The national debt ceiling debate is rearing its ugly head again.
The so-called “debt ceiling” is frivolous nonsense but extremely powerful propaganda. Do you know anybody who doesn’t believe these lies? After “extending the debt” a hundred times since WWII, you would expect that people would begin to inquire.
You know that your own personal debt capacity is limited. But you must also know that “federal government debt” is unlimited. Wouldn’t this tell you that something is “rotten in Denmark”? This is the nature of the beast and we have all taken its mark on our foreheads, i.e. we have all believed the lies.
The lies always come straight from the top. I recall writing about Obama’s top economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, who at the time said that the U.S. would go into default if the ceiling isn’t raised. “I don’t see why anybody’s talking about playing chicken with the debt ceiling. If we get to the point where you’ve damaged the full faith and credit of the United States, that would be the first default in history caused purely by insanity.”
But this will never happen, and a debt deal doesn’t really matter. I’ve written before that the U.S. really has no debt. And although many can’t comprehend this notion, none other than former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan confirmed what I have said for years, and flatly denounced Goolsbee’s notion.
“The United States can pay any debt it has because we can always print money to do that. So there is zero probability of default,” Greenspan said on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Debt implies that there are limits to money and spending. This applies to government at all levels except the federal government. Debt is not a concept that can be applied to federal government so-called accounting. This is one of the system’s deep dark secrets.
Seeking Alpha points out that a debt ceiling deal is unlikely to get done quickly as the “GOP leadership contends that Democrats are in a spending free for all and will only support raising the debt ceiling if they promise major spending reforms and cutbacks.”
This is disingenuous at best. Republican voters vote — or at least think they vote — for small government, fiscal responsibility and safety at home but get massive spending bills more government bureaucracy and more wars abroad. Politicians Republican and Democrat alike have no compunction over raising taxes and spending trillions, ostensibly to fund needed projects.
The American people have been sold a bill of goods. They have been conditioned to believe that government — the federal government, especially — is necessary to thwart all the evils in society. Those evils must be confronted by a myriad of alphabet soup agencies like the EPA, FDA, USDA, OSHA, NLRB, HHS, HUD, DOE (both energy and education), and on and on, ad infinitum.
To fund those agencies that “keep us safe,” Americans are told, more spending is required. Thus, the leviathan grows. The people grumble, but their grumbling is squelched by the elites and the majority who remind them the government is only acting in their best interests.
Any talk of possibly scaling back not even the size of the agencies but merely the growth of those agencies is quickly suppressed. If the budgets of those agencies are touched, we are told, pollution will flow uncontrollably from industry, the water will be poisoned, our food will kill us, terrorists will run amok in our streets and the greedy capitalists will abuse us. No rational discussion of alternatives is possible because people automatically default to government.
Now, Biden and congressional Democrats are offering a “new” spending plan. In reality, it is an old plan from the old Dem playbook, one that has failed before if success is measured in a way that helps the people. They intend to transfer more wealth from the middle class to their elite partners in crime. This is theft from the American people to those who have bought themselves a seat at the elite table.
My conjecture is that the elected class will again pull a stunt like they did in 2011, and simply suspend the current debt ceiling, instead of raising it. This has the dual purpose of hiding the exact amount of debt from the public while also giving the Federal government open-ended spending power until some future date.
Mainstream investors and advisors are mostly distracted by this bread and circus, provided by the media and entertainment, which are one and the same. Do television shows, movies and sports seem any different than the latest debate on tax overhauls or fighting in congress over the debt ceiling or the budget? They are not meant to. The revolution will indeed be televised, and it has been, except the revolution is that many non-thinking people can’t tell the difference between reality and reality television. Debates between these congressweasels are public exercises to give the appearance of validity but are simply performance art.
I wrote back in 2013, “If you are a gun owner, expect an all-out public relations campaign to blame you for every incident involving a gun. Obama and the leftist Democrats have promised to do all they can to ignite public opinion in favor of their anti-gun crusade. The reason is obvious. They need to distract public attention from the contentious debates on the debt ceiling and immigration reform. It’s an obvious diversionary tactic to mask their misguided positions on these important issues from the public.
Have you noticed any similarities between the Biden administration (Obama 2.0) coming out with a huge push to ban guns, and a new immigration “reform” plan, right before the debt ceiling debate was to begin? Again, dear reader, these are all plays from the same playbook, recycled over and over again.
Meanwhile, it’s the greatest of irony that analysts, traders, brokers and even some Fed governors seem to understand how stock prices would be far lower without the Fed’s injection of new money, and how funds from bond purchases are immediately spent by the government and its employees and transfer payment recipients… yet they deny that inflation is causing a huge burden to Americans as we speak.
Be assured that in this environment, where the Fed can’t stop printing money, buying up U.S. bonds when no one else will and financing an artificially lofty stock market, we can only experience more inflation and a rising market for commodities. Gold and silver are the natural alternatives to worthless financialized assets. Always in inflationary times, hard assets are what you want to own. Items and investments of real-world value, not paper promises.
Some people get upset that I continue with ongoing warnings of a coming financial “pandemic.” Seeing the probabilities before they happen is the only prediction that is worthwhile. Afterward is merely reporting the obvious.
My findings are that the American people don’t believe that we can have economic collapse followed by economic and social chaos. They suffer from normalcy bias. We need to pay more attention to the history of the United States and the world.
Bob Livingston
