.
According to treasury figures released today, government spent $46.6 billion more in September than it took in, a month that normally records a surplus.
However, this is only the tip of the iceberg. Few Americans are actually aware what a serious financial situation America is currently in.
The Treasury Department doesn't like to advertise the fact, but America’s national debt is larger than the total economies of China, the United Kingdom, and Australia combined and is quickly approaching or exceeding the USA's 14 trillion GDP. (It appears less than that in charts, because the government has been cooking the books since the Clinton Administration. They are not counting Social Security and Medicare obligations as part of the debt.) If the pattern continues over the next decade, the government will borrow approximately $1.72 million every minute.
Our debt to China alone is approximately $776.4 billion, having grown more than $240 billion in the last year.
How did we get to this point and what are the long-term consequences if America continues down this same course, borrowing itself into oblivion? How did America get itself into this position?
A Brief History of Fiscal Foolishness
When George Bush took office in 2001, he inherited a national debt equivalent to 57.4% of America’s yearly GDP. But he also inherited a budget surplus of $128 billion - the second successive surplus after roughly 30 years of budget deficits.
(For those who don't know, a budget deficit occurs whenever a country spends more money during a year than it has taken in. A budget surplus occurs every time the country takes in more money than it has spent during a year. The national debt is the accumulation of all the unpaid deficits in a nation’s history. Servicing the interest on the debt becomes a central part of successive budgets, making it progressively harder to achieve a budget surplus.)
Instead of building on the opportunity afforded by the surplus and reducing the national debt, Bush quickly ran up unprecedented deficits, as the chart below left reveals.
Not only did he engage in foreign wars costing hundreds of billions, but he also initiated an array of new government goodies on a scale unseen since the days of Franklin Roosevelt. His Medicare Prescription Drug Act alone will cost more than $1 trillion by the end of the decade, possibly a lot more as the baby boomers begin accessing it.
Far too few people asked where the money for all of Bush’s new programs and his bank bailout was going to come from. The answer, of course, is that it could only come from running up huge budget deficits and digging the nation deeper into debt.
When Obama took office in early 2009, the economy was crippling under the weight of so much unpayable debt. Blaming his predecessors for the recession he inherited, Obama allegedly set out to correct their foolish choices. Among the irresponsibilities that Obama pledge not to repeat was the practice of making financial commitments that the country couldn’t afford. As Obama said in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress: “Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for -- from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy.”
Far too few people asked where the money for all of Bush’s new programs and his bank bailout was going to come from. The answer, of course, is that it could only come from running up huge budget deficits and digging the nation deeper into debt.
When Obama took office in early 2009, the economy was crippling under the weight of so much unpayable debt. Blaming his predecessors for the recession he inherited, Obama allegedly set out to correct their foolish choices. Among the irresponsibilities that Obama pledge not to repeat was the practice of making financial commitments that the country couldn’t afford. As Obama said in a speech to the Joint Session of Congress: “Now, part of the reason I faced a trillion-dollar deficit when I walked in the door of the White House is because too many initiatives over the last decade were not paid for -- from the Iraq war to tax breaks for the wealthy.”
How The Government Gets Money
Before considering the Obama solution to this problem, it may be useful to review just how the government gets money.
There are only three ways that a government can get funds to inject into the economy: tax, print or borrow. If government raises its funds through taxation, then it can only inject into the economy what it has first suctioned out, a point that was made with characteristic lucidity by Daniel Hannan in THIS short video clip. Although Western governments make liberal use of this option, the amount of revenue that is available through taxation is necessarily limited. For example, in order for America to meet its present commitments through taxes alone, the federal tax rate for each American household would have to increase by 42% by 2040 (a figure does not take into account the liabilities to business, and therefore to tax revenue, that always come as the corollary of burdensome taxation).
