Our children are going to hate us for this

The utterly unbelievable scale of U.S. debt right now

The debt accumulated under Donald Trump would be enough to cover the inflation-adjusted cost of U.S. involvement in the Second World War
Every second, the U.S. national debt grows by about $46,000. In the time it takes you to look at this photo, the debt will have swelled much more than the value of these stacks of $100 bills.AP Photo/LM Otero

This week, the United States national debt ticked above US$22 trillion for the first time, an amount equivalent to $67,000 per U.S. citizen.

The U.S. federal government owes more money than any other institution in the history of human civilization. And it’s just getting worse. According to the Congressional Budget Office, in only 10 years the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio will be higher than any point since the Second World War.

Better be careful, the "downstaters" may approve of this.....

STATE REP CALLS FOR CHICAGO TO BE 51ST STATE 

SPRINGFIELD - Thursday, State Rep Brad Halbrook , with the support of his downstate colleagues Chris Miller and Darren Baileyintroduced HR 101, suggesting that Illinois split into two states between the City of Chicago and the rest of the state - making Chicago the 51st state.

The resolution's wording is as follows:

WHEREAS, The State of Illinois is often regarded as having two distinct regions, the City of Chicago and downstate Illinois; and

WHEREAS, Even communities north of Chicago are considered "downstate" because they have more in common with rural southern and central Illinois counties than they do with the City of Chicago; and

WHEREAS, The divide between the City of Chicago and downstate Illinois is frequently manifested in electoral results such as the 2010 gubernatorial election in which the Democrat candidate won the election despite only

MMT Part 2

A year ago she was tending bar

The Next Great Monetary Experiment, Part II

Yesterday we cracked open MMT — Modern Monetary Theory.

Today we poke it, prod it, shake it, heckle it, harass it, roughhouse it, waterboard it… and see if it holds together.

Did you miss yesterday’s reckoning?

Before pressing on we suggest you first catch up here.

But to proceed…

As explained yesterday, MMT is drawing a crowd nowadays.

Its drummers claim it is a powerful tool to invigorate the American economy, sitting needlessly idle.

They further claim it can fund ambitious social programs — all without raids upon the taxpayer.

And, if interest rates are shackled down, without blasting the deficit.

Coming Soon? MMT - Economic Insanity

MMT Proponent

The Next Great Monetary Experiment

“Dow just broke 25,000. Tremendous news!”

Thus the president delivered a blast for the stock market yesterday… for the first time since October.

Yesterday’s 435-point surge was substantially due to Jerome Powell’s pledge to be “patient.”

Further, that he is prepared to take his hands off the balance sheet:

The committee is revising its earlier guidance regarding the conditions under which it could adjust the details of its balance sheet normalization program.

Finally, someone is talking about it

is competent, has a proven track record

Howard Schultz: The $21 trillion national debt is the ‘greatest threat domestically to the country’

For those concerned about the Federal shutdown

US DEBT CLOCK

There is another aspect of the shutdown that is not being discussed. In fact, it's not even being mentioned.

The day will come when many of these same employees will be furloughed permanently.

 Economist say that happens when the debt hits $28 trillion (in about 5 years). 

Fed Chairman Powell says he is ‘very worried’ about growing amount of U.S. debt

PUBLISHED THU, JAN 10 2019 • 1:07 PM EST | UPDATED 4 HOURS AGO

Thomas Franck@TOMWFRANCK

KEY POINTS

• “I’m very worried about it,” Fed Chairman Powell said Thursday. “It’s a long-run issue that we definitely need to face, and ultimately, will have no choice but to face.”
• Total U.S. debt is about $21.9 trillion, of which $16 trillion is owed by the public. The sustained annual U.S. deficit is now believed to be more than $1 trillion.
• In part because of continued rate increases under Powell, the interest cost on that debt could start to become a bigger and bigger burden.

WATCH NOW

VIDEO02:58

Fed’s Powell says he’s very worried about amount of US debt

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell is concerned about the ballooning amount of

SHUTDOWN.....OMG what are we going to do?

Look at how much $$$ we're saving. This is the way it's going to be if they don't get the debt under control. 

The country would face an economic hellscape if the government shutdown lasts "months or even years," as the president has suggested it might, experts tell NBC News.

The doomsday scenario might be unlikely — the longest the federal government has ever shut down is 21 days, a record that will fall if the current closure lasts until Saturday — but it is chilling.

"We'll be in no man's land," Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics, told NBC News.

If the worst were to happen, experts say the devastating impact would be

The Makings of a Global Debt Crisis Are in Place

In 2017, the financial world was filled with talk of synchronized sustainable growth in major economies for the first time since before the 2008 global financial crisis. This was being proclaimed by global financial elites including Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF.

