Let’s hear it from the Trumpeteers. The national debt goes up by $3 BILLION per day. Is he a liar, an idiot, on drugs, or playing 44DD chess? What say you?
“Utter nonsense. Tariffs are separate from the 21T BUDGET deficit, Except by reducing trade they will make it worse.. Do some people believe ANYTHING?”
Our trade produces debt, even if it isn’t an official and listed part of the national debt.
All those foreign held bonds that are American debt obligations, where do you think those foreigners got the money for them and why did they buy our bonds (debt obligations) instead of the trade goods we make to cover our balance of trade deficits? Trade is supposed to be ours for theirs, and all we have to offer for ours is government and corporate debt and ownership of American properties and interests.
Do you understand what the cumulative balance of trade deficit means? Or how quickly it is growing?
And if you do, what do you suggest be done to change it to our favor instead of our liability?
Greetings,
Trump is in office precisely because he understands bankruptcy. Who better than Trump to oversee the settlement in this nation wide bankruptcy. Lets have a look.
1. Municipal government – bankrupt
2. State government – bankrupt
3. Pensions – bankrupt
4. Federal government – bankrupt
5. Our best performing stock are from companies that have not nor will not ever make a profit.
Americans have been living on borrowed time since Nixon. Trump is here to wipe the slate clean and a lot of people are going to be unhappy about it.
Yeah, I’m with nickle on this one. The magic muslim was selected to destroy the merkin family and the golden golum of greatness was selected to oversee the destruction of the economy. You ladies are so cute as you argue over how many trumps can dance on the head of a pin. Your ubermenchen meanwhile sap the last of your precious bodily fluids.
Trump is a politician, and needs to be a politician. And for 150 years, the entire US government was funded by tariffs and excise taxes, and there was virtually no debt…So cease the Trump bashing…
22winmag - refugee from ZeroHedge who just couldn't take the explosion of doom porn and the avalanche of near-hourly Bitcoin stories
August 5, 2018 9:44 am
I say don’t get yourself baked into the Psyop cake!
Another commenter said don’t let yourself get eaten and become an African communist terrorist’s bowel movement.
CCRider
August 5, 2018 9:59 am
Yes.
Anonymous
August 5, 2018 10:10 am
Ron Paul stuck to his oath to the people of the United States and the Constitution . The Deep State and the Fourth Estate went full bore on making him appear like the nice old doctor who lost a few marbles along the way .
The dumbed down citizens bought it all of it and the entrenched laughed behind his back . No one ever challenged him on the issues and facts .
Now we have President Trump attempting to upset the Apple cart while swimming in glue that is the DC SWAMP .
Tariffs were the original way our government funded its operations leaving the people and their accumulated wealth and production to do with as they see fit under limited government interference . It was known as FREEDOM
A lot of what cost paul support was his anti-war stance. To be sure, Trump being critical of Iraq and the rest of that nonsense was safe and popular in 2016, but it wasn’t in 2012. I personally know several people who would call themselves ‘very conservative’ who said some variation of “I love Ron Paul on the economy, and debt, and the proper role of government in society, but he loses me on foreign policy. He wants to pull our troops out of the middle east, reduce military spending, and the result would be chaos. We should be increasing military spending, and taking a more active role in world leadership” or some such nonsense. But I’ve heard statements like that from a lot of people. It amuses me to know end to hear people call themselves ‘fiscally conservative’ while simultaneously advocating for moar military spending. The stupid, it burns.
Those who disagreed with Ron Paul on foreign policy needed a constitutional lesson on declaration of war and foreign military entanglements and how without a clear defined objective with a pure National intrest it should always be a no go . I bet most of the 58,000 names on a wall would agree . Want to go to war ? Here is your weapon go for it !
Commit the nation by our laws or shut your war drum mouth up !
If we do declare war it is shock and awe no mercy till full surrender and don’t hand an 18 year old an automatic weapon and expect an excutive decision in a split second weather to use deadly force . Rules of engaugement : kill or be killed !
Excommunicated
August 5, 2018 10:18 am
It is mathematically impossible to pay off the national debt. A default has to exist somewhere along that path.
The Treasury can simply issue debt free money to cover all current obligations under the orders of Congress and pay off the debt.
That is the Constitutional way of doing it, and it is totally possible to do that if people would wake up to the current basis of our money and demand a change in it.
Agreed. I am agnostic about Trump, although I did vote for him. Time will tell what sort of man he is and what impact he will have on our future, though a default seems to be a forgone conclusion, but one of which no one, not even Trump will speak of. What I think I see, and hope I see, is a prepositioning for a economy that can recover after the fall. The first things he did were to try and revive the mining, agricultural and manufacturing industries. True wealth, and the basis for a true lasting economy are based on things you must wrestle from the Earth. Tariffs are a way to generate income when other sources (income tax) fail, which I believe they will when the economy tanks.
I hope this is what I see.
I’m hoping this is hyper-dimensional, quantum-chess and he’s simply positioning his pieces to recover from a default, not to prevent it.
starfcker
August 5, 2018 10:23 am
I never liked the chess analogies, Jim. But in this case, he’s definitely trolling the Chinese
unit472/
August 5, 2018 10:31 am
The Federal government financed itself pretty much through custom duties for the first 125 years and while it was a much smaller government tariffs on, say $500 billion of imports would raise a lot of money.
There would be knock on effects but if there is one thing we can be sure of no economist can define exactly what they will be because economics is not a rule based science. If the price of cheap plastic junk from China goes up who is really going to suffer. Toys R Us went bankrupt and does anyone really care other than Chinese plastic junk makers.
A rope and an old tire make an excellent swing even if it isn’t available in neon plastic colors. OTOH is some idiot who wants to pay $125,000 for a 500 hp foreign sports car going to go broke if he has to pay $150,000 for the same car or will he enjoy the increased status his auto now has.
You have smartly addressed it. Many of the Chinese junk Americans consume are worthless and useless. In fact sometimes I feel Americans, considering their prosperity, consume too many cheap stuff. Rather they should consume good quality stuff in less quantity. Tariffs should be increased more. Since America is self sufficient in food, there will not be any impact on food inflation. The next is apparel. Americans buy too many cheap clothes. Rather they should buy good quality American made apparel at higher cost. For the cost of 3 cheap shirts you will get one good quality one but then why do someone need so many cheap clothes?
But I can tell you the world is willing to sell to America for much cheaper price than what is being charged. Then we have toys and white goods. Again Americans are getting these appliances for far less than their real value. In India an above average washing machine will cost you US$500. In the US also the costs are similar. Come on, the per capita of India is 1/25th of that of the USA.
Pay a little more and bring back your prosperity. There will be some inflation for couple of years but your industrial capacity will come back. I will tell you one thing. The whole world wants to sell to America. It is their need now. And for that America is not getting anything in return other than ridicule and dishonour. So get some spine and make some sacrifices and take back your national pride and prosperity.
— An Indian who likes the American way of life.
Anonymous
August 5, 2018 10:38 am
Excommunicated has the right of it. They debt is already too high and has passed the Rubicon. No one brings it up anymore cause they know this. Things will continue to go on until it doesn’t. Then , who knows….depression, new currency, war? All three?? The real question is how far off is the event horizon? Years, decades, century??? I have no idea.
bc aware
August 5, 2018 10:47 am
Not like this bullshit hasn’t been going on for 50+ years , but President Trump is supposed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA , get the economy going , fight the demoncratic socialists/communists , the gop , feral judges , state , feral ,local bureaucracies , the entire national propagandist media , the fed raising rates [like they did during odumba’s reign of terror [/s] , while bitch slapping so called allies who suck our money for their defense , canadian’ s dumping chinese steel into our economy calling it their own [ lying mofo’s] , high tariff’s on our ag products , tariff imbalances with all countries [free trade [/s], all while propping up every socialist government program in the world , just so asshats with a pitifully high opinion of their own intellect [or lack thereof ] , can continually call him and his working supporters stupid , dumb , deplorables , toothless hicks , uneducated , rayciss , etc., get out of the way you ivory tower pseudo intellectuals or get on your knee’s for the coming socialist holocaust . Your choice to fight now or become a slave to the new world order , if you survive the purge [intellectuals always go first even the useful idiots who think they are down with the struggle ] , but for those who sell their soul and freedom for that state ,corporate , university paycheck and political correctness ,safety,security , maybe you could benefit from a strategic move to venezuela or other socialists workers paradise . Everybody[in their pitiful flacid mind ] is smarter than President Trump [ i know nobody was ever smarter than odumba because they never criticized him — he made the oceans recede – helped all black people prosper -and every other good thing you could imagine — if you just weren’t a white supremist , islamaphobe , misogynist , rayciss ,neanderthal .. ] and are all billionaires who have been elected President of The United States of America right? So many nanny babies would prefer the ease of the status operandi and its assured ultimate death of dignity to the challenge of change and self discipline , true education , physical work [that’s what somebody else does right ? ] , and sacrifice of temporal pleasure for solid net gains for future use – its called CAPITALISM , the only system that works to avoid abject poverty of mind , body and spirit !
Francis Marion
August 5, 2018 11:14 am
I don’t think he cares too much about the debt. Which is kind of strange given his focus/concern for the economy in general.
Using Ron Paul as an example, there is no way a deficit hawk can get elected President.
There is no way a candidate who wants to reduce military spending could ever get elected President.
You have to create a coalition to get elected. Trump picked the working class, pro-law enforcement, pro-military, the nationalists, and the MIC (military industrial complex) to create a big enough coalition to win. If he lost any of those groups, he would not have won.
Even today in Washington, you cannot take on the Intelligence Agency/Deep State and the MIC at the same time. Kennedy tried that, and it didn’t work so well for him.
Lol..EC, it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking critically. Just trying to listen more and stop forcing my opinion on people who don’t give a crap… and no more predictions ever again.
MC
Sure, the rest of the world we owe that to will just let us have a debt jubilee…and get stiffed on what we owe them ….
If it happens, be careful what strings come attached.
BL,
Good ?
Who do you refer to?
My natural person or my strawman?
I have accumulated debt in FRNs and have been conscripted into this system where unalienable rights are bestowed as privileges thus my labor taxed….
That bondage is what binds us to the unplayable debt accumulated in our name through the judicially interpreted legally defined term CITIZEN of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
To become a Soveriegn Citizen is no easy task or happily ever after existence.
He’s a full-time time actor and he takes his marching orders from the new world order, just like the other blackmailed fucks. Some of you can choose to live in la la land where Trump wears a white hat, is a master of parallel universe multidimensional chess, but sooner or later reality is going to smack you upside the head
He reminds me of a court jester, providing comic relief for the humorless occupiers of the throne of power in DC. And I must admit, he is not bad in that role. How could one not laugh at the subject quote?
Dio- Took a look at MM’s site for first time the other day. He is right to look at bloodlines but is way off on El Douche. He even admits he runs into nothing burgers there because he is looking at the subject in the wrong light.
I started unraveling bloodline connection in the 70’s, I give him credit for doing all that he has done. At least he is on the right path through the theater. Admin used to ridicule me and say if I looked into a mirror that I would not even believe it was me looking back. If he only knew the years of reading and pondering that goes into my thoughts.