The other option is that government can print money ex nihilo. The problem is that governments which do that have never been able to resist the temptation to completely debase their currency, resulting in hyperinflation. All Western governments have handed over the authority to create money to private central banks (America’s version of this is called the Federal Reserve). But the banks do not create money through printing presses. Instead, they create new money electronically every time they issue a loan for more money than they actually have on deposit. The reason they can get away with this is because only a small percentage of commerce takes place with actual physical money. The commercial banks in America end up creating $98 for every $1 held on deposit, which means that most of the money in circulation is actually debt money. Since every loan increases the money supply (a supply that is represented in bank ledgers rather than hard cash), it also depreciates the relative value of the money held by everyone else. Thus, central banking is also inflationary. However, the requirement to pay interest curtails the borrowing to a certain degree. On the other hand, when governments print money or mint debased coinage, as in Weimar Germany and the last three centuries of the Roman Empire, they tend to completely debase the currency in a shorter period of time than happens under a central banking system.
What this means is that if the American government wants more money to spend then it can raise through taxation, the only option is to go to the banks and ask for a loan.
Spending As if There Is No Tomorrow
Obama’s method for correcting his predecessors’ mistakes has been to perpetuate their disastrous policies to an unprecedented extreme. In an attempt to stimulate the economy out of the recession (a recession caused, primarily, by so much unpayble debt), Obama borrowed more federal funds than any President in the nation’s history. Hardly had Obama settled into the White House when he signed two new bills, the $787B stimulus and the $410B omnibus, which together equal the $1.2T deficit he "inherited." Consequently, when the 2009 fiscal year finally ended this October, America had run up an all time record deficit of $1.58 trillion - 3.4 times the $459B deficit of 2008, and 10 times the $160B deficit of 2007.
.
The impulse behind Obama’s borrowing spree is an economic theory known as Keynesianism. John Maynard Keynes (1883 –1946) argued that a failing economy could be revived by governments injecting money into it. As the new money began circulating, Keynes theorized, it would reach people who would spend it, creating economic growth and more revenue for the state coffers.
Selling Ourselves Into Slavery
Keynesianism has an air of plausibility about it until we stop to ask where the money actually comes from that government so generously pumps into the economy. The answer, of course, is that it can only come from debt. However, given the inflationary implications of debt, even this indirectly comes out of the pockets of citizens in the form of currency devaluation.
The result is essentially that the American government has sold its people into slavery. Those who will be hit the hardest with this debt servitude are those future generations of Americans who will be crippled by their obligation to service the interest on such an extortionate debt. But it is not just the burden to pay the debt that will cripple successive generations. They will also face the much more terrifying prospect of holding a devalued currency, since devaluation is always the result of pumping so much debt-money into the economy over long periods of time.
The Hidden Tax
What many people don't realize is that by letting its currency depreciate, the American government is actually engaged in a form of hidden taxation. When every new injection of debt money arrives into circulation, those who first access it (in this case, the government and its favoured constituencies) are able to use the money before the inflationary consequences are realised. By the time the new money trickles down to ordinary people (and poor people are usually the last to access it unless they are on government subsidies), it has lost much of its value. If this be doubted, one need only compare the purchasing power of the dollar today with twenty or even ten years ago. This is why Keynes, in one of his rare moments of insight, referred to inflation as a form of hidden taxation. (Click HERE to see what Keynes and others have said about this hidden tax.)
Of course, inflation happens every time someone takes out a loan that they fail to pay back, but because this is usually in small amounts, the effect it has in debauching the nation’s currency is small and only realized over long periods of time. The real danger occurs when government borrows gargantuan sums that it has no way of paying back, which is exactly what America is doing at an accelerated rate.
Naturally, this cannot go on forever. A fool may be able to defer the consequences of irresponsible choices, but God has designed the world in such a way that eventually judgment day arrives. For America, that day will come when the government is finally unable to service the interest on so much debt. Once that point is reached, no one will want to lend to America, and lawmakers will suddenly find that they have to live within their means. However, because the currency will then be so devalued, having a balanced budget will be impossible without curtailing about 97% of government’s obligations. Consider that at the moment the government collects approximately only about $2 trillion each year in total tax revenue (revenue that can actually do something since the dollar still has purchasing power), but needs at least $34 trillion just to meet the unfunded liabilities of medicare.
