According to the International Monetary Fund, global debt has grown to a staggering grand total of
152 trillion dollars. Other estimates put that figure closer to
200 trillion dollars,
but for the purposes of this article let’s use the more conservative
number. If you take 152 trillion dollars and divide it by the seven
billion people living on the planet, you get $21,714, which would be the
share of that debt for every man, woman and child in the world if it
was divided up equally.
So if you have a family of four, your family’s share of the global debt load would be $86,856.
Very
few families could write a check for that amount today, and we also
must remember that we live in some of the wealthiest areas on the
globe. Considering the fact that
more than 3 billion people
around the world live on two dollars a day or less, the truth is that
about half the planet would not be capable of contributing toward the
repayment of our 152 trillion dollar debt at all. So they should
probably be excluded from these calculations entirely, and that would
mean that your family’s share of the debt would ultimately be far, far
higher.
Of
course global debt repayment will never actually be apportioned by
family. The reason why I am sharing this example is to show you that it
is literally impossible for all of this debt to ever be repaid.
We
are living during the greatest debt bubble in the history of the world,
and our financial engineers have got to keep figuring out ways to keep
it growing much faster than global GDP because if it ever stops growing
it will burst and destroy the entire global financial system.
Bill Gross, one of the most highly respected financial minds on the entire planet,
recently observed that
“our highly levered financial system is like a truckload of nitro glycerin on a bumpy road”.
And
he is precisely correct. Everything might seem fine for a while, but
one day we are going to hit the wrong bump at the wrong time and the
whole thing is going to go KA-BOOM.
The
financial crisis of 2008 represented an opportunity to learn from our
mistakes, but instead we just papered over our errors and cranked up the
global debt creation machine to levels never seen before. Here is more
from Bill Gross…
My lesson continued but the crux of it was that in 2017, the
global economy has created more credit relative to GDP than that at the
beginning of 2008’s disaster. In the U.S., credit of $65 trillion is
roughly 350% of annual GDP and the ratio is rising. In China, the ratio
has more than doubled in the past decade to nearly 300%. Since 2007,
China has added $24 trillion worth of debt to its collective balance
sheet. Over the same period, the U.S. and Europe only added $12 trillion
each. Capitalism, with its adopted fractional reserve banking
system, depends on credit expansion and the printing of additional
reserves by central banks, which in turn are re-lent by private banks to
create pizza stores, cell phones and a myriad of other products and
business enterprises. But the credit creation has limits and the cost of
credit (interest rates) must be carefully monitored so that borrowers
(think subprime) can pay back the monthly servicing costs. If rates are
too high (and credit as a % of GDP too high as well), then potential
Lehman black swans can occur. On the other hand, if rates are too low
(and credit as a % of GDP declines), then the system breaks down, as
savers, pension funds and insurance companies become unable to earn a
rate of return high enough to match and service their liabilities.
There
is always a price to be paid for going into debt. It mystifies me that
so many Americans seem to not understand this very basic principle.
On
an individual level, you could live like a Trump (at least for a while)
by getting a whole bunch of credit cards and maxing all of them out.
But eventually a day of reckoning would come.
The
same thing happens on a national level. In recent years we have seen
examples in Greece, Cyprus, Zimbabwe, Venezuela and various other
European nations.
Here
in the United States, more than 9 trillion dollars was added to the
national debt during the Obama years. If we had not taken more than 9
trillion dollars of consumption and brought it into the present, we
would most assuredly be in the midst of an epic economic depression
right now.
Instead
of taking our pain in the short-term, we have sold future generations
of Americans as debt slaves, and if they get the chance someday they
will look back and curse us for what we have done to them.
Many
believe that Donald Trump can make short-term economic conditions even
better than Obama did, but how in the world is he going to do that?
Is he going to borrow another 9 trillion dollars?
A
big test is coming up. A while back, Barack Obama and the Republican
Congress colluded to suspend the debt ceiling until March 15th, 2017,
and this week we are going to hit that deadline.
The
U.S. Treasury will be able to implement “emergency measures” for a
while, but if the debt ceiling is not raised the U.S. government will
not be able to borrow more money and will run out of cash very quickly.
The following comes from
David Stockman…
The Treasury will likely be out of cash shortly after Memorial Day. That is, the White House will be in the mother of all debt ceiling battles before the Donald and his team even see it coming.
With just $66 billion on
hand it is now going to run out of cash before even the bloody battle
over Obamacare Lite now underway in the House has been completed. That
means that there will not be even a glimmer of hope for the vaunted
Trump tax cut stimulus and economic rebound on the horizon.
Trump
is going to find it quite challenging to find the votes to raise the
debt ceiling. After everything that has happened, very few Democrats
are willing to help Trump with anything, and many Republicans are
absolutely against raising the debt ceiling without major spending cut
concessions.
So we shall see what happens.
If
the debt ceiling is not raised, it will almost certainly mean that a
major political crisis and a severe economic downturn are imminent.
But
if the debt ceiling is raised, it will mean that Donald Trump and the
Republicans in Congress are willingly complicit in the destruction of
this country’s long-term economic future.
When you go into debt there are consequences.
And when the greatest debt bubble in human history finally bursts, the consequences will be exceedingly severe.
The
best that our leaders can do for now is to keep the bubble alive for as
long as possible, because what comes after the bubble is gone will be
absolutely unthinkable.
5 comments:
If all owe each other the same and pay each other, the only thing that happens id debt canceled and all remain with the same. Just cancel it.
WHAT ABOUT THE PEOPLE THAT ROBBED THE MONEY FROM THEIR GOVERNMENTS. SHOULD FREEZE THERE ACCOUNTS FIRST
Don't worry, be happy. Willie Wonka, I mean Leo Wanta, the RV, and NESARA will save us all. Just believe.
... this is not OUR debt,... but THEIR debt,... it is BOGUS debt anyway, and could never be repaid. They choose to 'play' with 'artificial' money,... well 'create' trillion dollar notes, and pay it off already.
Well, odious debt is debt taken on that was not for our benefit therefore, because these less than reputable men and women in a fiduciary trust relationship to us decided to unjustly enrich themselves and try to pawn their debt off on the American people doesn't mean that we have to do anything. Relax, sit back and watch the show. It's going to be a really good one with a lot of squirming around. They will eventually let it disappear because fiat currency without backing is a fiction and fiction isn't real. You can not pay a debt with a debt instrument. No allowable real remedy means use under duress only and when under duress you cannot be held responsible.
Post a Comment