Now that vision is in ashes. Synchronized global growth has turned into a synchronized global slowdown. Growth has already turned negative in two of the world’s largest economies, Japan and Germany, and is slowing rapidly in the world’s biggest economies, China and the U.S.

China may report something like 6.8% GDP growth, but when all the waste in its economy is stripped out the actual growth is probably closer to 4.5%. That’s still growth, but not nearly enough to sustain China’s massive debt overload. Its debt

The Plunge Protection Team? WTF

THESE PHONE CALLS MAY HAVE THE DESIRED EFFECT OF GUTTING THE MARKET. SINCE WHEN ARE THOSE TYPES OF CALLS LEAKED TO THE MEDIA?

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump’s Treasury secretary called top U.S. bankers on Sunday amid an ongoing rout on Wall Street and made plans to convene a group of officials known as the “Plunge Protection Team.”

U.S. stocks have fallen sharply in recent weeks on concerns over slowing economic growth, with the S&P 500 index .SPX on pace for its biggest percentage decline in December since the Great Depression.

“Today I convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Twitter shortly before financial markets were due to open in Asia.

U.S. equity index futures dropped late on Sunday as electronic trading resumed to kick off a holiday-shortened week. In early trading, the benchmark S&P 500’s e-mini futures contract ESv1 was off by about a quarter of a percent.

Is it a deliberate attempt to sink the market?

Federal Reserve hikes interest rates in defiance of Trump - and its chair tells president 'nothing will deter us' from more raises as share prices plunge after move

• The Federal Reserve announced its decision on rates after extraordinary public pressure from the president 
• Hike of 0.25 per cent 
• Benchmark rate at 2.5 per cent 
• Said more rate increases were appropriate 
• News wiped away morning 350 point gain in the Dow 
• Powell said 'political considerations play no role whatsoever in our discussions' 
• Said 'nothing will deter us from doing what we think is the right thing to do' 
• Trump on Tuesday argued against a hike and urged the Fed to 'feel the market'
• He has also attacked Fed Chair Jerome Powell in interviews and on Twitter
• Decision comes amid a strong job market but some signs of economic cooling
• A volatile market has wiped out 2018's stock market gains
• The move impacts borrowing across the board 

This cannot end well

missing-fiscal-sanity-in-washington

Another shut down and another kick the can?

Stock Market

Ron Paul is warning this year’s corrections could be a precursor to an epic market collapse that may come sooner than investors think.

According to the former Republican presidential candidate, Wall Street is becoming more vulnerable to near-depression conditions within the next 12 months.

“Once this volatility shows that we’re not going to resume the bull market, then people are going to rush for the exits,” Paul said Thursday on CNBC’s “Futures Now. ” The relentlessly bearish former congressman added that “It could be worse than 1929.”

During that year, the stock market began hemorrhaging, falling almost 90 percent and sending the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

Paul, a well-known Libertarian, has been warning Wall Street a massive market plunge is inevitable for years. He’s currently projecting a 50 percent decline from current levels as his base case, citing the ongoing U.S.-China trade war as a growing risk factor.

“I’m not optimistic that all of the sudden, you’re going to eliminate the tariff problem. I think that’s here to stay,” he said. “Tariffs are taxes.”

The scenario is exacerbating Paul’s chief reason behind his bearish call: 2008 financial crisis easy money policies. He contended the Federal Reserve’s quantitative easing has caused the “biggest bubble in the history of mankind. ”

“It’s so important to understand the original cause of the problem, and that is the Federal Reserve running up debt and letting politicians spend money,” he added.

Paul argued that Washington lawmakers do not have an ability to effectively fix the debt problem, and he’s been highly critical of the 2017 Trump tax cuts for creating a dire debt situation.

The White House is estimating this year’s budget deficit will total $1.09 trillion. The Obama administration saw deficits just as large while trying to solve the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent recession.

However, there may be a silver lining in Paul’s forecast.

Unlike the Great Depression, Paul said the next historic downturn doesn’t have to last a decade — as long as Fed policy and lawmakers don’t make the same financial mistakes.

“If you allow the liquidation, it doesn’t last long,” Paul said.

Ponder this

The rapidly exploding U.S. national debt is about to cross another critical threshold.  

According to the U.S. Treasury, the debt of the federal government is currently sitting at $21,854,296,172,540.94, and at our current pace we will likely hit the $22 trillion mark next month.  This is a horrifying national crisis, and yet nothing is being done about it.  When Barack Obama entered the White House in January 2008, the U.S. was $10.6 trillion in debt, and so that means that we have added 11.2 trillion dollars of new debt to that total in less than 11 years.  Needless to say, it doesn’t take a math genius to figure out that we have been adding an average of more than a trillion dollars a year to the national debt for more than a decade.  But instead of getting our insatiable appetite for debt under control, Congress is actually accelerating our spending.  At this point, there is no possible scenario in which this story ends well.