How long will America be able to go on? The history of national currencies and central banking over the last two hundred years shows that the national currency collapses when the combined national public and private debt meets or exceeds the GDP of the nation. The one exception to this was when the USA's national debt was 110% of GDP a few years after the end of WWII (ironically, this resulted more from FDR's social programs than from the war itself). However, as a result of winning the war, the USA owned nearly all of the world's silver and gold, controlled a large part of its oil, and was able to establish the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world during post war negotiations. This gave America a little more time to play with.Then again, the USA should have hit the tipping point in the late 1970's, but two factors gave it a thirty year life extension. First, the baby boomers produced an economic boom lasting about twenty six years. Secondly, the use of the US Dollar as the international reserve currency has meant that America’s ponzi scheme has been exported to a larger population than just the USA. This has encouraged foreign investors and buyers of US Debt. However, both these factors are soon to change. The baby boomers are retiring (and cashing in on their social security as they do so) while confidence in the dollar as a reserve currency (and therefore in US investments) is quickly running out.
Winter is quickly approaching and America is in a worse state than the fool in Proverbs. The fool merely failed to prepare, but the USA has gone even further. America has used the good times as an opportunity to sell away its resources. This means that when winter does finally arrive, all the USA will be able to do is to keep begging. What will it do if it finds that there is no one who still wants to give?
A version of this article appeared in the October edition of the Christian Voice (http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/) magazine. It is published here with permission.
The other option is that government can print money ex nihilo. The problem is that governments which do that have never been able to resist the temptation to completely debase their currency, resulting in hyperinflation. All Western governments have handed over the authority to create money to private central banks (America’s version of this is called the Federal Reserve). But the banks do not create money through printing presses. Instead, they create new money electronically every time they issue a loan for more money than they actually have on deposit. The reason they can get away with this is because only a small percentage of commerce takes place with actual physical money. The commercial banks in America end up creating $98 for every $1 held on deposit, which means that most of the money in circulation is actually debt money. Since every loan increases the money supply (a supply that is represented in bank ledgers rather than hard cash), it also depreciates the relative value of the money held by everyone else. Thus, central banking is also inflationary. However, the requirement to pay interest curtails the borrowing to a certain degree. On the other hand, when governments print money or mint debased coinage, as in Weimar Germany and the last three centuries of the Roman Empire, they tend to completely debase the currency in a shorter period of time than happens under a central banking system.
What this means is that if the American government wants more money to spend then it can raise through taxation, the only option is to go to the banks and ask for a loan.
Spending As if There Is No Tomorrow
Obama’s method for correcting his predecessors’ mistakes has been to perpetuate their disastrous policies to an unprecedented extreme. In an attempt to stimulate the economy out of the recession (a recession caused, primarily, by so much unpayble debt), Obama borrowed more federal funds than any President in the nation’s history. Hardly had Obama settled into the White House when he signed two new bills, the $787B stimulus and the $410B omnibus, which together equal the $1.2T deficit he "inherited." Consequently, when the 2009 fiscal year finally ended this October, America had run up an all time record deficit of $1.58 trillion - 3.4 times the $459B deficit of 2008, and 10 times the $160B deficit of 2007.
.
The impulse behind Obama’s borrowing spree is an economic theory known as Keynesianism. John Maynard Keynes (1883 –1946) argued that a failing economy could be revived by governments injecting money into it. As the new money began circulating, Keynes theorized, it would reach people who would spend it, creating economic growth and more revenue for the state coffers.
Selling Ourselves Into Slavery
Keynesianism has an air of plausibility about it until we stop to ask where the money actually comes from that government so generously pumps into the economy. The answer, of course, is that it can only come from debt. However, given the inflationary implications of debt, even this indirectly comes out of the pockets of citizens in the form of currency devaluation.
The result is essentially that the American government has sold its people into slavery. Those who will be hit the hardest with this debt servitude are those future generations of Americans who will be crippled by their obligation to service the interest on such an extortionate debt. But it is not just the burden to pay the debt that will cripple successive generations. They will also face the much more terrifying prospect of holding a devalued currency, since devaluation is always the result of pumping so much debt-money into the economy over long periods of time.
