BUDGET: While President Biden's agenda has been billed as a $3.5 Trillion cost, he says the real cost is $0, since it will all be paid for and won't contribute to the national debt. pic.twitter.com/PWBqTSOHE3
— Forbes (@Forbes) September 24, 2021
News that I missed, courtesy of The Babylon Bee:
SOUTH BURLINGTON, VT—Local wife and mother Josefina Quedando made a bold claim Monday: that her $3.5 trillion shopping spree at Target would actually cost the family just $0.
Quedando had originally told her husband she would be spending $3.5 trillion at Target on prairie dresses, shoes, Magnolia decor, “a few things for the kids,” groceries, knick-knacks, throw pillows, and candles, among other “small” purchases. When this proposal didn’t poll well among her husband base, she quickly released a statement that the $3.5 trillion in spending would “actually cost $0 when you think about it.”
According to Quedando, when you look at how many coupons she used, the deals she got, and the fact that she put everything on her Target credit card, the total cost of her massive purchase was actually “a wash.”
“Honey, think about it this way,” she said as she got home with 50,000,000 truckloads of stuff from Target. “If we didn’t buy this stuff, we wouldn’t have saved all that money by scanning every item in the Target app. Then we would have saved $0. This purchase actually ends up being an even trade off.”
Go here to read the rest. Our gross national product is roughly twenty one trillion dollars. Since Covid began the national debt increased by 3.1 trillion last year and God knows how much this year. Our national debt is currently around twenty-nine trillion. Debt repudiation, here we come!
Phony numbers from a phony President. Now That adds up.
Of course, this will not end well and the green nude eel will be even worse.
Join the “[Expletive-Deleted} Joe Biden” Movement.
They already spent more on COVID hush money than WWII. Now, they want to spend another similarly huge amount.
In the 1960’s, LBJ et al ran huge deficits, which resulted in huge inflation – running the Vietnam War and the Great Society. That caused the US [we were still on the ‘gold window’] to deplete 55% of its gold reserves from 1951 to 1970 and could not maintain the $35 exchange price (Breton Woods and Tiffen Dilemma). In August Nixon closed the gold and imposed wage and N.B. imposed price controls window. Amity Sclaes, ” Nixon and Connally would now present a policy package containing most of or all their ideas, a package so sudden and revolutionary, like Nixon’s decision to go to China, that it outclassed either the New Frontier or the Great Society for sheer drama. Shultz and Connally got in the spirit. ‘I think it’s the biggest thing in economic policy since World War II,” Shultz concluded, accurately enough. Nixon had always known he could out-Kennedy Kennedy and out-Johnson Johnson, and now he was going to do it.'”
In the 1960’s, LBJ et al ran huge deficits, which resulted in huge inflation – running the Vietnam War and the Great Society.
He did not and they did not. The deficits run during the Kennedy-Johnson years were as a % of gross domestic product smaller than those of any eight year time span since. Johnson’s last budget was balanced, something that would not be seen again for another 30 years.
The problem was that Johnson and his brain trust got the idea that stoking an expanding the economy to reduce unemployment would be a capital idea, so the President extorted the co-operation of Wm. Martin of the Federal Reserve Board. Martin wasn’t happy about it, but complied. What you got when you tried to use fiscal and monetary levers to push production above capacity was inflation. Martin retires in 1970 and is replaced by Arthur Burns, a politically-connected economist who somehow got the idea in his head that monetary authorities could do nothing about inflation. Burns was in turn replaced in 1978 by Wm. Miller, a corporation executive with no experience in central banking or anything adjacent. After a year and change, Carter replaced him with Paul Volcker, an experienced central banker who had a plan. The problem was that the plan would induce a recession and Carter didn’t want that in an election year, so insisted he abandon it. It was only in January of 1981 that Volcker was given a green light to control the growth of monetary aggregates until prices were re-stabilized. Didn’t require wage and price controls, or ‘incomes policies’ or adjustments in fiscal policy. Recall that Wm. Martin had managed in 1951-52 to restabilize prices through monetary policy levers.
The Nixon administration could have put an end to the inflation in 1969-70 if they’d just had the balls to stick to it and quit trying to pick a spot on the Phillips Curve. Milton Friendman was arguing at that time that Phillips Curves were short term phenomena contingent on inflation expectations among consumers and producers, something the experience of 1969-70 demonstrated. You want to do something about unemployment rates without stoking inflation, you have to put an end to public policies which inhibit hiring and wait for them to take effect, something neither party was willing to do in 1970 (or, really, at any other time).
That caused the US [we were still on the ‘gold window’] to deplete 55% of its gold reserves from 1951 to 1970 and could not maintain the $35 exchange price (Breton Woods and Tiffen Dilemma).
We don’t need gold and the case for fixed exchange rates (if I’m not mistaken) applies to small open economies. We ain’t Barbados. Milton Friedman was of the view that fixed-exchange rates should be jettisoned.
Submarine veteran Aaron Amick at Sub Brief comments on the military portion of the Federal budget coming out of Congress at the YouTube link below. He has a marked streak of political ignorance about him. At one point he demonstrates confusion and lack of understanding about why Congress inserted funds for diversity and inclusion indoctrination in the budget. He was completely unaware of the whole LGBTQ, BLM agenda the Democrats have, how they consider white males political extremists; a commenter had to explain it to him. When it comes to Naval matters, Aaron is on target. When it comes to politics, he is without a clue, being quite apolitical and too willing to simply accept what the main stream news media puts out as news. That said, he usually avoids politics. Here is the link to his commentary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anKqW93w3ak&t=1s
BTW, even back in the late 70s on my submarine, it didn’t matter if you were white, black or yellow, Christian Jew or Buddhist, even straight or gay. We had one gay guy who never bothered any of us, and was a competent and good-natured sailor who did his job and kept his personal life personal. Remember: you’re on a sub 800+ feet under water; there’s no room for prejudice, racism, or homophobia unless you want to learn to breathe sea water.
