spent not to benefit our economy but to fulfill the dreams of the Neocons; when Communism fell, they refused to accept any real change.

Trajan Welfare Youth

Rome takes care of widows and orphans.

We borrow, which is worse than printing because we have to pay interest on constantly rolling the debt. This year, we will spend about $1 trillion on interest, the total national debt when Reagan took office in 1981. At times, 70% of the national debt is accumulative interest. That means it went nowhere to improve society or care for widows and orphans, at least as the Romans did. Had we printed the money instead of borrowing, it would have been less inflationary and the capital would have created more jobs instead of investing in government debt which has only funded the Neocons’ wildest dreams.

Mar 7 2024

Scared of the National Debt? You Should Be.


Posted originally on Mar 7, 2024 By Martin Armstrong 

NationalDebtNYCVBillboard

A new billboard launched in New York City’s Times Square is sounding the alarm on America’s growing national debt crisis. “Scared of the national debt? You should be.” US national debt spiked past $34 trillion at the top of the year and continues to rise due to massive spending packages. Now that America is committed to funding two largescale wars and 7.2+ million new migrants, America will continue sinking deeper in a hole.

The Committee to Unleash Prosperity (CTUP) funded the billboard and said its aim to inform the voting public on the policies that will destroy this nation. CTUP says that this is a bipartisan problem that must be revealed to average person. Their website quotes Milton Friedman:

“Keep your eye on one thing and one thing only: how much government is spending, because that’s the true tax … If you’re not paying for it in the form of explicit taxes, you’re paying for it indirectly in the form of inflation or in the form of borrowing. The thing you should keep your eye on is what government spends, and the real problem is to hold down government spending as a fraction of our income, and if you do that, you can stop worrying about the debt.”
Friedman Milton Autograph

The average person does not realize that these “free” aid packages to Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, the migrants, climate change, etc., come at the expense of the US taxpayers. YOU are paying for all of these measures. Government has and will raise taxes in order to fund these fiscal measures but they will NEVER collect enough revenue from the people to cover their spending. Then these measures lead to rising inflation where goods cost significantly more and our dollar is worth significantly less.

The Congressional Budget Office stated that national debt reached 97% of GDP by the end of 2022.  I repeatedly point to Jerome Powell’s 60 Minute interview where he breaks with Washington to point out how utterly unsustainable government policy has become. “How do you asses the national debt?” the interviewer questioned the Fed chairman. “We mostly try very hard not to comment on fiscal policy and instruct Congress on how to do their job,” Powell answered, adding that Congress has oversight on the Fed and not the other way around.

@60minutes

60 Minutes witnessed migrants struggling to get through coils of sharp wire to illegally enter the U.S. #60minutes #eaglepasstx #borderpatrol #usborder #migrants

♬ original sound – 60 Minutes

“In the long run, the US is on an unsustainable fiscal path. The US federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path and that just means that the debt is growing faster than the economy,” Powell finally warned, later adding, “effectively, we are borrowing from future generations.” He warned that we must begin to prioritize fiscal policy immediately to fix this unending crisis. Again, his comments were unprecedented as his agency is largely unable to criticize Washington. How is the Federal Reserve supposed to regulate price stability when their overlords are doing everything possible to steer the nation’s economy off the deep end?

So what can the public do and what’s the point of this billboard? It begins with your voice and ends with your vote. Stop supporting these endless wars, they are only hurting the nation from within and are NOT meant to attain victory or liberate anyone. We are not helping the people of Ukraine by prolonging their war. We are not saving the world by throwing money at climate change policies. We simply do not have the resources to fund millions of migrants who continue to show up at the border every minute. All of these policies are hurting the economy and, ultimately, the future of America and the American people.