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NORMANDY, FRANCE – And “The Donald” said: “Open the floodgates!”
And the floodgates opened.
Less than 48 hours after Congress approved his debt ceiling suspension, more than $300 billion had flooded in.
That is the amount by which the U.S. national debt increased on Friday, September 8. By $317 billion, to be exact.
And “The Donald” said:
“It’s good.”
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Tide of Debt
And it is good, but only if you are a zombie or a crony or a Deep State grifter.
The rest of us better get out our high waders and pool floats. This flood is going to drench us all.
“Deficits don’t matter,” said Dick Cheney.
Since the Reagan era, Republicans as well as Democrats have been ready to borrow money. But never, ever, did they borrow so much so fast as they did on Friday.
The feds needed cash… and they needed it fast.
So the floodgates opened. And now they are wide open… with no plausible way to close them.
The president and Congress are ready to borrow as though there were no tomorrow.
In comes a tide of debt, splashing over the sandbags put up by the old conservatives, sloshing through our banks and financial institutions, and coming to rest in the fetid waters of The Swamp.
Deficits DO Matter
If there were no tomorrow, Mr. Cheney would be right.
Why not eat tomorrow’s “seed corn” today?
There would be no reason not to reach for another dessert… or park your car in a handicapped space and tell your boss exactly what you think of him.
The trouble is there is a tomorrow. And tomorrow is when a drinking binge turns into a hangover… a bad marriage turns into a divorce… and your boss fires you.
Tomorrow is when deficits DO matter.
Yesterday, our subject was tomorrow’s political world… as “The Donald” creates his new Trumpismo movement.
Today, we look at tomorrow’s money world…
We don’t know exactly what will happen… or when. But we know the world still turns. Every boom not supported by real savings and real increases in output is phony. Tomorrow is when you find out.
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Great Betrayal
Today’s prosperity, such as it is, was built on fake money, fake savings, and fake signals from the Fed.
The feds have pumped $37 trillion in “excess credit” – above and beyond the traditional relationship between debt and GDP – into the system over the last 30 years.
And now, the economy – especially the parasitic half of it run by the Deep State – depends on more and more fake money and fake credit.
That’s the one thing Republicans, Democrats, and Trumpistas agree on – nothing will be allowed to get in the way of the fake-money flow.
With the sluices open, the debt will rise. How much?
No one knows.
Credit expert Richard Duncan, who runs the Macro Watch advisory service, believes it could increase another $19 trillion before the U.S. is as deeply in debt as Japan.
Maybe.
All we know for sure is that, with nothing to stop it, you can expect it to keep going up – until the whole economy drowns in it.
That is the real meaning of Trumpismo and the Great Debt Ceiling Betrayal.
The wash of credit will continue. More spending. More debt. More mischief. More claptrap. More swindles by more scoundrels. No turning back.
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Final Act
In short, this is what we’ve seen coming for the last 15 years…
Empires do not back up. The institutions that were meant to restrain them – a constitution, a bill of rights, voters, a debt ceiling – are abolished, ignored, or reshaped so the farce can continue to its final act.
Now, Congress blithers impotently. Politicians plot and connive. Deep State apparatchiks gather more power. Corporate insiders jig the figures and rig the game.
And more and more win-lose deals mean fewer and fewer win-win deals.
At some point, though, the gods stop laughing… and tomorrow comes.
Markets crash. And all the feds’ money… and all the feds’ men… can’t put them back together again. The insiders can control many things… but not everything.
Japan’s stock market took a dive 27 years ago. Investors are still down nearly 80% – more than a quarter of a century later – despite a flood tide of credit that increased government debt from 60% of GDP in 1990 to 250% today.
More to come… including what it will mean for America when the feds try to control the money system…
Regards,
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Bill
Market Insight: Movie Theaters Take a Beating
BY CHRIS LOWE, EDITOR AT LARGE, Bonner & partners
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Now is not a great time to be in the movie theater business.
As Bill mentioned last week, this past Labor Day weekend was the worst in terms of box office sales in nearly 20 years.
Meanwhile, the “Netflix effect” is stealing eyeballs from big movie theater companies such as AMC Entertainment Holdings and IMAX.
Today’s chart tracks the performance of shares in AMC, IMAX, and Netflix since September 2014.
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As you can see, over that time, AMC is down 42%… IMAX is down 29%… and Netflix is up 172%.
– Chris Lowe
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The GOP has had control of the White House, Congress, and the Senate since January. But it still has no major legislative achievement to show for it. Here’s why…
Cannabis Should Be 100% Legal
Over the weekend, Bill’s old friend Doug Casey laid out the case against Washington’s failed War on Drugs. As he revealed, few people consider how arbitrary, and historically recent, the current prohibition is.
Mailbag
According to Bill, President Trump has gone “Full Deep State” after his deal with Democrats over the debt ceiling. And it’s gotten readers thinking…
Conservatives’ last defense against a spendthrift Washington is the debt ceiling. Bill reckons much of the blame for the current debt situation goes to President Reagan. And he’s not alone…
What happened with Reagan is pretty obvious. He trusted Milton Friedman. BAD MISTAKE.
That guy, just like Volcker and Greenspan, wanted to climb the social ladder as high up as possible… call it a pusillanimous disregard for self-respect in favor of a tawdry obsession with mainstream adulation… Nobel Prize and Kennedy Center Honors… and invitations to Bilderberg or Davos… or even Jackson Hole.
Reagan surrendered… and dug himself one. Sophisticated, sagacious. NOT. Bumbling, buffoonish. The headstones are falling, keep up with the holes!
– Rex P.
Meanwhile, our Weekend Edition on the government’s bungled War on Drugs from Bill’s old friend Doug Casey continues to earn kudos from readers:
Just finished Doug Casey’s fine article regarding the “War on Drugs.” He is spot on in his assessment. I suspect that, perhaps, prohibition may have been initiated as an excuse to establish a federal police force.
Didn’t Elliot Ness and his “G-Men” – the FBI – vault into prominence as a result of the bogus “War on Demon Rum”? I really don’t think Babe Ruth, or other rich and famous folks, for that matter, experienced the slightest problem finding a speakeasy where they could quench their thirsts.
– Ed G.
Fantastic article by Doug Casey. I wrote something similar a decade ago and it was rejected by many newspaper editors and academic journal publishers. Thanks for keeping up the fight against the government-pharma-industrial complex!
– James P.