US Debt Spiral Is Reaching Terminal Phase - Economic Reset Is The Only Way Out
By Michael Snyder/Economic Collapse Blog October 05, 2023
Share this article:
If you are going to go out, you might as well do it with a bang. At the beginning of June, our national debt was sitting at $31,467,639,287,894.39. Today, it has risen to $33,442,148,619,617.43. That means that we have added almost two trillion dollars to the national debt in just three months.
It is the largest single debt in the entire history of our planet, and it will never be paid off. Our debt spiral has reached a terminal phase, and all we can do now is prolong the agony.
If we keep taking on more debt at an exponential rate, we may be able to extend our seemingly endless party for a little while longer. As for the bright future that our children and grandchildren were supposed to have, we destroyed that a long time ago, and so it doesn't really matter what we do now.
What our politicians are doing to us is truly a crime against humanity.
And I am not just talking about the United States. All over the world, politicians have been on the greatest debt binge in the history of the human race, and for quite a few years it seemed like they were getting away with it.
But now interest rates are rising and there is great turmoil in the bond markets. The following comes from CNN...
A slump in government bonds around the world has pushed up the cost of some nations' debt to levels not seen in more than a decade. That's bad news for governments in the red but also for the wallets of millions of mortgage borrowers, stock investors and businesses.
The sell-off has been fueled by expectations among investors that the world's major central banks will keep interest rates "higher for longer" to bring inflation down to their targets.
It works like this: Governments looking to raise cash for public services and investments issue bonds. A bond provides a way to borrow money from investors for a set length of time, with the obligation to make regular interest payments.
In recent weeks, bond yields have reached very alarming levels.
If this continues, governments all over the world will soon be facing enormous problems...
When official interest rates rise, so do investors' expectations for returns on bonds, known as yields. This creates an incentive for investors to sell the bonds they currently hold and buy newly issued ones that offer higher interest payments. Selling bonds reduces prices. So, in short, when yields rise, bond prices fall.
And yields have most definitely been rising: The yield on 30-year US government bonds, also known as Treasuries, hit 5% on Tuesday for the first time since 2007. In the United Kingdom, the yield on 30-year bonds also reached 5% this week, the highest level in more than two decades.
Yields on German long-dated bonds are back to levels last seen on the eve of the eurozone debt crisis in 2011. Yields on Italy's 10-year bonds hit 5% on Wednesday, the highest level since 2012, when that crisis was in full swing.
There is no way out of this mess now.
If we would have acted responsibly all along, we would have gotten a much different outcome.
But at this point our fate is pretty much sealed.
Of course our politicians never intended to change course. In fact, they continue to spend money like drunken sailors.
As Zero Hedge has aptly noted, the U.S. government recently added 275 billion dollars to the national debt in a single day...
The US added - checks notes - $275 billion in debt in, uh, ONE DAY
Total US debt is now $33.442 trillion, hit $33 trillion just 2 weeks ago, and on pace to rise by $1 trillion in 1 month.
What makes all of this even more frustrating is that they aren't even spending the money efficiently.
And in many instances, it is being wasted on extremely frivolous things...
Federal officials have been criticized after splashing $3.3 billion on swanky new office furniture during the pandemic, when almost all staff worked from home.
The egregious spending habits of the US government included almost $250,000 on solar-powered picnic tables for the CDC, and $120,000 on plush Ethan Allen leather chairs.
We are borrowing and spending money at an exponential pace, and we all know how this is going to end.
It is going to end with the U.S. dollar becoming worth little more than toilet paper.
This is a point that author Robert Kiyosaki made very eloquently during a recent interview...
Robert Kiyosaki, renowned author of the phenomenal personal finance book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad," shared a piece of his mind on how to decentralize from the fiat currency in these scary times of a broken banking system. According to him, the dollar has been losing its purchasing power and not long from now, it would just be worth less than "toilet paper."
During his appearance on the recent episode "Decentralize.TV" hosted by Mike Adams and Todd Pitner, Kiyosaki pointed out how the lack of financial education in the United States blinds the people and even President Joe Biden's administration in tackling the current economic downturn. "Just recently they raised the debt ceiling again... and because our schools have no financial education, no idea of credit rating, our debt increased by $1.8 trillion. The United States via Fitch Rating services downgraded the U.S. debt from AAA to AA-plus. We are on a collision course for disaster."
It is true.
We really are on a "collision course" with disaster, but most Americans don't realize what is happening.
Most Americans seem to believe that there will never be any serious consequences for all the borrowing and spending that we have been doing.
And that is because most Americans don't understand basic economics.
When your debt rises much faster than your income does for an extended period of time, it is always going to result in pain.
Every single time.
If you have ever found yourself drowning in debt, you know exactly what I am talking about.
Well, now our entire country is drowning in debt, and our politicians are adding hundreds of billions more to that debt every single month.
This is not going to end well, and that should be obvious to everyone.
For the moment, our politicians are doing their best to keep the debt spiral humming, but the clock is ticking and time is quickly running out...
Originally published at The Economic Collapse Blog - reposted with permission.