Bea, I won’t discuss it here, but bloodline issues are very spooky. However, I will point out you don’t look like yourself from time to time. Haha…
Javelin
August 5, 2018 11:32 am
Any impediment to the leftists’ vaunted Cloward/Piven strategy to systemically bankrupt our nation and usher in their utopian socialism will be met with derision.
This is why they wanted their universal health care… it’s not about taking care of the dirt people, it’s about the bankrupting costs.
Our massive trade deficits bleed hundreds of billions of national wealth, a very effective tool in the agenda to end what’s left of our once free market society.
There will always be pain when one addresses long-ignored cancers, the other option is business as usual and certain death.
Any attempts at this point to eliminate our annual trillion dollar deficits and even stabilize the patient will be hard on someone.
If not now, when?
Administrator
Author
August 5, 2018 11:39 am
TRUMP MATH:
$21 Trillion + $1 Trillion = $20 Trillion
TRUMPETEERS:
YEAH Trump!!!! He’s right. He’s our Savior. He’s draining the swamp with his new math. How dare anyone call him out just because he makes one of the dumbest fucking statements of all-time.
i know this is an old analogy.
I have a huge balance of payments “problem” with Safeway. For years I’ve been giving them US dollars and getting groceries in return. Net result? I eat well and they pay their shareholders etc.
Just expand the picture:
Safeway = China
Me = USA.
It’s that simple.
Oh, but it’s even better than that. In the China, USA case, the dollars must be invested in USA capitalization and debt support.
Who dares put a downer on our savior Lord Q? Pray infidel.
Administrator
Author
August 5, 2018 11:43 am
All the Trump sycophants who are unwilling to deal with reality and give him a pass when he states an unequivocal lie can hit the fucking road. I don’t want non-critical thinking cheerleaders corrupting my site.
It really is a sign of the times when the Trumpeteers exhibit the same level of idiotic hero worship as the left wing idiots who said Obama could do no wrong.
You could be living with Justin “The budget will balance itself” and “We’ll grow the economy from the heart outward” Trudeau who has stated we will be running deficits (big ones) until 2045.
That’s a level of stupidity that makes Trump’s math look really reasonable.
Nope. Not a different opinion. His statement is 100% false. Anyone who agrees with his statement is dumber than a sack of hammers and would be polluting this site with their presence. Do you believe his statement to be true?
Personally, I don’t listen to much of anything he says. He’s too incoherent for me. As for tariffs and their effects, I’d probably wait a while before I pass judgment as to what impact they will have on the deficit and debt.
1) I love Ron Paul, I voted for him, I still listen to his podcasts, however he was always a niche candidate, not for the dumbed down masses. The same reason I look for a rare, well made scotch when we live in a Jack N’ Coke world (Trump is Jack and Coke). Which is why I will eventually buy my compound in Montana encircled with electrified fence.
2) Nearly all the Presidents of the 20th Century prove the abject failure of democracy. The average human being is hollow and pliable. He only learns through pain, like a dog with a shock collar.
3) You have to make more and more money to keep insulating yourself from these people. Membership in the expensive health club where you don’t see a back tattoo of a snake consuming another snake.
4) The whole point of the income tax (when they sold it to the corn pone idiot masses of 1913) was that we could lower tariffs and the rich guy down the street will make up the difference. For most of the last hundred years, we’ve had both. If you work for Alcoa it’s good, if you work for a customer of Alcoa it’s bad. If you buy an aluminum can, it’s bad. One winner, ten losers.
i know this is an old analogy.
I have a huge balance of payments “problem” with Safeway. For years I’ve been giving them US dollars and getting groceries in return. Net result? I eat well and they pay their shareholders etc.
Just expand the picture:
Safeway = China
Me = USA.
It’s that simple.
Oh, but it’s even better than that. In the China, USA case, the dollars must be invested in USA capitalization and debt support.
AmazingAZ
August 5, 2018 12:24 pm
Tariffs would be far better than the onerous income tax. Many of the industries that have been shipped overseas are important to our security.
We really are at the advantage in the trade wars. I hope that we get a better deal going forward.
I imagine that if I were Trump, I would be a babbling idiot by now with all he’s had to endure, so I disregard obvious errors…
Are the tariffs replacing my income tax. I didn’t notice that in my last paycheck. Are those industries coming back to America? The trade deficit hit an all-time high when reported this week. Shouldn’t it be going down?
Anon, et al
That’s all fine and dandy but doesn’t mean “returning to the original constitutional intent of tariffs” will not even put a dent in the debt at its current level…
Either devaluation of a country’s currency must happen, thus the term “race to the bottom” st the macro level is underlying current that everything else must be viewed to to help understand the things that are happening nationally and regionally…
Or
a default similar to what Iceland chose to do…unfortunately a default of the world’s reserve currency would dramatically impact the entire world unlike Icelands diminutive global economic impact.
Nor
Does your suggestion suggest that you have any understanding of the legal term CITIZEN , our straw man to this system we interact with…
Who do you think will be left holding the bag of worthless dollars, the billionaires who can move money into other things easier orrrr …the suckers who believe the average pension fund manager??
These FRNs which have debt attached to them whom is pledged the labor of US CITIZENS to pay towards this by-design unpayable debt in this house of cards ponzi economy….
Iceland didn’t unplug just let the banks default and cleared debt instead of Bailing out the Banks through policies like TARP and paid for by posterity like the E.U. and U.S. did…
Then came the Q.E three card monte central banks peak a boo mark to market accounting stock buyback FAANGS and markets at all time highs war on terror, drugs, education, opiods bullying suicide cop shooting civilians like hot cakes epidemic
Trade wars and currency wars can create supply disruptions on certain items….
Trick is figuring which industries will be impacted most. Not too difficult if paying attention and realistically there is only so much you can prepare for anyways.
In this fractional reserve central banking system if we issued debt free money and defaulted on our debt a la Venezuela much social strife would occur, that is backed into the cake….
The Power elite have already developed a redundant system to minimize the effects of the ritual sacrifice of the dollar on the altar to Moloch.
Look to Russia, China and India to see the risers in the 21st century…
… many ‘taxes’ (and equivalent – fees, licenses, cost shring, etc.) besides just the income tax.
Like many universities advertise their “tuition” has only risen a small amount … but the the total cost, fees, etc. have went up 1000%.
AmazingAZ
August 5, 2018 12:41 pm
One never knows these days. With Trump, it was always a shot in the dark. He gets a lot of “goodwill” from me because he beat Hillary. The deficits are alarming, and the military spending is disheartening. My income taxes are still there. A handful of jobs have come back, but only a handful. Some jobs are still leaving. Supporting Trump may be completely idiotic; I just don’t pay attention to every word or tweet, and will just have to wait to see how things play out. Meanwhile, I don’t have that much time to waste, and he sure doesn’t care what I think. Got preps?
Anonymous
August 5, 2018 12:42 pm
Q is a 5th dimension universal observer. Q is on a higher level than most of us. We as 4th dimension observers cannot see; for most of us, past our noses.
Q can see the end of the US but tries to instruct us how to figure out the now so we can see the current and it’s destructive path.
We cannot change the current. The current has two streams; one that follows the general path; destructive, leading to the abyss, and the other leading to freedom. Very few will find that current.
In life; as in nations such as ours, everything leads to death. Death has two realities. One is total death meaning the end of existence and the other is transformation which leads to a higher level of life. The former is the reality most of us will face. The latter is the reality those who found their purpose will ascend to.
President Trump is shaking up the status quo. He says he wants to make this nation great again. That means different outcomes for different people. For religious people this means restoring christian values. For financial people it means more profits. For military people it means more military adventures. For me it means transformation.
Without transformation this nation is dead. Time is not reversible. Potentiality is not possible for a dead nation; or a dead people.
Written history is full of mass migrations of people. Migrations today are a result of failing governments. Look at Europe and the US today where mass migrations are overcoming barely functioning governments. History does not lie. Our governments are failing and no one can stop it.
Those who’s observations are still in the fourth dimension cannot see this. Q can. And that is why it is so sad to read the observations of so many following the rabbit trails created in their minds about what is going on at the present time. A waste of time and more importantly a waste of the human potential our creator gave us.
The broader view says that the US is going down just like the former Soviet Union did that ended the cold war. Then around 2000 the transformation began for Russia. It will be the same for America.
There are many that don’t want to accept this. But they have no control of universal currents. Nor of eternal patterns. Hyparxis; that is, ableness-to-be and cyclicity is only understood by those who have become sensitive to the eternal patterns. The herd is only sensitive to their immediate environment. They will have to go along with the changes that are coming. Right at this present time the dumb are being led by the dumber. And right now the dumb and the dumber have no idea what is coming.
Beautifully written with many valid observations particularly the macro understanding of what is to come.
Both roads will not lead to freedom however…due to the interconnectedness of the global system, freedom is quickly evaporating in the West
Am Soviet type collapse would be great news.
What’s different is their population hadn’t grown up being told how special and adorable they are.
NPR just reported that 2919’s defense budget was approved before DOD even submitted it but the mission will change from fighting terrorism to containing China and Russia.
It’s getting harder to enforce world wide supremacy of the Peto Dollar with those two mucking up the works.
Fleabaggs.
Anonymous
August 5, 2018 1:10 pm
If Q posts a picture of a random building in downtown DC, we will know it is true. We will know if there are extra lines of gibberish numbers added that we will be in high cotton for the rest of the century. Who needs RP when we have the all knowing , all seeing Q ? Soon we will question the need for government at all with Q being the all-encompassing answer to all our needs. Praise be Lord Q.
Fleabaggs
August 5, 2018 1:12 pm
My phone erased my handle from my comment above about a Soviet collapse.
22winmag - when you ask certain persons which floor they'd like, and they respond with "ladies lingerie"- they're referencing the AEROSMITH SONG!!!
So Trump is presently floating the notion of another tax cut …. $100 Billion in magnitude … EXCLUSIVELY for the very rich. And some readers still wish to believe this arse represents them? It is time to give up on intellectual discourse. Collectively we are doomed. This has been the agenda of OUR OWNERS all along.
Grizzly Bare
August 5, 2018 2:02 pm
Faith in politicians as saviors is quite understandable because it provides an easy path. All you have to do is show up at the polls every couple of years and you’ve performed your civic duty. You transfer your responsibility for creating the world you want to live in from an onerous and distasteful personal task to trusting your elected leaders to take care of it for you. The problem with that is the fact that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When you hand off your responsibilities to someone else, you also hand off your liberty and freedom. A representative is just a master by another name.
Uncola
August 5, 2018 2:23 pm
A little late to the party and off topic regarding the tarrifs but perhaps on target about Trump:
Ya wonder if the pressure of
“The Donald versus the world” is taking its toll on the Orange One, or if it’s all just a reality show.
As for the Tweetstorm the other night, at first I thought it might have been strategic when Trump called out the recently-hired, racist New York Times’ Asian editor while addressing the intelligence of LeBron James and CNN’s Don Lemon.