Meanwhile, the global financial elite are really starting to talk up the possibility of a new financial crisis.

For example, the deputy head of the IMF just said that he sees “storm clouds building”…

The storm clouds of the next global financial crisis are gathering despite the world financial

Stocks drop big time

dow-plunges-by-nearly-800-points

It's almost like the government is trying to collapse the stock market....

the thinking is that middle America will take some heavy stock losses and blame Trump.

fed-warns-that-particularly-large-plunge-in-asset-prices-is-possible-if-risks-materialize

Unreal Stickup

NY taxpayers to pay $48,000 per Amazon HQ job

UPDATED: NOV 13 2018 12:42PM EST

New York state is kicking in more than $1.5 billion in taxpayer-funded incentives for getting half of Amazon's second headquarters located in a section of Queens.

The Seattle-based company made its long-awaited announcement Tuesday, saying Long Island City and Alexandria, Virginia, will each get 25,000 jobs. The online retailer also said it will open an operations hub in Nashville, creating 5,000 jobs.

Amazon will also receive as-yet unspecified incentives from New York City.

New York state's incentives are nearly triple those of Virginia's, while Tennessee's are $102 million.

According to Amazon, the cost per job for New York taxpayers is $48,000, compared to $22,000 for Virginia and $13,000 for Tennessee.

In a statement released by Amazon, Cuomo called the agreement "one of the largest, most competitive economic development investments in U.S. history."

New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson issued a statement saying:  "Amazon is one of the richest companies in the world...I also don’t understand why a company as rich as Amazon would need nearly $2 billion in public money for its expansion plans at a time when New York desperately needs money for affordable housing, transportation, infrastructure and education." 

FROM AP: 

NEW YORK CITY - Long Island City

Incentives offered to Amazon:

— Performance-based direct incentives of $1.525 billion, based on 25,000 full-time, high-paying jobs created. This includes a refundable tax credit of up to $1.2 billion calculated as a percentage of the salaries Amazon expects to pay employees over the next 10 years, which equates to $48,000 per job for 25,000 jobs with an average wage of over $150,000.

— Cash grant of $325 million based on the square footage of buildings occupied in the next 10 years.

— Amazon will also apply for as-of-right incentives including New York City's Industrial & Commercial Abatement Program and New York City's Relocation and Employment Assistance Program. There was no dollar figure immediately attached to this benefit.

City Benefits:

— More than 25,000 full-time jobs.

— $2.5 billion investment from Amazon.

— Facilities totaling 4 million square feet, with the potential to double in size.

— Projected incremental tax revenue of more than $10 billion over 20 years.

THESE TYPES OF DEALS SHOULD BE OUTLAWED. MOST PUBLIC OFFICIALS ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO STAND UP TO A COMPANY LIKE AMAZON.

Dan Hynes

key advisor

19th warders are back in a high clout position with ready access to Governor Pritzker, via the naming of Dan Hynes to the Pritzker transition team. Hynes, the son of legendary 19th ward healer Tom Hynes, leads a brain trust composed of some of the keenest minds to ever advise a governor elect. Things are going to be good. 

The United States Is Going Broke

Those who focus on the U.S. national debt (and I’m one of them) keep wondering how long this debt levitation act can go on.

The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is at the highest level in history (106%), with the exception of the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. At least in 1945, the U.S. had won the war and our economy dominated world output and production. Today, we have the debt without the global dominance.

The U.S. has always been willing to increase debt to fight and win a war, but the debt was promptly scaled down and contained once the war was over. Today, there is no war comparable to the great wars of American history, and yet the debt keeps growing.

In a new Weekly Standard article, the celebrated James Grant of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer reviews not only the current debt and deficit situation but provides an overview of the U.S. national debt since George Washington and Alexander

$36,000 per taxpayer!

Chicago’s financial condition over the year saw minimal improvements, but not the kind needed to rescue it from a failing grade issued by a financial watchdog group.

Truth in Accounting handed Chicago an “F” on its fiscal grading scale for the second year in a row. The study pegs the city’s overall debt at $32.5 billion, or $36,000 per taxpayer.

In 2017, Truth in Accounting pegged Chicago’s debt per taxpayer at $45,000. The report attributes the city’s minor improvement to a recent change in state law imposing stricter funding requirements for local pension funds.

Informed Chicagoans won’t be surprised that city finances are overwhelmed by pension debt. Chicago’s unfunded pension liability shrank by $7.8 billion as a result of the new state law, leaving