There has been a tremendous amount of talk about the spending deal that was just reached in Congress. Most of the focus has been on who “won” and who “lost” politically, and if you have been keeping up with my articles you definitely know my opinion on the matter. But what nobody is really talking about is that this deal actually increases spending at a time when our debt has been absolutely exploding. We added more than a trillion dollars a year to the U.S. national debt during Obama’s eight years in the White House, and our debt binge actually accelerated toward the end of his second term. In fact, the national debt increased by more than 1.4 trillion dollars during fiscal 2016… (Read More...)
Interest Rates
Not Prepared: Will Most Americans Be Absolutely Blindsided By Multiple Wars And A Simultaneous Economic Collapse?
According to CBS News, an astounding three-fourths of all Americans have to “scramble to cover their living costs” each month. In other words, most of the country is either living paycheck to paycheck or very close to it. But instead of tightening their belts and trying to put something away for the very hard times that are coming, most Americans are completely and utterly unprepared for what is ahead because the people that they trust on television keep telling them that everything is going to be okay. Unfortunately, everything is not going to be “okay”, and when things start falling apart all around us there is going to be a lot of anger directed toward those that have been lulling everyone into a false sense of security. (Read More...)
12 Signs That America Has Become A Politically-Correct Madhouse
What in the world has happened to the United States? We are rapidly getting to the point where political correctness is in danger of becoming our national religion. Of course most people would not even call it a “religion”, but for most Americans this unwritten set of rules shapes everything that they think, do and say. Many had been hoping that the spell of political correctness would be broken by the election of Donald Trump, but that obviously has not happened. The forces of political correctness still have a stranglehold on our education system, on all forms of entertainment, on our legal system, and on most of the politicians in both political parties. (Read More...)
Financial Crisis 2016: High Yield Debt Tells Us That Just About EVERYTHING Is About To Collapse
Did you know that there are more than 1.8 trillion dollars worth of junk bonds outstanding in the United States alone? With interest rates at record lows all over the world in recent years, investors that were starving for a decent return poured hundreds of billions of dollars into high yield debt (also known as junk bonds). This created a giant bubble, but at first everything seemed to be going fine. Defaults were very low and most investors were seeing a nice return. But then the price of oil started crashing and the global economy began to slow down significantly. Energy company debt makes up somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of the junk bond market, and the credit rating downgrades for that sector are coming fast and furious. But it isn’t just the energy industry that is seeing a massive wave of defaults, debt restructurings and bankruptcy filings. Just like with subprime mortgages in 2008, investors are starting to wake up and realize that the paper that they are holding is not worth a whole lot. So now investors are rushing for the exits and we are starting to see panic on a level that we have not witnessed since the last financial crisis. (Read More...)
The Last Housing Crash Is Not Even Over But Bernanke Is Already Setting The Stage For The Next One
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is determined to push mortgage rates to record low levels and he is encouraging the banks that the Fed regulates to make home loans more freely. Wait a second – isn’t that exactly what caused the last housing bubble? After 9/11, the Federal Reserve slashed interest rates and this caused mortgage rates to steadily fall. Financial institutions were urged to help “expand home ownership” in America, and many of them started making home loans to people who never, ever should have gotten home loans. When mortgage rates started to go back up, millions of families with adjustable rate mortgages discovered that they could not make their monthly payments. Mortgage delinquencies absolutely soared and large numbers of mortgage-backed securities suddenly turned into garbage. So what is the Fed doing about it? The Fed recently announced another round of quantitative easing in which it will buy 40 billion dollars worth of these mortgage-backed securities a month. Essentially the Fed is clearing the bad financial paper out of the system and is creating the conditions for another housing bubble. But will we really fix our problems by going back and doing the same things that got us into trouble in the first place? (Read More...)
4 Ways Barack Obama And The Federal Reserve Are Destroying Our Long-Term Economic Future For Their Short-Term Gain
Many people have been stumped as they have attempted to find a coherent theme in Barack Obama’s economic policies. But the truth is that what the Obama administration is trying to do is not that difficult to figure out. Just like so many other previous administrations, the Obama administration is motivated by self-preservation. All of Barack Obama’s economic policies are designed to produce a short-term economic burst that will help him win the next election in 2012, and the Federal Reserve has been cooperating every step of the way. Perhaps the Federal Reserve is motivated by self-preservation as well. The American people are becoming extremely disenfranchised with the Federal Reserve, and so those inside the Fed likely realize that they better get the economy on track or face even more scrutiny. In any event, Obama and the Fed are working together to do whatever they can to improve the short-term economic situation. Unfortunately, everything that they are doing is making our long-term economic problems even worse. But Barack Obama and the Federal Reserve are not really concerned with what is going to happen down the road. What the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve are concerned about is protecting their rear ends in the here and now. (Read More...)
The Washington Post Runs An Article Entitled “Five Myths About The Federal Reserve” Authored By An Economist Linked To The Rothschilds
There have been so many attacks on the Federal Reserve recently that the mainstream media now feels almost forced to try to defend their actions. The most blatant example of this recently was an article in the Washington Post entitled “Five Myths About The Federal Reserve”. The article was authored by Greg Ip, the U.S. economics editor of The Economist. According to Wikipedia, the Rothschild banking family is a partial owner of the firm that operates The Economist. You would have thought that they would have gotten someone a whole lot less obvious to produce this propaganda piece, but apparently they did not think anyone would notice. Of course an economics editor of The Economist is going to defend the Federal Reserve. He would be fired if he didn’t. The Economist is well known to be a mouthpiece for the international central banking establishment. But what is really sad is how poor a job Greg Ip did in defending the Fed. If these are the best intellectual arguments they can come up with then they are in huge trouble. (Read More...)