I mean, if the snowflakes object to what Trump said about James and Lemon, they would also have to address the NYT’s Asian gal who hates white people. Kind of a clever way to point out the double standard.
Yet, LeBron responded in a way that made Trump look not cool, and even Melania and Michael Jordan backed LeBron in that exchange.
So, to summarize: At the same time Trump was trying to rally Republican voters in Ohio, he insults James who is a hometown hero from that state.
LeBron, by appearing to take the high ground via his charity work in Ohio, made Trump look petty and even foolish, by playing into the stereotypes assigned to him by his political opponents; and in a way that was indefensible for friends to come to his aid.
Looking cool and smart is one thing. But appearing petty and out of control is quite another.
What happens now? Stay tuned, and don’t touch that dial, we’ll be right back after the commercial break….
Anonymous
August 5, 2018 2:33 pm
Plato,
Grand scale economic collapse usually takes the framework with it. It is more than an outward manifestation… It is an inner one too.
Many seem to think the system is a permanent framework. It is not. Nowhere in history has there been a permanent framework in economic forms. There is growing resistance in the world against our form of economics. The writing is on the wall for the demise of our system. People just don’t want to believe it. and you are right freedom is quickly evaporating in the west. Unfortunately this freedom is both external and internal. So we cannot predict what will happen.
Many people in our society have lost their self directing ability. This has happened over time. Now we are witnessing the loss of self regulating ability. Laws have replaced this ability. And further, people are losing their coalescence, potentiality, subsistence and relatedness skills. We are basically at the binary level of existence where polarities is all we know.
I would say our western civilization is demonstrating a return to barbarian society where the fine points of culture has eroded to a lower form of consciousness.
It is plane to see all around us; yet we refuse to acknowledge it. The systems we built up to sustain our way of life are fracturing along with our social and material infrastructures.
It is like the movie “ConAir” where the prisoners escaping the authorities were singing a song; sung by a band that died in a plane crash.
Our nation is going down due to our ignorance to see our stupid ways or where our corrupt leaders are leading us and all we do is party like there is no consequences to our naive beliefs.
Thank you for taking the time to write such an AMAZING response. Great points about the fractures clearly visible throughout every aspect of our physical and social worlds, starting with the smallest social unit, THE FAMILY, to groups of like minded individuals or individuals thrust into extraordinary social conditions like economic collapse, see Venezuela, supply disruptions, clean drinking water, food,…
To local governments, corporations, organizations to state, national, to supranational.
Russia setting up it’s own SWIFT system and it’s dumping of u.s. treasuries in response to sanctions seems to be a key point in history if writing the history books as it happens is possible hahaha
That’s and the Yuan getting added to the basket of currencies called the SDR IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.
Monumental occurrences people who talk about MAGA fail to consider along with the trillions in public and private american debt…
Ouch! In business terms, the LIQUIDATION will intensify until there’s nothing left except CITIZENS like you, you, you, and me…
Edit:
Love the ConAir analogy.
The veil is being pulled back faster and faster until the band aid rip-off occurs…then the bricks at the back of the theater will be clearly insight
Complexity is a function of energy. Less energy => less complexity.
Can’t maintain the cell wall? Your cell is kaput.
Iconoclast421
August 5, 2018 2:38 pm
It’s actually 4 trillion a day. Almost 3 million per minute! Yeah real great economy. Imagine partying with a group of 3000 people all running up $1000 per minute on their credit cards. Woohoo, talk about a great time… till they hit their limit.
youno
August 5, 2018 2:46 pm
Trump is merely the Act IV of the same old play. Same script, different actor. The American sheeple are being played like a violin string, and most (99%) are too distracted to see it. For whatever reason, there are no critical thinking skills left in this country. If you think Trump won the election, you are horribly wrong. You were played into thinking you were getting something different when in fact he is more of the same. Constant distraction is the theme in the news media to keep sheeple from thinking about this and seeing the true direction we are headed.
I really don’t have an ‘I Care’ horse in the Trump race, except for my kids but as I’m learning that is up to them not me. I do believe that Trump wants what he says he wants … MAGA: I think that part of him is transparent. He would not have done some of the things he has if that wasn’t actually who he was (e.g., TTIP). Like every other pol he would have politely forgotten to get around to such things once elected. In that sense, he is genuine.
But, it is too late and the continuation of the obscene spending/deficits shows that. Perhaps even as late as 2008 there was a chance, but no longer.
Administrator
Author
August 5, 2018 4:11 pm
“How do you expect to pay down the national debt when you are adding to that debt at a much faster pace then was Obama when he left office? If foreign trade surpluses actually shrink, who will buy all the extra bonds the Treasury needs to sell to finance your huge deficits?”
Peter Schiff
Administrator
Author
August 5, 2018 4:16 pm
“Tariffs are not working. They are backfiring. They are rising prices for American consumers, and increasing costs for American producers. You are not taxing foreigners you are taxing Americans. If you want to reduce our trade deficits, you must reduce government spending first!”
And for some reason, they never acknowledge the fact that no matter which side’s in charge, the debt continues to grow. Repub or dem, doesn’t matter, more and more debt is the rule. We always bump up against the debt ceiling… seems someone sometime gotta ask, how come debt ALWAYS grows???
That’s the simply question no one in charge wants you to ask. Because you might get the crazy idea that the system is at fault, not the government. Enough people asking that question and things may finally change. And Peter’s just another paid off shill for the financial elite… paid to keep your eyes off the real problem.
The debt continues to grow because no one is willing to cut back on the financing of any programs, even when they are a complete and total failure.
Incrementalism in the policy wonker world needs to stop. At some point, the policies that fail will be ended and completely eliminated.
By the government that forms when ours finally gets wiped from the (embarrassed) face of the nation.
What will replace all the vote-buying by the corrupt Congress Critters?
Forced labor and re-education camps, I imagine.
Mags
BL
August 5, 2018 4:52 pm
My question is, after we were suckered into sending the chinks our manufacturing jobs, why should we let them come in here and make trillions from the maroons who gave it all up without them paying a tribute (tariff/tax)? Why in the name of Q should we give the ChiComs that big of a break?
I realize the commie lovers in here will get bunged up in a knot but why are we doing all of these idiotic things which run us into the iceberg, and for commies to boot? Big fukkin deal if the Chinese shit will cost more, we should not be lining their commie pockets in the first place. Let the Euro halfwits buy their crap.
EL Coyote
August 5, 2018 4:53 pm
Nixon – No gold, you take paper
Ronnie – No paper, you take plastic
Trump – No plastic, you take shaft
Platonic, I mean that when it comes to paying off foreign creditors, there’s a pattern above where Republican presidents take a hard line towards creditors. The default keeps getting shabbier.
It reminds me of the movie Goodfellas, where Jimmy knocks off his associates one by one so he can keep the entire stash. Their is no faster way to lose a friend than to lend him money.
Two friends start a partnership, they will not be friends at the end. – Doc Pangloss
There is no money without debt, eliminate debt and you eliminate money… that’s the way a debt-money monetary system works. Take your wallet out and count, that’s the only REAL money you have. Even the “money” you have in the bank, or stocks, or bonds, or 401 is debt UNTIL you convert it to cash. Talk of reducing the debt is merely talk, it will NEVER happen(unless it’s planned, which will lead to a credit crunch and likely depression and war).
“reducing the debt is merely talk, it will NEVER happen”
It CANNOT happen while maintaining the internal logic of the current system. That’s why Nixon *had to* go to China and why they are desperate to expand the global debt-money franchise By Any Means Necessary and coming up with SDRs and so forth. TINA.
Back in the good old days, they could keep the charade going… the sleight-of-hand that made people think that investing in the System yielded profits that came from Within the System (as some sort of inherent, forever-magical, infinite property of capitalism) instead of from Outside the System, as is physically mandated. Send a guy with a boat to the New World or to Asia in the 1600s to get some stuff, and ‘wah-lah’.. you can get a return. Need to expand the debt envelope? Just force more regions into the overall Ponzi scheme. In a now-global system, though, there are no longer enough Other Places from which to book returns. [Fossil fuels represent the only remaining, now-dwindling, input from Outside the System that’s supporting profits of any kind, but that switcheroo is on its way out, too, which is why we have found ourselves in particular trouble lately.]
I give you $100. At some future point, you give me back $105. Where does the extra $5 come from? It’s a pretty simple question with an answer few people can really give.
Everyone here seems to have railed about interest rates being artificially low, while they actually *should be negative* (which, with inflation, is what we are effectively seeing). They should be negative because there are no longer the massive energy and resource gradients to exploit that we once had, the ones which allowed us to pretend they were “produced” by a debt-money system that operates as though there’s always a free lunch, in fact, an exponentially-growing banquet of free lunches as far as the eye can see.
Virtually everything “produced” is (more properly stated) CONSUMED. We are reaching (have reached) The Limits to Growth in consumption, with all of consumption’s attendant knock-on effects. There are no more piggy banks to break into to get the $5 we think is our “due”.
Mark Branham, “cash” is still debt because it’s an IOU for some future quantity of goods/services. Which may not be forthcoming.
At one time I thought money was the way one exchanges one’s labor and skillset for the products of another person’s labor and skillset.
Now, an entire generation of young (and old) people think a Universal Basic Income is due them whether or not they choose to produce anything other than turds and piss.
I think about the “jobs” I’ve performed for monetary recompense and realize that most of them were really just busy work required by the military/government type of “work” I did, both in uniform and after my “service.” (By the way, when people see my military ID (husband is retired) in my hand and thank me for my service, I have a hard time saying thanks instead of thanking them for their hard-earned tax dollars for doing nothing of note. I worked hard at what I was supposed to be doing, but honestly, unless I was actually flying around in a racetrack pattern five miles above the ground I was probably wasting time. Which, they say, is also money.
Llpoh
August 5, 2018 5:46 pm
I love it when Admin kicks ass.
Any benefit, if any, that tariffs bring will be years away. But the pain will be immediate. And that pain is already being felt.
There is no guarantee that biz will relocate from China to the US. Instead, it might well move to a no tariff low cost nation. Why would you build a corp in the US when there are still so many other low cost nations out there to move to? Hell, some companies are moving to Europe, which is not exactly low cost.
We do not need tariffs. We need a population smart enough to simply not buy foreign shit, but instead only buy US made goods and services.
Fuck that. Get it through your thick head, the idea is not for us to have tariffs. The idea is to use the threat of tariffs to break down the tariffs and non-tariff barriers other countries have against our companies. Your buddy, star. Who WordPress insists is now an anonymous
Star – they ain’t gonna buy our shit, at least not more than they are already doing. Germans will not buy US cars. Chinese got no money. Etc.
Plus, you have said it dozens of times -you want protectionist tariffs. Now you are changing your mind. Make up your damn mind – either you want free trade, or you want protectionist tariffs.
Get it through your thick head -even if there were no tariffs anywhere, the US would still have balance of trade issues. The US is too damn expensive relative to many other nations. The Thais, the Indians, South America, etc., are cheaper locales. At least not many corps are going to Africa, as they are too stupid and too corrupt to deal with.
