As empires collapse, the government employees/legislators begin to loot the treasury in preparation for the coming hard times. I believe that we are there. In support of this, I offer the increasingly blatant examples of Congress making hundreds of millions, the Bidens selling access, this morning’s story about CBP agents on the take, and someone in the Arkansas Department of Education creating a fake $66 million contract that, according to the vendor, doesn’t exist.
I have been posting on this since 2009, nearly since this blog began.
- Reagan borrowed his first trillion in 6 years
- George HW Bush borrowed his first trillion in 3 years, and he increased the National debt by 170% in four years.
- It took President Clinton 3 and a half years to borrow his first trillion dollars. All told, he borrowed $1.2 trillion in his first term, and $600 billion in his second. He increased the national debt by 140% in eight years.
- President George W Bush borrowed his first trillion dollars in two and a half years. He borrowed his second trillion a year and a half later. Another two years, another $1 trillion. All told, President Bush borrowed $5 trillion in 8 years, increasing the national debt by 187%.
- Obama borrowed his first trillion in 13 months.
- Trump borrowed his first trillion in just over 7 months. In all, he borrowed about $8 trillion in four years.
- Biden has borrowed $6 trillion in the three and a half years he has been in the Oval office. Now we are borrowing a trillion dollars every 5 and a half months.
The US treasury has borrowed $24 trillion in the past 15 years.
7 Comments
Joe Blow · June 17, 2024 at 6:02 am
Got gold?
Robert · June 17, 2024 at 7:51 am
Some words of wisdom I consider pertinent to the times:
“No man’s life or property are safe while the legislature is in session” (Mark Twain)
also:
“You never really own more than what you can carry with two hands – while running”. (Robert Heinlein)
IcyReaper · June 17, 2024 at 11:43 am
I fully agree. That’s the reason for the push for a WW3. They can blame the collapse on it vs them. Below the radar of most, The house just added up to 26 year olds to the draft now its 18-26 until we go the Uke way of drafting. We will start a world war and send mostly the straight white males so they can be weeded out while the Gays and trans are mostly non deployable. Then with the shortage of citizens we can enlisted the new illegal criminal army to finish the country off. My belief is the war starts sometime before the elections say July to Sept with a false flag op. That way its the Uke way of Democracy again, sooo sorry we just cant have elections security with a war going on, maybe afterwards if anything is left.
Jonesy · June 17, 2024 at 11:50 am
RE: gold and silver – I keep hearing on talk radio about how everyone should diversify their portfolio with metals. In general I agree, but if it’s in some vault somewhere, it’s no better than your other 401k assets. You don’t own it unless you hold it. And there is the problem for most people…you have to have cash to convert to be able to own metals. Who has 100s or 10s of thousands to covert to metals?
Things will continue until the dollar finally collapses under the weight of all the borrowing. Trump spent a ton of money and will again if he gets elected. Policies are what keep us going (IMO). Collapse will happen faster under the leftist socialist/communist way of governing, conservatives will hold it off longer, but at some point, it has to stop.
jimmyPx · June 17, 2024 at 3:22 pm
DM, I saw this first hand in Detroit 30 years ago.
I am in IT and I was a Sales Engineer selling IBM gear to the county and their existing gear was ancient and desperately needed upgrading.
We have our presentation and at the end, the top guy (an elected official no less), openly said
“looks good, now give me 10,000 reasons to approve this deal and it will be done”.
I’m sure that this stuff has gone on for a long time but now the corruption is in the open and the politicians and bureaucrats don’t care.
Michael · June 17, 2024 at 3:48 pm
As a history buff, I don’t see anywhere in history that any nation survived such a level of debt vs it’s production. Way too much of America’s Gross National Production is wall street money games, not steel, computer chips or stuff in general.
Money debasement is older than paper Fiat Money. The Roman empires silver denarii (ONCE World Reserve Currency) when Rome was strong had 4.55 grams of 98% silver and at the end due to debasement had the “Double Denarii” 3.41 grams and a silver content of 5%.
Sound familiar? Our country currently can set the debt interest as an artificially low rate but even so it’s a ridiculous % of our Tax INCOME. That and our own Government Accounting Office saying we are ADDING over a trillion dollars NEW Debt every 90 days or so.
Hold in your hands PM is a good idea, BUT… AFTER you have plenty of food, safe water, defense (most of us have far more than we could use) and ability to repair your shelter.
Rule of 3’s but with the addition of 3 seconds without personal security stuff.
If both sides have ample firepower and you’re trading your gold for my case of Van Camps Beans.
Who sets the rate of exchange? You cannot just take it, although getting shot to bits over it does eliminate your hungry belly issues.
Collapse economically is pretty much a given. The Greater Depression is already upon us if you look at day to day costs vs wages. Just paid my home insurance bill, what a % rise on costs not so much in my income.
The question is what is the knock-on issues of EBT folks/Working Poor folks hearing “Daddy, I’m HUNGRY” becomes the song of the land OR if the Powers that Be choose to hide their theft by war.
The “winners” of a The Holodomor,[a] also known as the Ukrainian Famine,[8][b] was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. or Greater Depression is the strong family-friends group that can feed, shelter, protect their own while producing stuff that can get you the “Kings Shilling” to pay taxes until the Gov.com is gone. Then your groups production gives it ongoing trade value.
Sorry for the long reply but Economic Collapse is a serious situation. Cities will burn over the lack of food and energy. Oh! I live in the country.. So what. Trouble spreads until the source is resolved. Trucks and energy is interlinked with cities. Burning citys means everything stops.
Wild, wild west · June 18, 2024 at 9:36 am
The old thing about how bankruptcy occurs: Slowly at first, then all at once.
We’re at that point of inversion.
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