The Hidden Tax
What many people don't realize is that by letting its currency depreciate, the American government is actually engaged in a form of hidden taxation. When every new injection of debt money arrives into circulation, those who first access it (in this case, the government and its favoured constituencies) are able to use the money before the inflationary consequences are realised. By the time the new money trickles down to ordinary people (and poor people are usually the last to access it unless they are on government subsidies), it has lost much of its value. If this be doubted, one need only compare the purchasing power of the dollar today with twenty or even ten years ago. This is why Keynes, in one of his rare moments of insight, referred to inflation as a form of hidden taxation. (Click HERE to see what Keynes and others have said about this hidden tax.)
Of course, inflation happens every time someone takes out a loan that they fail to pay back, but because this is usually in small amounts, the effect it has in debauching the nation’s currency is small and only realized over long periods of time. The real danger occurs when government borrows gargantuan sums that it has no way of paying back, which is exactly what America is doing at an accelerated rate.
Naturally, this cannot go on forever. A fool may be able to defer the consequences of irresponsible choices, but God has designed the world in such a way that eventually judgment day arrives. For America, that day will come when the government is finally unable to service the interest on so much debt. Once that point is reached, no one will want to lend to America, and lawmakers will suddenly find that they have to live within their means. However, because the currency will then be so devalued, having a balanced budget will be impossible without curtailing about 97% of government’s obligations. Consider that at the moment the government collects approximately only about $2 trillion each year in total tax revenue (revenue that can actually do something since the dollar still has purchasing power), but needs at least $34 trillion just to meet the unfunded liabilities of medicare.
How long will America be able to go on? The history of national currencies and central banking over the last two hundred years shows that the national currency collapses when the combined national public and private debt meets or exceeds the GDP of the nation. The one exception to this was when the USA's national debt was 110% of GDP a few years after the end of WWII (ironically, this resulted more from FDR's social programs than from the war itself). However, as a result of winning the war, the USA owned nearly all of the world's silver and gold, controlled a large part of its oil, and was able to establish the US Dollar as the reserve currency of the world during post war negotiations. This gave America a little more time to play with.Then again, the USA should have hit the tipping point in the late 1970's, but two factors gave it a thirty year life extension. First, the baby boomers produced an economic boom lasting about twenty six years. Secondly, the use of the US Dollar as the international reserve currency has meant that America’s ponzi scheme has been exported to a larger population than just the USA. This has encouraged foreign investors and buyers of US Debt. However, both these factors are soon to change. The baby boomers are retiring (and cashing in on their social security as they do so) while confidence in the dollar as a reserve currency (and therefore in US investments) is quickly running out.
Winter is quickly approaching and America is in a worse state than the fool in Proverbs. The fool merely failed to prepare, but the USA has gone even further. America has used the good times as an opportunity to sell away its resources. This means that when winter does finally arrive, all the USA will be able to do is to keep begging. What will it do if it finds that there is no one who still wants to give?
A version of this article appeared in the October edition of the Christian Voice (http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/) magazine. It is published here with permission.
Further Resources
The Hidden Tax
Keynesian Economics
Missing a rather important part of the picture
Food is not a private matter!
The well worn path from socialized health to totalitarianism
Forced to be free
Health Care as a Tool For Social Engineering
Ebenezer Scrooge and global warming
New Report on the EU's Diplomatic Service
Social engineering and the dark side of the American Left
Why Obama needs crisis
Obama's Religious Zeal
Keynesian Economics
Missing a rather important part of the picture
Food is not a private matter!
The well worn path from socialized health to totalitarianism
Forced to be free
Health Care as a Tool For Social Engineering
Ebenezer Scrooge and global warming
New Report on the EU's Diplomatic Service
Social engineering and the dark side of the American Left
Why Obama needs crisis
Obama's Religious Zeal
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Unfortunately, spending like there is no tomorrow leads to no tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteNo tomorrow like any today that has ever been in this country, including the "great" depression.
That could have been a great depression if we had learned something useful from the experience.
However, being human beings, we forgot any valuable lessons learned when we got comfortable with our ignorance,television, and selfish greed. All of us, not just our leaders.
We have to accept responsibility in order to build a new foundation, based on truth and honesty with self and others.