Even if free trade were universal, the US is going to have balance of trade deficits. Plus no way on earth is the US political body going to stop subsidies to farmers, etc. , so it will have its own defacto tariffs.
It is all total bullshit. The only way balance of trade will markedly change is if US consumers refuse to buy foreign goods. MAGA requires some actual action on their part.
” We need a population smart enough to simply not buy foreign shit, but instead only buy US made goods and services.”
True enough, look at the NYT’s Sarah Jeong hiring.
I think her picture is now featured in Webster’s entry for “foreign shit”.
Anonymous
August 5, 2018 7:18 pm
We are now all annonymouse. Thank you microfuck.
Dennis Roe
August 5, 2018 8:08 pm
invest in wheelbarrow stock, you’re gonna need 1 to hump a 100 grand down to the liquor store for a 6 pack.
Thunderbird
August 5, 2018 8:47 pm
We are a people owned by our government. Just like our pets our every move and financial transaction is tracked and recorded. We are not free.
The laws we live under herd us. When we go astray of the laws designed to herd us we are promptly jailed, fined and branded. When we evade the law then we are cut off economically and cannot get a job. It is worse than Orwell’s 1984.
The choices we have are given us by government. I hear people say I chose to do this or that. I have to chuckle about that because I know their choices are what government allows them to choose.
We live in a consumer society. This is by design. We are swamped by advertising on the roadsides, television, internet, and every medium possible to buy and consume. We cannot turn it off. Talk about psychological brainwashing…. we are engulfed in it. Our children in particular.
We do not own anything. Everything of true value; like our homes, vehicles, motor homes are titled. Even our cash is taken from us if we get caught carrying a large amount on us when we travel. We are to use our plastic cards and many places do not take large bills for purchases.
The United States has become a great open prison with a large army of law enforcement officials watching our every move. We are so closely monitored that even a prison escapee does not get far when breaking from prison.
These are the facts.
The government can maintain this status quo because it owns all the money. It doesn’t care about how much money it takes to maintain this status quo because it knows digitized money is infinite in number.
How is it that people put up with this situation? I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the population are no longer free in their minds. For some reason human consciousness has lost it’s faith in it’s own consciousness. There is no hope in consciousness which is it’s strength. Faith and hope now resides in the body which is why sports is so popular.
The problem with this degeneration of consciousness is that our level of civilization; built up by previous great men of higher conscious thought, cannot continue to exist without continuous higher forms of though. We are on a slippery slope to another dark age. Perhaps a Mad Max world where our technology can no longer be maintained? This Mad Max world is already present in the political realm in Washington DC and the financial world of Wall Street.
There is a dark cloud hanging over this nation. I don’t think man was created to live in slavery. The human spirit is trapped in a matrix that is killing humanity. I don’t think our creator is going to allow this to continue for much longer. Intervention is coming. It is coming from the 5th dimension. Something man is blind to. But to those that can still see and hear the end is near.
To those who don’t want to look at the facts you will experience the shift in a state of denial. Woo to you because there will be no escape from the terror you will feel when the vale is lifted from the wizard behind the scenes. It will take a strong mind to get through this.
There are many who live and die without knowing what is going on around them. These people have no aim in life other than the pleasures of consumption. They have no clue of what is going on in the larger world around them. This is a fine life for cattle. Many have died abroad to keep this country free from invasion and war. But with more people and technical advances in military might around the world we can no longer ignore the world around us. We all have to get informed and do our duty to protect this country from invasion. If we fail in our duty then we fail ourselves and our fellow citizens. We can no longer live like cattle. Our purpose is to contribute to our civilization. To become individuals directing our own lives. Not slaves to a government taken over by evil men to keep us in slavery.
“We are swamped by advertising on the roadsides, television, internet, and every medium possible to buy and consume. We cannot turn it off.”
Sooooo …. your radio, television, and other electronic media dos not have an Off switch?? When you see a billboard on the highway, or on your computer screen …. you can’t avert your eyes?
A more accurate statement (because most Americans are very very stupid); —- “We do NOT WANT to turn it off.”
Overly simplistic, Stuck. It is so much more than a simple lack of desire. It is deep-rooted programming of the subconscious. It is the deliberate use of human weakness of addiction. It takes an almost superhuman amount of will to “turn it off” as you say and the will is diminished by the very same process that drives the addiction. Virtually no one is capable of turning it off entirely.
We are all slaves to our habits. This includes the people running the Matrix that holds us all in thrall…they are addicted to power and need ever-stronger doses of same. People, en masse, need to understand this process and, more importantly, FEEL it all around them, and THEN feel that unplugging is better in every way.
Unfortunately, this will not happen. The system cannot be saved, cannot be redeemed. It must collapse and the chips fall where they may. We are in the waning days of the largest, most powerful, most complex and perhaps last Empire in human history. Strange and powerful dynamics are at play. It is not so simple a thing as “Want or not want.”
Hello, Stucky! I thought I’d just pop in and tell you that little Stuckenheimer is my favorite little goat of the family. (His original name was “Dixie” because it was the grandfather’s nickname… I promised to not EAT the goats. I didn’t promise to not rename them.)
You will enjoy this story. I think.
Yesterday, I went to give the goats fresh water and discovered Mary Bess had her head stuck in that same fence panel little Stuck pokes his head into a lot. (I need to fix that… so I mentioned it to Nick. I expect that panel to be closed, as if by magic.)
It is beside the gatepost, so her head was all catawampus between post and fence and that pig of a goat SIMON was trying to hump her while she was trapped. I smacked him with a board (on the freaking head) but he was determined to get a little while she couldn’t kick back. (She is still nursing Little Bit-no name, so she won’t let him breed her. Ordinarily. What a PIG!)
I tried to get her out, but her head and horns are a bit more difficult to manipulate, so I called for Nick to assist. He came to help and for the first time… Simon tried to pee on him and then, he tried to gore Mary Bess to get her buttocks in position.
I went and got the big dogs to help. Big Jacob didn’t seem to care that Simon was trying to rape my nanny goat. However, Miss Melissa is a maniac and she will chase goats just for fun, so within seconds, Simon was back on his platform pouting while Nick and I got Mary Bess free.
Simon is a pygmy goat who should weigh around 60 lbs. He’s at least 90. The people who gave them to me treated these goats like pampered pets. But, they couldn’t contain Simon in the fence they had… I spent three hours chasing down one little goat when I went there to get them. I learned a lot about how to NOT manage goats from those nice people.
I did, however, promise to NOT eat the goats. Mary Bess, Stucken and Little Bit are safe. Simon is looking tastier and tastier.
Oh, the rabbits are fine. They just got upstaged.
Mags.
EL Coyote
August 5, 2018 10:06 pm
Back in the 80’s I said in frustration, I owe so much, I feel like killing myself.
My wife told Doc Pangloss. He said, tell him it’s the American way.
There is no way out.
I did a calculation re property taxes. I calculated that if I lived in Illinois, my property taxes would be over $50k. How in hell can that be fair?How can someone afford to retire in Illinois and carry the huge burden, plus all the other fed, state, county taxes?
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Why are people puting up with it? It is insane.
Why do people say – that’s funny, I don’t care who you are?
It’s as if they are saying that’s funny, I don’t care if you are a pedophile.
The moniker is right there, it can’t be the ‘funny’ comment is anonymous.
EC
The same question could, of course, be asked of ClevelandRocks or DRUD that matter. To think for yourself, to judge for yourself, each idea regardless of its source is the very foundation of critical thought.
“To think for yourself, to judge for yourself, each idea regardless of its source is the very foundation of critical thought.”
Nuff said!
Rather Not
August 6, 2018 11:49 am
I shouldn’t be, but I am continually surprised more people who don’t ‘get’ Trump’s highly effective manner of communicating somehow think it is the ones who do understand it are dumb.
Clearly, Trump’s position is to ‘grow’ our way out of debt. His plan to grow is to present the world the option of either 1) Via Tariffs, re-onshore all of the industry, jobs, and heart of our economy that has been gutted in the last several decades, or 2) Force other nations’ markets which have been closed to us open to expand our exports materially. Trump would prefer 2, but he will do 1 rather than let everyone else have access to our markets while we’re denied theirs. Either we make a bunch more stuff for ourselves (1) or we make a bunch more stuff for the rest of the world (2), but the plan is to make a bunch more stuff and grow the economy and jobs.
Trump’s position that the credible threat of tariffs (and harsh application if other countries try to ‘call our bluff’ which is not a bluff) are key to getting a better deal than the very sour current status quo of continuous half a trillion dollar annual trade deficits, collapse of our industrial base and massive foreign ownership of our debt, paid for with the proceeds of those trade deficits.
You can think that is not a good idea, and a bad strategy and oppose it, but you’d have to present a better one. But one can’t simply pretend it is incomprehensibly dumb to shake up the Chamber of Commerce multinational corporatist approved continued gutting of America…unless you are in fact incomprehensibly dumb, or you believe the people dumb enough to read and value your opinion are incomprehensibly dumb. I wonder which one Sven is.
Also worth noting, the only time the Federal government paid off its debt, it did so with the proceeds of high tariffs, and there were no personal or corporate income taxes. At all.
Vodka
August 6, 2018 1:54 pm
Scott Adams, from Dilbert fame, was prescient about Trump from the start. He recently met Trump for the first time and tells of the experience on a webcast. 45 minutes long, but worth your time. It starts slow for a few minutes talking about the dust up with LeBron James, then gets very interesting. It ends with him answering live-streamed questions. Remember, it’s a webcast, so he looks a bit nerdy. Watch it!
“Utter nonsense. Tariffs are separate from the 21T BUDGET deficit, Except by reducing trade they will make it worse.. Do some people believe ANYTHING?”
John Stossel
Our trade produces debt, even if it isn’t an official and listed part of the national debt.
All those foreign held bonds that are American debt obligations, where do you think those foreigners got the money for them and why did they buy our bonds (debt obligations) instead of the trade goods we make to cover our balance of trade deficits? Trade is supposed to be ours for theirs, and all we have to offer for ours is government and corporate debt and ownership of American properties and interests.
Do you understand what the cumulative balance of trade deficit means? Or how quickly it is growing?
And if you do, what do you suggest be done to change it to our favor instead of our liability?
Greetings,
Trump is in office precisely because he understands bankruptcy. Who better than Trump to oversee the settlement in this nation wide bankruptcy. Lets have a look.
1. Municipal government – bankrupt
2. State government – bankrupt
3. Pensions – bankrupt
4. Federal government – bankrupt
5. Our best performing stock are from companies that have not nor will not ever make a profit.
Americans have been living on borrowed time since Nixon. Trump is here to wipe the slate clean and a lot of people are going to be unhappy about it.
Yeah, I’m with nickle on this one. The magic muslim was selected to destroy the merkin family and the golden golum of greatness was selected to oversee the destruction of the economy. You ladies are so cute as you argue over how many trumps can dance on the head of a pin. Your ubermenchen meanwhile sap the last of your precious bodily fluids.
bartender, I want what that man’s been drinking.
