Can America Do It All?

Guest Post by Pat Buchanan

Can America Do It All?

With the national debt already equal to the GDP, and growing faster now, a question arises: Where does this end?

In fiscal year 2020, which ended on Sept. 30, the U.S. government set some impressive new records.

The deficit came in at $3.1 trillion, twice the previous record of $1.4 trillion in 2009, which was set during the Great Recession, and three times the 2019 deficit of about $1 trillion.

Federal spending hit $6.5 trillion, one-third of U.S. gross domestic product, a share unrivaled except for the later years of World War II when federal spending exceeded 40% of GDP.

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Big Spending Trump

Guest Post by John Stossel

Big Spending Trump

Last week, I tallied Joe Biden’s spending plans. This week, President Trump’s.

Which presidential candidate will bankrupt America first?

When Donald Trump ran for president, he promised “big league” spending cuts.

Once in office, he again said he’d cut the budget, adding, “There’s a lot of fat in there.”

There sure is.

Since I was born, spending has grown faster than inflation most every year.

Then, President Obama, as Trump liked to out, “put more debt on than all other presidents of the United States combined!”

It’s true.

But then Trump increased the debt just as much.

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Sen. Rand Paul blasts GOP colleagues, says they should ‘apologize’ to Obama for past spending complaints

Via Fox News

Congressional Republicans should apologize to former President Barack Obama “for complaining that he was spending and borrowing too much,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told “Your World” Wednesday.

“It’s funny that people say, ‘Well, Washington Republicans and Democrats never compromise and can’t get along.’ That’s actually the opposite of the truth,” Paul told host Neil Cavuto. “Republicans and Democrats compromise every day of the year to spend money we don’t have.

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FOURTH TURNING ECONOMICS (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I laid out the unsustainable economic conditions which will drive the next phase of this Fourth Turnings and detailed the economic factors which drove the previous three American Fourth Turnings.

Image result for fourth turning crisis

Strauss and Howe, when writing The Fourth Turning in 1997, did not know the exact circumstances and events which would propel the next Turning. But their study of economic and demographic trends along with the attitudes of generations and historical precedents in prior Fourth Turnings, led them to conclude the driving factors of this Crisis would be debt, global disorder and civic decay.

As I watch what is currently happening in this country and around the world, it is evident to me they nailed it. The volcanic eruption in 2008 unleashed a torrent of molten lava, which continues to flow along channels of distress, but is currently threatening to burst free of these channels and wreak worldwide financial and physical devastation. A multitude of possibilities described by Strauss and Howe below are already happening or will happen in the next few years.

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TRUMP SETS ANOTHER RECORD

I thought tax cuts for corporations paid for themselves. I thought tariffs reduced trade deficits. All hail Trump on another record. Think about this for a moment. We surpassed Obama deficits during the financial crisis and we are supposedly experiencing the best economy evah – according to Trump. I believe the facts, not the narrative. Oh, you say deficits don’t matter. We shall see.

Via Bloomberg

Most Corrupt in History: US Budget Deficit Under Trump ...

U.S. Posts Largest-Ever Monthly Budget Deficit in February

  • Shortfall rises 40% to $544b in first 5 months of fiscal year
  • Corporate, income taxes decline as tariff revenue climbs

The U.S. posted its biggest monthly budget deficit on record last month, amid a 20 percent drop in corporate tax revenue and a boost in spending so far this fiscal year.

The budget gap widened to $234 billion in February, compared with a fiscal gap of $215.2 billion a year earlier. That gap surpassed the previous monthly record of $231.7 billion set seven years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

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10 YEARS LATER – NO LESSONS LEARNED

“A variety of investors provided capital to financial companies, with which they made irresponsible loans and took excessive risks. These activities resulted in real losses, which have largely wiped out the shareholder equity of the companies. But behind that shareholder equity is bondholder money, and so much of it that neither depositors of the institution nor the public ever need to take a penny of losses. Citigroup, for example, has $2 trillion in assets, but also has $600 billion owed to its own bondholders. From an ethical perspective, the lenders who took the risk to finance the activities of these companies are the ones that should directly bear the cost of the losses.”John Hussman – May 2009

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the Wall Street/Fed/Treasury created financial disaster of 2008/2009. What should have happened was an orderly liquidation of the criminal Wall Street banks who committed the greatest control fraud in world history and the disposition of their good assets to non-criminal banks who did not recklessly leverage their assets by 30 to 1, while fraudulently issuing worthless loans to deadbeats and criminals. But we know that did not happen.

You, the taxpayer, bailed the criminal bankers out and have been screwed for the last decade with negative real interest rates and stagnant real wages, while the Wall Street scum have raked in risk free billions in profits provided by their captured puppets at the Federal Reserve. The criminal CEOs and their executive teams of henchmen have rewarded themselves with billions in bonuses while risk averse grandmas “earn” .10% on their money market accounts while acquiring a taste for Fancy Feast savory salmon cat food.

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