I had to be treated at the hospital yesterday here in Lima. It was sunday and so my amiga took me to the emergency room. I had to pay for medications, the consultation, and afterwards I bought two inhalers. What did I pay for everything? Less than ten dollars. Afterwards the doctor asked me to come back so he could see how I was doing and gave me advice about diet. He spent time with me and my friend asking about our lives and our church. There is no reason medication and medical treatment needs to be so expensive in the U.S. Peru, for all its economic woes brought about by communist governments and terrorism, has a substitive economy which means that even in hard times it retains some degree of self-sufficiency. You mentioned at the end of your article how America has used the good times to sell off most of its recourses. I believe this is called ¨free trade¨, a practice you seem to defend in other articles you have written. Peru is now engaging in a similar love affair with the free market and people are complaining to me that the best potatoes and mangoes are now shipped overseas. But if anything happened drastically, since they grow their own food---at least they could go to the corner market and buy the food. It is cheap because it is local. What local produce does America have? None. So when America finally does fall to the Obama regime (has it already fallen?) who will they turn to for food? The family farmers? What family farmers. Willy Nelson?
ReplyDeleteRobin, have you seen America: From Freedom To Faschism directed by Aaron Rusou? It is a documentary about the Federal Reserve. When I still lived in the U.S, I handed out hundreds of these videos which a friend burned for me for free. It may be similar to the film you just saw. A lot of people were turned away by the term fascism, but in the interview at the end of the CD Rusou says that he chose the term because the federal reserve was the head of the beast. Before he died, he gave an interview where he claimed Nelson Rockefeller approached him eight months before 9/11 and told him what was going to happen. He said Rockefeller was laughing saying people were going to think there were terrorists and a war but it was all just going to be the media. The film goes into the history of how the federal reserve was created and exposes how there is actually no law that says American citizens are required to pay income tax. He searched for a law and couldn't find it. He actually has a debate in the film with an IRS official who admits there is no law.
ReplyDeleteHey Robin great primer on central bank's grip on America, via their fractional reserve fiat based banking system.
ReplyDeleteThe only quip I have, is that concerning loans in this country post 1913, whether small or large, corporate or consumer based; all are speculative in nature and based on nothing and hurt this country whether they are paid or not. A complex subject in itself, G. Edward Griffin and others treat this subject in full detail better than I could ever attempt.
Otherwise great job, good to see you tackling this problem. It's my prayer that other Christians will do the same as well
When the debt clock says that my family owes 64,000 what does this mean? What happens if I don't pay?
ReplyDeleteRyan, you will pay and you do pay. You pay indirectly every day without realizing it through your dollars being progressively devalued and the ripple effects that the increase in the dollar's puchasing power has in the larger economy in which you must ultimately do business.
ReplyDelete"To steal from the shoemaker the fruit of his labor, one can take his product or the money he has received for it. Or else one can so tamper with the monetary system that the money will not serve to purchase economic goods equivalent to the product the shoemaker provides. Outright stealing is widely recognized for what it is, but the economic crime that accomplishes the same thing through debasing the money is not. Yet the motive and the effect are the same." (Herbert Schlossberg, Idols of Destruction, p. 90.)
Robin, America's fiscal misbehavior actually started with Ronald Reagan who implemented policy on the premise of supply side economics. Supply side economics said that if you reduce taxes you could, in fact, raise tax revenues throung increased economic activity that lower taxes would generate. Alas, this was a bogus theory that led to massive deficits. In deed, even responsible conservative economists such as Greg Mankiw railed against this nonsense. It was left up to Democrat Bill Clinton to finally do something about the fiscal irresponsibility of the conservatives.
ReplyDeleteThen George Bush came along and totally, completely and utterly ruined the public finances and the economy at large, presiding over the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He completely undid the good progress made under Clinton. So Obama inherited a mess. And whatever one thinks of his policies, he was always going to have huge task fixing the economic mess, foreign policy mess and social policy mess that Bush left behind. It isn't just a matter of slashing spending because this would have a deleterious and dehumanizing impact on the poorest of the poor. And any Christian would not want that. So conservatives have got to be a little bit more sophisticated and compassionate when thinking about policy formulation. And no, the simplifications and fantasies of Ron Paul are not real answers to the problems we face.