Agreed, I am waiting for the better solution to emerge, haha.
Trump is a politician, and needs to be a politician. And for 150 years, the entire US government was funded by tariffs and excise taxes, and there was virtually no debt…So cease the Trump bashing…
Math can be challenging for the MSM….
I hope this is True!
Who are those 3 women above?
Sorry, the 1 in the middle is a man.
I say don’t get yourself baked into the Psyop cake!
Another commenter said don’t let yourself get eaten and become an African communist terrorist’s bowel movement.
Yes.
Ron Paul stuck to his oath to the people of the United States and the Constitution . The Deep State and the Fourth Estate went full bore on making him appear like the nice old doctor who lost a few marbles along the way .
The dumbed down citizens bought it all of it and the entrenched laughed behind his back . No one ever challenged him on the issues and facts .
Now we have President Trump attempting to upset the Apple cart while swimming in glue that is the DC SWAMP .
Tariffs were the original way our government funded its operations leaving the people and their accumulated wealth and production to do with as they see fit under limited government interference . It was known as FREEDOM
A lot of what cost paul support was his anti-war stance. To be sure, Trump being critical of Iraq and the rest of that nonsense was safe and popular in 2016, but it wasn’t in 2012. I personally know several people who would call themselves ‘very conservative’ who said some variation of “I love Ron Paul on the economy, and debt, and the proper role of government in society, but he loses me on foreign policy. He wants to pull our troops out of the middle east, reduce military spending, and the result would be chaos. We should be increasing military spending, and taking a more active role in world leadership” or some such nonsense. But I’ve heard statements like that from a lot of people. It amuses me to know end to hear people call themselves ‘fiscally conservative’ while simultaneously advocating for moar military spending. The stupid, it burns.
Those who disagreed with Ron Paul on foreign policy needed a constitutional lesson on declaration of war and foreign military entanglements and how without a clear defined objective with a pure National intrest it should always be a no go . I bet most of the 58,000 names on a wall would agree . Want to go to war ? Here is your weapon go for it !
Commit the nation by our laws or shut your war drum mouth up !
If we do declare war it is shock and awe no mercy till full surrender and don’t hand an 18 year old an automatic weapon and expect an excutive decision in a split second weather to use deadly force . Rules of engaugement : kill or be killed !
It is mathematically impossible to pay off the national debt. A default has to exist somewhere along that path.
The Treasury can simply issue debt free money to cover all current obligations under the orders of Congress and pay off the debt.
That is the Constitutional way of doing it, and it is totally possible to do that if people would wake up to the current basis of our money and demand a change in it.
Agreed. I am agnostic about Trump, although I did vote for him. Time will tell what sort of man he is and what impact he will have on our future, though a default seems to be a forgone conclusion, but one of which no one, not even Trump will speak of. What I think I see, and hope I see, is a prepositioning for a economy that can recover after the fall. The first things he did were to try and revive the mining, agricultural and manufacturing industries. True wealth, and the basis for a true lasting economy are based on things you must wrestle from the Earth. Tariffs are a way to generate income when other sources (income tax) fail, which I believe they will when the economy tanks.
I hope this is what I see.
Yes, true wealth comes only from labor and land. Everything else is a skim.
BS Wip, you can marry more money in five minutes than you can make in a lifetime.
…did you even read his words, or are you just flailing at your keyboard in a drunken seizure? What part of ‘skim’ confounds you?
I’m hoping this is hyper-dimensional, quantum-chess and he’s simply positioning his pieces to recover from a default, not to prevent it.
I never liked the chess analogies, Jim. But in this case, he’s definitely trolling the Chinese
The Federal government financed itself pretty much through custom duties for the first 125 years and while it was a much smaller government tariffs on, say $500 billion of imports would raise a lot of money.
There would be knock on effects but if there is one thing we can be sure of no economist can define exactly what they will be because economics is not a rule based science. If the price of cheap plastic junk from China goes up who is really going to suffer. Toys R Us went bankrupt and does anyone really care other than Chinese plastic junk makers.
A rope and an old tire make an excellent swing even if it isn’t available in neon plastic colors. OTOH is some idiot who wants to pay $125,000 for a 500 hp foreign sports car going to go broke if he has to pay $150,000 for the same car or will he enjoy the increased status his auto now has.
You have smartly addressed it. Many of the Chinese junk Americans consume are worthless and useless. In fact sometimes I feel Americans, considering their prosperity, consume too many cheap stuff. Rather they should consume good quality stuff in less quantity. Tariffs should be increased more. Since America is self sufficient in food, there will not be any impact on food inflation. The next is apparel. Americans buy too many cheap clothes. Rather they should buy good quality American made apparel at higher cost. For the cost of 3 cheap shirts you will get one good quality one but then why do someone need so many cheap clothes?
But I can tell you the world is willing to sell to America for much cheaper price than what is being charged. Then we have toys and white goods. Again Americans are getting these appliances for far less than their real value. In India an above average washing machine will cost you US$500. In the US also the costs are similar. Come on, the per capita of India is 1/25th of that of the USA.
Pay a little more and bring back your prosperity. There will be some inflation for couple of years but your industrial capacity will come back. I will tell you one thing. The whole world wants to sell to America. It is their need now. And for that America is not getting anything in return other than ridicule and dishonour. So get some spine and make some sacrifices and take back your national pride and prosperity.
— An Indian who likes the American way of life.
Excommunicated has the right of it. They debt is already too high and has passed the Rubicon. No one brings it up anymore cause they know this. Things will continue to go on until it doesn’t. Then , who knows….depression, new currency, war? All three?? The real question is how far off is the event horizon? Years, decades, century??? I have no idea.
Not like this bullshit hasn’t been going on for 50+ years , but President Trump is supposed to bring manufacturing jobs back to the USA , get the economy going , fight the demoncratic socialists/communists , the gop , feral judges , state , feral ,local bureaucracies , the entire national propagandist media , the fed raising rates [like they did during odumba’s reign of terror [/s] , while bitch slapping so called allies who suck our money for their defense , canadian’ s dumping chinese steel into our economy calling it their own [ lying mofo’s] , high tariff’s on our ag products , tariff imbalances with all countries [free trade [/s], all while propping up every socialist government program in the world , just so asshats with a pitifully high opinion of their own intellect [or lack thereof ] , can continually call him and his working supporters stupid , dumb , deplorables , toothless hicks , uneducated , rayciss , etc., get out of the way you ivory tower pseudo intellectuals or get on your knee’s for the coming socialist holocaust . Your choice to fight now or become a slave to the new world order , if you survive the purge [intellectuals always go first even the useful idiots who think they are down with the struggle ] , but for those who sell their soul and freedom for that state ,corporate , university paycheck and political correctness ,safety,security , maybe you could benefit from a strategic move to venezuela or other socialists workers paradise . Everybody[in their pitiful flacid mind ] is smarter than President Trump [ i know nobody was ever smarter than odumba because they never criticized him — he made the oceans recede – helped all black people prosper -and every other good thing you could imagine — if you just weren’t a white supremist , islamaphobe , misogynist , rayciss ,neanderthal .. ] and are all billionaires who have been elected President of The United States of America right? So many nanny babies would prefer the ease of the status operandi and its assured ultimate death of dignity to the challenge of change and self discipline , true education , physical work [that’s what somebody else does right ? ] , and sacrifice of temporal pleasure for solid net gains for future use – its called CAPITALISM , the only system that works to avoid abject poverty of mind , body and spirit !
I don’t think he cares too much about the debt. Which is kind of strange given his focus/concern for the economy in general.
It’s a head-scratcher for sure.
He proved that with his increase in military spending. You can’t be a credible deficit hawk and do that at the same time.
Using Ron Paul as an example, there is no way a deficit hawk can get elected President.
There is no way a candidate who wants to reduce military spending could ever get elected President.
You have to create a coalition to get elected. Trump picked the working class, pro-law enforcement, pro-military, the nationalists, and the MIC (military industrial complex) to create a big enough coalition to win. If he lost any of those groups, he would not have won.
Even today in Washington, you cannot take on the Intelligence Agency/Deep State and the MIC at the same time. Kennedy tried that, and it didn’t work so well for him.
Expand your thinking.
Trump needed that large dose of money to support a military ops outside of the corruption of government.
I had an opinion but then lost it… maybe the debt will be cancelled and it will all go away.
“I had an opinion then lost it…”
Happens to me all the time…or did you mean you wrote something then lost it, which happens to me also.
I’m trying to recover from having set opinions and working on just trying to analyze and having a wait and see…
Careful, MC.
His brain idled so slowly that if he hesitated it might go ahead and shut down. – Old Pangloss
Lol..EC, it doesn’t mean I’m not thinking critically. Just trying to listen more and stop forcing my opinion on people who don’t give a crap… and no more predictions ever again.
MC
No… I started typing and forgot what I planned to say. In my defense, I am having a really terrible day here in the unwelcome return to summer.
Sure, the rest of the world we owe that to will just let us have a debt jubilee…and get stiffed on what we owe them ….
If it happens, be careful what strings come attached.
Plato
Who exactly do we owe? If it has a Rothschild attachment, why should we worry?
BL,
Good ?
Who do you refer to?
My natural person or my strawman?
I have accumulated debt in FRNs and have been conscripted into this system where unalienable rights are bestowed as privileges thus my labor taxed….
That bondage is what binds us to the unplayable debt accumulated in our name through the judicially interpreted legally defined term CITIZEN of the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
To become a Soveriegn Citizen is no easy task or happily ever after existence.
P
To not have the label citizen (which shows ownership is even better).
You all know—-Trust the Plan!
made U laugh.
He’s a full-time time actor and he takes his marching orders from the new world order, just like the other blackmailed fucks. Some of you can choose to live in la la land where Trump wears a white hat, is a master of parallel universe multidimensional chess, but sooner or later reality is going to smack you upside the head
He reminds me of a court jester, providing comic relief for the humorless occupiers of the throne of power in DC. And I must admit, he is not bad in that role. How could one not laugh at the subject quote?
Dio- Took a look at MM’s site for first time the other day. He is right to look at bloodlines but is way off on El Douche. He even admits he runs into nothing burgers there because he is looking at the subject in the wrong light.
I started unraveling bloodline connection in the 70’s, I give him credit for doing all that he has done. At least he is on the right path through the theater. Admin used to ridicule me and say if I looked into a mirror that I would not even believe it was me looking back. If he only knew the years of reading and pondering that goes into my thoughts.
Bea, I won’t discuss it here, but bloodline issues are very spooky. However, I will point out you don’t look like yourself from time to time. Haha…
Any impediment to the leftists’ vaunted Cloward/Piven strategy to systemically bankrupt our nation and usher in their utopian socialism will be met with derision.
This is why they wanted their universal health care… it’s not about taking care of the dirt people, it’s about the bankrupting costs.
Our massive trade deficits bleed hundreds of billions of national wealth, a very effective tool in the agenda to end what’s left of our once free market society.
There will always be pain when one addresses long-ignored cancers, the other option is business as usual and certain death.