Sorry guys, but I HATE Democrats. They ruin everything with their divisive victimhood agenda.
The point is They want to pile on $5 to $7 trillion more on top of the current National debt of $28.4 trillion up from $22.5 trillion 9/2019; and $19.6 trillion 9/2016; and $10.1 trillion 9/2008; and $5.7 trillion 9/2000 remember GWB. And the, destroy the economy with the green nude eel.
In the 17 months from start of the China virus hysterics (March 2020 to Sep 2021), the US deficit [outlays exceeded receipts] was an astounding $5.1 trillion, with $2.7 trillion so far in FY 2021 which ends 30 Sep.
Currently, the aggregate amount of US Federal Reserve notes/currency -unsecured debt instruments – in circulation is – Wait For It – $2.2 trillion dollars. And, it’s backed by nothing not even air. With that you have US household net worth at $140+ trillion; The aggregate value of US equities at $40+ trillion; US GDP $22 trillion GDP economy; FDIC insured bank deposits $18.5 trillion. With $2.2 trillion in extant currency, you could back it with gold. The total value of gold held is $11 trillion, of all crypto is $2 trillion.
Art,
The World replaced secured money (gold) with unsecured debt instruments. It replaced the gold standard (nature) with corrupt, fallible, incompetent politicians, economists = erudite ideologues = with dishonest statistics, central planning and command control freaks. And, look what it’s gotten us.
The gold standard is hated by politicians, central bankers and ideologues with PhD’s b/c it hindered their central planning boondoggles.
In case you have trouble sleeping tonight.
Here is what actually happened after Nixon cut loose the last vestige of monetary sanity from the global “Titanic.”
Nixon ended dollar convertibility @$35/ounce; imposed wage/price freeze; and import restrictions. Effective dollar devaluation caused higher commodities prices – 21% US $ devaluation to $42.22/ounce gold; THEN oil prices rose 4x, gas lines; inflation 12% by 1974 and gold @ $195/ounce. The genius Fed raised rates to unprecedented levels -13% mid-1974 – to fight inflation (from 1971 dollar devaluation and oil shock after the Yom Kippur War 10/1973). That sent GDP crashing down 3.2% (biggest post-Depression drop until the 5.1% drop 2007 – 2009). Unemployment went to 9% – highest since Depression. S&P 500 went down 51.5% from January 1973 to December 1974.
Long term starting in 1971, credit soared out of sight to the benefit of the banks, CEOs, the already wealthy, and the politically connected.
It was one source of global trading imbalances, soaring public and private debt loads, escalating median home prices, declining real wages, and the massive rise of the 1% at the expense of the bottom 90% – Nixon closing the gold window.
Of course, the econ PhDs’ respond with propaganda about ‘barbarous relic;’ “It wasn’t me!;” and “What Me Worry!”
zzzzz
More Numbers:
1973 – US devalues dollar, gold to $42.22. Currencies begin to free float.
1974 -Gold reaches $195/Oz.
1975 – US citizens may own gold.
1980 – Gold reaches $875/oz. falls to$591 by 12/31.
1980’s – Volcker fights inflation 21% prime rate, 18.44% 30 year fiexed-rate mortgage, 15.8% 10 year UST, . . . And, slowly reduced money supply.
FYI – FDR had done same same when he confiscated (after campaigning he would not) all the money (gold is money) in America in 1933 and replaced it with unsecured debt instruments, subject to manipulation. In 1934, FDR devalued the Federal Reserve Notes by 69%.
UCLA economists think, like Obama, that the New Deal wasn’t so much about economic recovery, but fundamental change and the Great Depression was elongated by seven years.
The World replaced secured money (gold) with unsecured debt instruments. It replaced the gold standard (nature) with corrupt, fallible, incompetent politicians, economists = erudite ideologues = with dishonest statistics, central planning and command control freaks. And, look what it’s gotten us.
Central banks in every corner of the world succeeded in re-stabilizing prices after 1982, some sooner, some later. In the 12 months before COVID hit, there were 40-odd countries of the 150+ tracked where the rate of inflation exceeded 4% per annum and a baker’s dozen wherein it exceeded 10%. Those of Argentina, Turkey, and Iran were among the larger economies with a problem with currency erosion.
You don’t need gold and the maintenance of an overvalued currency during the period running from 1929 to 1933 proved a disaster in the United States and in every country who followed this policy.
UCLA economists think, like Obama, that the New Deal wasn’t so much about economic recovery, but fundamental change and the Great Depression was elongated by seven years.
By 1941, real gross domestic product per capita was 29% higher than it had been in 1929 and real personal consumption per capita was 13% higher. That is to say, production and consumption levels had returned to the long-term trend line. The Depression was over. However, the labor market remained injured. If your UCLA economists fancy all of this could have been accomplished by 1934 (the country having experienced a 20% fall in real per capita consumption and a 30% fall in real per capita production during the period running from 1929 to 1933), I can sell bridges to them.
Art,
You read all my stuff!
I’m impressed.
I won’t stop, Although, no matter how hard I try, you resist my efforts to edify you, my son.