What’s That Sound?
Have you noticed that practically nobody in Washington talks about the national debt anymore?
Not so long ago there were committees of concern about the national debt, national debt commissions, people signing petitions, and coalitions in Congress to rein in the debt.
But now, at $22 trillion dollars of debt and climbing, there is none of that. If you listen carefully, all you can hear is crickets!
22 trillion is an amount more than the human mind can adequately comprehend.
22 trillion… let’s put this astronomical number into some perspective: To travel 22 trillion miles, you would have to go from the Earth to Pluto and back… 3,081 times!
The silence about this incomprehensible national debt reminds of the famous Sherlock Holmes tale of the dog that didn’t bark. The dog didn’t bark in the night because the criminal in the story was familiar to him. There was no point in alerting anyone.
Now, no one bothers to raise an alarm about the national debt because there is no reason to. Nothing can be done about it now. We have passed the point of no return.
Even with todays Fed-engineered low interest rates, the interest on the debt is climbing at a hair-raising pace. Interest payments on the federal debt rose at a double-digit rate in the first half of the current fiscal year.
Here’s the way the Congressional Budget Office reported on the results for the six months ending in March: “Outlays for net interest on the public debt increased by $22 billion (or 13 percent) because interest rates on short-term debt are substantially higher now than they were during the same period in 2018 and because the amount of federal debt is larger than it was a year ago.”
The Fed Can’t Stop Rising Interest Rates
No matter what the Fed does, market interest rates will go up. And they will go higher on US Treasury debt as the grim prospects of that debt being repaid become more widely known.
Rather than attacking the federal debt, politicians are offering more entitlements, new foreign wars, and Medicare for all. They are promising to wipe out student debt, pay reparations, and increase defense budgets. They are planning to spend trillions on new infrastructure programs and are talking about universal basic income and regime change interventions in places like Iran and Venezuela.
So what happens when the debt can’t be repaid? Running for president three years ago, candidate Donald Trump uttered the unspeakable truth: “You never have to default because you print the money. I hate to tell you. So there’s never a default.”
I hate to tell you!
Washington has grown accustomed to the idea that the Fed can print money to fund its vote-buying schemes. Yes, the Fed can bail them out… but only by destroying the dollar. And that’s just what they will do. In our lifetimes we have never before seen Congress this irresponsible.
Never.
The time is long past when you could hope that somebody in Washington will put things right and protect the wealth and prosperity of the American people.
Now you must protect your own wealth and prosperity.
I encourage you to take steps now to do so. Begin by speaking with the RME gold authorities. Simply call our office at 602-955-6500 and you will be connected to one of our knowledgeable gold and silver professionals.