Any attempts at this point to eliminate our annual trillion dollar deficits and even stabilize the patient will be hard on someone.
If not now, when?
TRUMP MATH:
$21 Trillion + $1 Trillion = $20 Trillion
TRUMPETEERS:
YEAH Trump!!!! He’s right. He’s our Savior. He’s draining the swamp with his new math. How dare anyone call him out just because he makes one of the dumbest fucking statements of all-time.
i know this is an old analogy.
I have a huge balance of payments “problem” with Safeway. For years I’ve been giving them US dollars and getting groceries in return. Net result? I eat well and they pay their shareholders etc.
Just expand the picture:
Safeway = China
Me = USA.
It’s that simple.
Oh, but it’s even better than that. In the China, USA case, the dollars must be invested in USA capitalization and debt support.
Trump’s statement was false, but it seems to me that the best measure of our debt is less the nominal number than the percentage of GDP.
The bigger the debt the greater the GDP. Magic.
Q is our savior, Trump sits at the right hand of Lord Q. Pray!
President Qu will kick Chairman Xi’s ass. Wait. Pray.
First, he’s got a little business to take care of with LeBron.
Who dares put a downer on our savior Lord Q? Pray infidel.
All the Trump sycophants who are unwilling to deal with reality and give him a pass when he states an unequivocal lie can hit the fucking road. I don’t want non-critical thinking cheerleaders corrupting my site.
It really is a sign of the times when the Trumpeteers exhibit the same level of idiotic hero worship as the left wing idiots who said Obama could do no wrong.
We’re doomed with so many morons.
Could be worse.
You could be living with Justin “The budget will balance itself” and “We’ll grow the economy from the heart outward” Trudeau who has stated we will be running deficits (big ones) until 2045.
That’s a level of stupidity that makes Trump’s math look really reasonable.
No FM, you can’t justify dumb by comparing it to dumber.
Jeez. That sounds like anyone who may disagree with or have a different opinion about an article here is not a critical thinker.
Nope. Not a different opinion. His statement is 100% false. Anyone who agrees with his statement is dumber than a sack of hammers and would be polluting this site with their presence. Do you believe his statement to be true?
Personally, I don’t listen to much of anything he says. He’s too incoherent for me. As for tariffs and their effects, I’d probably wait a while before I pass judgment as to what impact they will have on the deficit and debt.
Admin,
+ 1 billion godgillion trillion ? ☝️
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Some observations:
1) I love Ron Paul, I voted for him, I still listen to his podcasts, however he was always a niche candidate, not for the dumbed down masses. The same reason I look for a rare, well made scotch when we live in a Jack N’ Coke world (Trump is Jack and Coke). Which is why I will eventually buy my compound in Montana encircled with electrified fence.
2) Nearly all the Presidents of the 20th Century prove the abject failure of democracy. The average human being is hollow and pliable. He only learns through pain, like a dog with a shock collar.
3) You have to make more and more money to keep insulating yourself from these people. Membership in the expensive health club where you don’t see a back tattoo of a snake consuming another snake.
4) The whole point of the income tax (when they sold it to the corn pone idiot masses of 1913) was that we could lower tariffs and the rich guy down the street will make up the difference. For most of the last hundred years, we’ve had both. If you work for Alcoa it’s good, if you work for a customer of Alcoa it’s bad. If you buy an aluminum can, it’s bad. One winner, ten losers.
If you are surrounded by like-minded neighbors you won’t need the electrified fence.
Meh, good neighbors or not, I’d still go with the electrified fence.
Good neighbors make good fences.
Yes, that is a good one.
i know this is an old analogy.
I have a huge balance of payments “problem” with Safeway. For years I’ve been giving them US dollars and getting groceries in return. Net result? I eat well and they pay their shareholders etc.
Just expand the picture:
Safeway = China
Me = USA.
It’s that simple.
Oh, but it’s even better than that. In the China, USA case, the dollars must be invested in USA capitalization and debt support.
Tariffs would be far better than the onerous income tax. Many of the industries that have been shipped overseas are important to our security.
We really are at the advantage in the trade wars. I hope that we get a better deal going forward.
I imagine that if I were Trump, I would be a babbling idiot by now with all he’s had to endure, so I disregard obvious errors…
Are the tariffs replacing my income tax. I didn’t notice that in my last paycheck. Are those industries coming back to America? The trade deficit hit an all-time high when reported this week. Shouldn’t it be going down?
Obvious errors or Obvious lies????
Returning to financing government by tariffs the way it was originally done would replace your income tax.
That is what was being suggested, a return to the original Constitutional intent of tariffs.
Anon, et al
That’s all fine and dandy but doesn’t mean “returning to the original constitutional intent of tariffs” will not even put a dent in the debt at its current level…
Either devaluation of a country’s currency must happen, thus the term “race to the bottom” st the macro level is underlying current that everything else must be viewed to to help understand the things that are happening nationally and regionally…
Or
a default similar to what Iceland chose to do…unfortunately a default of the world’s reserve currency would dramatically impact the entire world unlike Icelands diminutive global economic impact.
Nor
Does your suggestion suggest that you have any understanding of the legal term CITIZEN , our straw man to this system we interact with…
Who do you think will be left holding the bag of worthless dollars, the billionaires who can move money into other things easier orrrr …the suckers who believe the average pension fund manager??
These FRNs which have debt attached to them whom is pledged the labor of US CITIZENS to pay towards this by-design unpayable debt in this house of cards ponzi economy….
So what has happened to Iceland since unplugging ?
Does America need to worry about global disruptions by unplugging from the reserve currency system or America as the cause of concern?
@ Dagandy
Iceland didn’t unplug just let the banks default and cleared debt instead of Bailing out the Banks through policies like TARP and paid for by posterity like the E.U. and U.S. did…
Then came the Q.E three card monte central banks peak a boo mark to market accounting stock buyback FAANGS and markets at all time highs war on terror, drugs, education, opiods bullying suicide cop shooting civilians like hot cakes epidemic
Daganda,
Trade wars and currency wars can create supply disruptions on certain items….
Trick is figuring which industries will be impacted most. Not too difficult if paying attention and realistically there is only so much you can prepare for anyways.
In this fractional reserve central banking system if we issued debt free money and defaulted on our debt a la Venezuela much social strife would occur, that is backed into the cake….
The Power elite have already developed a redundant system to minimize the effects of the ritual sacrifice of the dollar on the altar to Moloch.
Look to Russia, China and India to see the risers in the 21st century…
… many ‘taxes’ (and equivalent – fees, licenses, cost shring, etc.) besides just the income tax.
Like many universities advertise their “tuition” has only risen a small amount … but the the total cost, fees, etc. have went up 1000%.
One never knows these days. With Trump, it was always a shot in the dark. He gets a lot of “goodwill” from me because he beat Hillary. The deficits are alarming, and the military spending is disheartening. My income taxes are still there. A handful of jobs have come back, but only a handful. Some jobs are still leaving. Supporting Trump may be completely idiotic; I just don’t pay attention to every word or tweet, and will just have to wait to see how things play out. Meanwhile, I don’t have that much time to waste, and he sure doesn’t care what I think. Got preps?
Q is a 5th dimension universal observer. Q is on a higher level than most of us. We as 4th dimension observers cannot see; for most of us, past our noses.
Q can see the end of the US but tries to instruct us how to figure out the now so we can see the current and it’s destructive path.
We cannot change the current. The current has two streams; one that follows the general path; destructive, leading to the abyss, and the other leading to freedom. Very few will find that current.
In life; as in nations such as ours, everything leads to death. Death has two realities. One is total death meaning the end of existence and the other is transformation which leads to a higher level of life. The former is the reality most of us will face. The latter is the reality those who found their purpose will ascend to.
President Trump is shaking up the status quo. He says he wants to make this nation great again. That means different outcomes for different people. For religious people this means restoring christian values. For financial people it means more profits. For military people it means more military adventures. For me it means transformation.
Without transformation this nation is dead. Time is not reversible. Potentiality is not possible for a dead nation; or a dead people.
Written history is full of mass migrations of people. Migrations today are a result of failing governments. Look at Europe and the US today where mass migrations are overcoming barely functioning governments. History does not lie. Our governments are failing and no one can stop it.
Those who’s observations are still in the fourth dimension cannot see this. Q can. And that is why it is so sad to read the observations of so many following the rabbit trails created in their minds about what is going on at the present time. A waste of time and more importantly a waste of the human potential our creator gave us.
The broader view says that the US is going down just like the former Soviet Union did that ended the cold war. Then around 2000 the transformation began for Russia. It will be the same for America.
There are many that don’t want to accept this. But they have no control of universal currents. Nor of eternal patterns. Hyparxis; that is, ableness-to-be and cyclicity is only understood by those who have become sensitive to the eternal patterns. The herd is only sensitive to their immediate environment. They will have to go along with the changes that are coming. Right at this present time the dumb are being led by the dumber. And right now the dumb and the dumber have no idea what is coming.
Just ask Q
Anon,
Beautifully written with many valid observations particularly the macro understanding of what is to come.
Both roads will not lead to freedom however…due to the interconnectedness of the global system, freedom is quickly evaporating in the West
a “fifth dimension universal observer”? on a “higher level” than most of us?
Is Q the Dalai Lama?
If Q could produce Maggie’s full frontal beach pic, then I would believe.
EC
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Here’s one in the flowers out front…
I don’t go to the beach these days. That post with the dish on it is my only link to the world. And we don’t turn it on much these days.
You’re a badass, Mags.
Am Soviet type collapse would be great news.
What’s different is their population hadn’t grown up being told how special and adorable they are.
NPR just reported that 2919’s defense budget was approved before DOD even submitted it but the mission will change from fighting terrorism to containing China and Russia.
It’s getting harder to enforce world wide supremacy of the Peto Dollar with those two mucking up the works.
Fleabaggs.
If Q posts a picture of a random building in downtown DC, we will know it is true. We will know if there are extra lines of gibberish numbers added that we will be in high cotton for the rest of the century. Who needs RP when we have the all knowing , all seeing Q ? Soon we will question the need for government at all with Q being the all-encompassing answer to all our needs. Praise be Lord Q.
My phone erased my handle from my comment above about a Soviet collapse.
You too?
Fuckers.
So Trump is presently floating the notion of another tax cut …. $100 Billion in magnitude … EXCLUSIVELY for the very rich. And some readers still wish to believe this arse represents them? It is time to give up on intellectual discourse. Collectively we are doomed. This has been the agenda of OUR OWNERS all along.
Faith in politicians as saviors is quite understandable because it provides an easy path. All you have to do is show up at the polls every couple of years and you’ve performed your civic duty. You transfer your responsibility for creating the world you want to live in from an onerous and distasteful personal task to trusting your elected leaders to take care of it for you. The problem with that is the fact that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
When you hand off your responsibilities to someone else, you also hand off your liberty and freedom. A representative is just a master by another name.
A little late to the party and off topic regarding the tarrifs but perhaps on target about Trump:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/basketball/ct-trump-lebron-20180804-story.html
Ya wonder if the pressure of
“The Donald versus the world” is taking its toll on the Orange One, or if it’s all just a reality show.
As for the Tweetstorm the other night, at first I thought it might have been strategic when Trump called out the recently-hired, racist New York Times’ Asian editor while addressing the intelligence of LeBron James and CNN’s Don Lemon.
I mean, if the snowflakes object to what Trump said about James and Lemon, they would also have to address the NYT’s Asian gal who hates white people. Kind of a clever way to point out the double standard.
Yet, LeBron responded in a way that made Trump look not cool, and even Melania and Michael Jordan backed LeBron in that exchange.
So, to summarize: At the same time Trump was trying to rally Republican voters in Ohio, he insults James who is a hometown hero from that state.
LeBron, by appearing to take the high ground via his charity work in Ohio, made Trump look petty and even foolish, by playing into the stereotypes assigned to him by his political opponents; and in a way that was indefensible for friends to come to his aid.
Looking cool and smart is one thing. But appearing petty and out of control is quite another.
What happens now? Stay tuned, and don’t touch that dial, we’ll be right back after the commercial break….
Plato,
Grand scale economic collapse usually takes the framework with it. It is more than an outward manifestation… It is an inner one too.
Many seem to think the system is a permanent framework. It is not. Nowhere in history has there been a permanent framework in economic forms. There is growing resistance in the world against our form of economics. The writing is on the wall for the demise of our system. People just don’t want to believe it. and you are right freedom is quickly evaporating in the west. Unfortunately this freedom is both external and internal. So we cannot predict what will happen.
Many people in our society have lost their self directing ability. This has happened over time. Now we are witnessing the loss of self regulating ability. Laws have replaced this ability. And further, people are losing their coalescence, potentiality, subsistence and relatedness skills. We are basically at the binary level of existence where polarities is all we know.
I would say our western civilization is demonstrating a return to barbarian society where the fine points of culture has eroded to a lower form of consciousness.
It is plane to see all around us; yet we refuse to acknowledge it. The systems we built up to sustain our way of life are fracturing along with our social and material infrastructures.
It is like the movie “ConAir” where the prisoners escaping the authorities were singing a song; sung by a band that died in a plane crash.
Our nation is going down due to our ignorance to see our stupid ways or where our corrupt leaders are leading us and all we do is party like there is no consequences to our naive beliefs.
Thunderbird
Thunderbird,
Thank you for taking the time to write such an AMAZING response. Great points about the fractures clearly visible throughout every aspect of our physical and social worlds, starting with the smallest social unit, THE FAMILY, to groups of like minded individuals or individuals thrust into extraordinary social conditions like economic collapse, see Venezuela, supply disruptions, clean drinking water, food,…
To local governments, corporations, organizations to state, national, to supranational.
Russia setting up it’s own SWIFT system and it’s dumping of u.s. treasuries in response to sanctions seems to be a key point in history if writing the history books as it happens is possible hahaha
That’s and the Yuan getting added to the basket of currencies called the SDR IMF’s Special Drawing Rights.
Monumental occurrences people who talk about MAGA fail to consider along with the trillions in public and private american debt…
Ouch! In business terms, the LIQUIDATION will intensify until there’s nothing left except CITIZENS like you, you, you, and me…
Edit:
Love the ConAir analogy.
The veil is being pulled back faster and faster until the band aid rip-off occurs…then the bricks at the back of the theater will be clearly insight
Complexity is a function of energy. Less energy => less complexity.
Can’t maintain the cell wall? Your cell is kaput.
It’s actually 4 trillion a day. Almost 3 million per minute! Yeah real great economy. Imagine partying with a group of 3000 people all running up $1000 per minute on their credit cards. Woohoo, talk about a great time… till they hit their limit.
Trump is merely the Act IV of the same old play. Same script, different actor. The American sheeple are being played like a violin string, and most (99%) are too distracted to see it. For whatever reason, there are no critical thinking skills left in this country. If you think Trump won the election, you are horribly wrong. You were played into thinking you were getting something different when in fact he is more of the same. Constant distraction is the theme in the news media to keep sheeple from thinking about this and seeing the true direction we are headed.
I really don’t have an ‘I Care’ horse in the Trump race, except for my kids but as I’m learning that is up to them not me. I do believe that Trump wants what he says he wants … MAGA: I think that part of him is transparent. He would not have done some of the things he has if that wasn’t actually who he was (e.g., TTIP). Like every other pol he would have politely forgotten to get around to such things once elected. In that sense, he is genuine.
But, it is too late and the continuation of the obscene spending/deficits shows that. Perhaps even as late as 2008 there was a chance, but no longer.
“How do you expect to pay down the national debt when you are adding to that debt at a much faster pace then was Obama when he left office? If foreign trade surpluses actually shrink, who will buy all the extra bonds the Treasury needs to sell to finance your huge deficits?”
Peter Schiff
“Tariffs are not working. They are backfiring. They are rising prices for American consumers, and increasing costs for American producers. You are not taxing foreigners you are taxing Americans. If you want to reduce our trade deficits, you must reduce government spending first!”
Peter Schiff
Schiff is not the sharpest knife in the drawer
I’d agree, Adam Schiff is a dumbass.
And for some reason, they never acknowledge the fact that no matter which side’s in charge, the debt continues to grow. Repub or dem, doesn’t matter, more and more debt is the rule. We always bump up against the debt ceiling… seems someone sometime gotta ask, how come debt ALWAYS grows???
That’s the simply question no one in charge wants you to ask. Because you might get the crazy idea that the system is at fault, not the government. Enough people asking that question and things may finally change. And Peter’s just another paid off shill for the financial elite… paid to keep your eyes off the real problem.
The debt continues to grow because no one is willing to cut back on the financing of any programs, even when they are a complete and total failure.
Incrementalism in the policy wonker world needs to stop. At some point, the policies that fail will be ended and completely eliminated.
By the government that forms when ours finally gets wiped from the (embarrassed) face of the nation.
What will replace all the vote-buying by the corrupt Congress Critters?
Forced labor and re-education camps, I imagine.
Mags
My question is, after we were suckered into sending the chinks our manufacturing jobs, why should we let them come in here and make trillions from the maroons who gave it all up without them paying a tribute (tariff/tax)? Why in the name of Q should we give the ChiComs that big of a break?
I realize the commie lovers in here will get bunged up in a knot but why are we doing all of these idiotic things which run us into the iceberg, and for commies to boot? Big fukkin deal if the Chinese shit will cost more, we should not be lining their commie pockets in the first place. Let the Euro halfwits buy their crap.
Nixon – No gold, you take paper
Ronnie – No paper, you take plastic
Trump – No plastic, you take shaft
E.C. …
Don’t forget
Obummer-
NO clunkers NO Obamaphones !
Reminds me of this SNL skit that was actually funny from 2009:
https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d9c_1258865433
Platonic, I mean that when it comes to paying off foreign creditors, there’s a pattern above where Republican presidents take a hard line towards creditors. The default keeps getting shabbier.
It reminds me of the movie Goodfellas, where Jimmy knocks off his associates one by one so he can keep the entire stash. Their is no faster way to lose a friend than to lend him money.
Two friends start a partnership, they will not be friends at the end. – Doc Pangloss
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPqOTA1HQAQ
it’s me… still online
There is no money without debt, eliminate debt and you eliminate money… that’s the way a debt-money monetary system works. Take your wallet out and count, that’s the only REAL money you have. Even the “money” you have in the bank, or stocks, or bonds, or 401 is debt UNTIL you convert it to cash. Talk of reducing the debt is merely talk, it will NEVER happen(unless it’s planned, which will lead to a credit crunch and likely depression and war).
“reducing the debt is merely talk, it will NEVER happen”
It CANNOT happen while maintaining the internal logic of the current system. That’s why Nixon *had to* go to China and why they are desperate to expand the global debt-money franchise By Any Means Necessary and coming up with SDRs and so forth. TINA.
Back in the good old days, they could keep the charade going… the sleight-of-hand that made people think that investing in the System yielded profits that came from Within the System (as some sort of inherent, forever-magical, infinite property of capitalism) instead of from Outside the System, as is physically mandated. Send a guy with a boat to the New World or to Asia in the 1600s to get some stuff, and ‘wah-lah’.. you can get a return. Need to expand the debt envelope? Just force more regions into the overall Ponzi scheme. In a now-global system, though, there are no longer enough Other Places from which to book returns. [Fossil fuels represent the only remaining, now-dwindling, input from Outside the System that’s supporting profits of any kind, but that switcheroo is on its way out, too, which is why we have found ourselves in particular trouble lately.]
I give you $100. At some future point, you give me back $105. Where does the extra $5 come from? It’s a pretty simple question with an answer few people can really give.
Everyone here seems to have railed about interest rates being artificially low, while they actually *should be negative* (which, with inflation, is what we are effectively seeing). They should be negative because there are no longer the massive energy and resource gradients to exploit that we once had, the ones which allowed us to pretend they were “produced” by a debt-money system that operates as though there’s always a free lunch, in fact, an exponentially-growing banquet of free lunches as far as the eye can see.
Virtually everything “produced” is (more properly stated) CONSUMED. We are reaching (have reached) The Limits to Growth in consumption, with all of consumption’s attendant knock-on effects. There are no more piggy banks to break into to get the $5 we think is our “due”.
Mark Branham, “cash” is still debt because it’s an IOU for some future quantity of goods/services. Which may not be forthcoming.
At one time I thought money was the way one exchanges one’s labor and skillset for the products of another person’s labor and skillset.
Now, an entire generation of young (and old) people think a Universal Basic Income is due them whether or not they choose to produce anything other than turds and piss.
I think about the “jobs” I’ve performed for monetary recompense and realize that most of them were really just busy work required by the military/government type of “work” I did, both in uniform and after my “service.” (By the way, when people see my military ID (husband is retired) in my hand and thank me for my service, I have a hard time saying thanks instead of thanking them for their hard-earned tax dollars for doing nothing of note. I worked hard at what I was supposed to be doing, but honestly, unless I was actually flying around in a racetrack pattern five miles above the ground I was probably wasting time. Which, they say, is also money.
I love it when Admin kicks ass.
Any benefit, if any, that tariffs bring will be years away. But the pain will be immediate. And that pain is already being felt.
There is no guarantee that biz will relocate from China to the US. Instead, it might well move to a no tariff low cost nation. Why would you build a corp in the US when there are still so many other low cost nations out there to move to? Hell, some companies are moving to Europe, which is not exactly low cost.
We do not need tariffs. We need a population smart enough to simply not buy foreign shit, but instead only buy US made goods and services.
Fuck that. Get it through your thick head, the idea is not for us to have tariffs. The idea is to use the threat of tariffs to break down the tariffs and non-tariff barriers other countries have against our companies. Your buddy, star. Who WordPress insists is now an anonymous
Star – they ain’t gonna buy our shit, at least not more than they are already doing. Germans will not buy US cars. Chinese got no money. Etc.
Plus, you have said it dozens of times -you want protectionist tariffs. Now you are changing your mind. Make up your damn mind – either you want free trade, or you want protectionist tariffs.
Get it through your thick head -even if there were no tariffs anywhere, the US would still have balance of trade issues. The US is too damn expensive relative to many other nations. The Thais, the Indians, South America, etc., are cheaper locales. At least not many corps are going to Africa, as they are too stupid and too corrupt to deal with.
Even if free trade were universal, the US is going to have balance of trade deficits. Plus no way on earth is the US political body going to stop subsidies to farmers, etc. , so it will have its own defacto tariffs.
It is all total bullshit. The only way balance of trade will markedly change is if US consumers refuse to buy foreign goods. MAGA requires some actual action on their part.
” We need a population smart enough to simply not buy foreign shit, but instead only buy US made goods and services.”
True enough, look at the NYT’s Sarah Jeong hiring.
I think her picture is now featured in Webster’s entry for “foreign shit”.
We are now all annonymouse. Thank you microfuck.
invest in wheelbarrow stock, you’re gonna need 1 to hump a 100 grand down to the liquor store for a 6 pack.
We are a people owned by our government. Just like our pets our every move and financial transaction is tracked and recorded. We are not free.
The laws we live under herd us. When we go astray of the laws designed to herd us we are promptly jailed, fined and branded. When we evade the law then we are cut off economically and cannot get a job. It is worse than Orwell’s 1984.
The choices we have are given us by government. I hear people say I chose to do this or that. I have to chuckle about that because I know their choices are what government allows them to choose.
We live in a consumer society. This is by design. We are swamped by advertising on the roadsides, television, internet, and every medium possible to buy and consume. We cannot turn it off. Talk about psychological brainwashing…. we are engulfed in it. Our children in particular.
We do not own anything. Everything of true value; like our homes, vehicles, motor homes are titled. Even our cash is taken from us if we get caught carrying a large amount on us when we travel. We are to use our plastic cards and many places do not take large bills for purchases.
The United States has become a great open prison with a large army of law enforcement officials watching our every move. We are so closely monitored that even a prison escapee does not get far when breaking from prison.
These are the facts.
The government can maintain this status quo because it owns all the money. It doesn’t care about how much money it takes to maintain this status quo because it knows digitized money is infinite in number.
How is it that people put up with this situation? I have come to the conclusion that the majority of the population are no longer free in their minds. For some reason human consciousness has lost it’s faith in it’s own consciousness. There is no hope in consciousness which is it’s strength. Faith and hope now resides in the body which is why sports is so popular.
The problem with this degeneration of consciousness is that our level of civilization; built up by previous great men of higher conscious thought, cannot continue to exist without continuous higher forms of though. We are on a slippery slope to another dark age. Perhaps a Mad Max world where our technology can no longer be maintained? This Mad Max world is already present in the political realm in Washington DC and the financial world of Wall Street.
There is a dark cloud hanging over this nation. I don’t think man was created to live in slavery. The human spirit is trapped in a matrix that is killing humanity. I don’t think our creator is going to allow this to continue for much longer. Intervention is coming. It is coming from the 5th dimension. Something man is blind to. But to those that can still see and hear the end is near.
To those who don’t want to look at the facts you will experience the shift in a state of denial. Woo to you because there will be no escape from the terror you will feel when the vale is lifted from the wizard behind the scenes. It will take a strong mind to get through this.
There are many who live and die without knowing what is going on around them. These people have no aim in life other than the pleasures of consumption. They have no clue of what is going on in the larger world around them. This is a fine life for cattle. Many have died abroad to keep this country free from invasion and war. But with more people and technical advances in military might around the world we can no longer ignore the world around us. We all have to get informed and do our duty to protect this country from invasion. If we fail in our duty then we fail ourselves and our fellow citizens. We can no longer live like cattle. Our purpose is to contribute to our civilization. To become individuals directing our own lives. Not slaves to a government taken over by evil men to keep us in slavery.
Thunderbird….
Masterful! Thank you for a dose of reality and reminder what is truly important.
“We are swamped by advertising on the roadsides, television, internet, and every medium possible to buy and consume. We cannot turn it off.”
Sooooo …. your radio, television, and other electronic media dos not have an Off switch?? When you see a billboard on the highway, or on your computer screen …. you can’t avert your eyes?
A more accurate statement (because most Americans are very very stupid); —- “We do NOT WANT to turn it off.”
Overly simplistic, Stuck. It is so much more than a simple lack of desire. It is deep-rooted programming of the subconscious. It is the deliberate use of human weakness of addiction. It takes an almost superhuman amount of will to “turn it off” as you say and the will is diminished by the very same process that drives the addiction. Virtually no one is capable of turning it off entirely.
We are all slaves to our habits. This includes the people running the Matrix that holds us all in thrall…they are addicted to power and need ever-stronger doses of same. People, en masse, need to understand this process and, more importantly, FEEL it all around them, and THEN feel that unplugging is better in every way.
Unfortunately, this will not happen. The system cannot be saved, cannot be redeemed. It must collapse and the chips fall where they may. We are in the waning days of the largest, most powerful, most complex and perhaps last Empire in human history. Strange and powerful dynamics are at play. It is not so simple a thing as “Want or not want.”
Terrific comment, Thunderbird, BTW.
“The system cannot be saved, cannot be redeemed.”
Couldn’t agree more.
But, you can save yourself. We become what we desire, so strengthen your desire to do good. Slavery to one’s habits is not destiny, it is a choice.
It IS simple. But, it’s not easy.
I think you could write a really great article about these concepts.
Hello, Stucky! I thought I’d just pop in and tell you that little Stuckenheimer is my favorite little goat of the family. (His original name was “Dixie” because it was the grandfather’s nickname… I promised to not EAT the goats. I didn’t promise to not rename them.)
You will enjoy this story. I think.
Yesterday, I went to give the goats fresh water and discovered Mary Bess had her head stuck in that same fence panel little Stuck pokes his head into a lot. (I need to fix that… so I mentioned it to Nick. I expect that panel to be closed, as if by magic.)
It is beside the gatepost, so her head was all catawampus between post and fence and that pig of a goat SIMON was trying to hump her while she was trapped. I smacked him with a board (on the freaking head) but he was determined to get a little while she couldn’t kick back. (She is still nursing Little Bit-no name, so she won’t let him breed her. Ordinarily. What a PIG!)
I tried to get her out, but her head and horns are a bit more difficult to manipulate, so I called for Nick to assist. He came to help and for the first time… Simon tried to pee on him and then, he tried to gore Mary Bess to get her buttocks in position.
I went and got the big dogs to help. Big Jacob didn’t seem to care that Simon was trying to rape my nanny goat. However, Miss Melissa is a maniac and she will chase goats just for fun, so within seconds, Simon was back on his platform pouting while Nick and I got Mary Bess free.
Simon is a pygmy goat who should weigh around 60 lbs. He’s at least 90. The people who gave them to me treated these goats like pampered pets. But, they couldn’t contain Simon in the fence they had… I spent three hours chasing down one little goat when I went there to get them. I learned a lot about how to NOT manage goats from those nice people.
I did, however, promise to NOT eat the goats. Mary Bess, Stucken and Little Bit are safe. Simon is looking tastier and tastier.
Oh, the rabbits are fine. They just got upstaged.
Mags.
Back in the 80’s I said in frustration, I owe so much, I feel like killing myself.
My wife told Doc Pangloss. He said, tell him it’s the American way.
There is no way out.
I owe, I owe, so off to work I go!
I did a calculation re property taxes. I calculated that if I lived in Illinois, my property taxes would be over $50k. How in hell can that be fair?How can someone afford to retire in Illinois and carry the huge burden, plus all the other fed, state, county taxes?
WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? Why are people puting up with it? It is insane.
Now ADMIN is doing a QOTD?
Damn. Competition around here is brutal!
Next I’ll be doing circumcision articles to try and get comments over 200.
Now, that’s funny, I don’t care who you are.
I guess I am now forever anonymous, or else I have to re-enter my name.
Why do people say – that’s funny, I don’t care who you are?
It’s as if they are saying that’s funny, I don’t care if you are a pedophile.
The moniker is right there, it can’t be the ‘funny’ comment is anonymous.
EC
EC, it was started by Larry the Cable Guy many years ago. It’s just a figure of speech.
You can’t explain anything to EC until the smoking lamp is lit.
And, then, it will have to be translated by a red rope.
And, it appears he missed my full frontal offering.
How about an article about astronauts masturbating on the lunar surface during the Apollo missions?
Maggie…
Aliens are really sons of God might do it.
MC
We are, MC.
Maggie, with the lunar gravity being one sixth that of earth, they could put somebody’s eye out and propel themselves a couple of miles down field.
To answer Admins’s question ….. I say Trump is a friggin GENIUS!!!!
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heh heh
Stuck- We should have just elected Monty Hall if that’s all there is to that! Very funny post, but sadly he (Trump) DID say that and soooo much more.
Who is Sven Henrich and why would I care about his opinion on anything?
The same question could, of course, be asked of ClevelandRocks or DRUD that matter. To think for yourself, to judge for yourself, each idea regardless of its source is the very foundation of critical thought.
DRUD,
Nicely said…
“To think for yourself, to judge for yourself, each idea regardless of its source is the very foundation of critical thought.”
Nuff said!
I shouldn’t be, but I am continually surprised more people who don’t ‘get’ Trump’s highly effective manner of communicating somehow think it is the ones who do understand it are dumb.
Clearly, Trump’s position is to ‘grow’ our way out of debt. His plan to grow is to present the world the option of either 1) Via Tariffs, re-onshore all of the industry, jobs, and heart of our economy that has been gutted in the last several decades, or 2) Force other nations’ markets which have been closed to us open to expand our exports materially. Trump would prefer 2, but he will do 1 rather than let everyone else have access to our markets while we’re denied theirs. Either we make a bunch more stuff for ourselves (1) or we make a bunch more stuff for the rest of the world (2), but the plan is to make a bunch more stuff and grow the economy and jobs.
Trump’s position that the credible threat of tariffs (and harsh application if other countries try to ‘call our bluff’ which is not a bluff) are key to getting a better deal than the very sour current status quo of continuous half a trillion dollar annual trade deficits, collapse of our industrial base and massive foreign ownership of our debt, paid for with the proceeds of those trade deficits.
You can think that is not a good idea, and a bad strategy and oppose it, but you’d have to present a better one. But one can’t simply pretend it is incomprehensibly dumb to shake up the Chamber of Commerce multinational corporatist approved continued gutting of America…unless you are in fact incomprehensibly dumb, or you believe the people dumb enough to read and value your opinion are incomprehensibly dumb. I wonder which one Sven is.
Also worth noting, the only time the Federal government paid off its debt, it did so with the proceeds of high tariffs, and there were no personal or corporate income taxes. At all.
Scott Adams, from Dilbert fame, was prescient about Trump from the start. He recently met Trump for the first time and tells of the experience on a webcast. 45 minutes long, but worth your time. It starts slow for a few minutes talking about the dust up with LeBron James, then gets very interesting. It ends with him answering live-streamed questions. Remember, it’s a webcast, so he looks a bit nerdy. Watch it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKvYLUi6Hz8