The US Is Spiraling Down the Doom-Loop Drain Hole Rapidly Now
We just passed a level of debt-service costs scarcely before even imagined.
First, we hit a level of debt years ago that seemed astonishing at the time when the national debt topped one-trillion dollars for the first time in over 200 years of being a nation. Recently, we hit the insane level where just the deficit that adds to the debt each year hit one-trillion dollars a year. We, then, soared almost immediately right past that to where we had a trillion-dollar deficit more than twice a year. And now, today, we finally hit the outer limits where just the annual interest on the debt is a trillion dollars.
If anyone thinks we are not caught in a debt doom loop, consider this: we can only pay that interest by taking out more debt just for debt service. So, we’re forced to take out a trillion in new debt each year just to cover the interest on the old debt, and that amount is growing quickly. We’re swirling around the center of the drain so rapidly now that we’re seeing a trillion dollars in additional debt fly by with each revolution and making the revolutions multiple times per year.
To seal our doom, both presidential candidates are hell-bent on making sure we ramp up our debt spending. Trump promises to make even more massive tax cuts than those he did when in office last time. Harris plans to continue the “Build-Back Better Programs” of her present term as VP and fund a lot of new giveaways to help people by houses and do other nice things (by using other people’s money—people not even born yet).
It’s a grand insanity flush down the toilet of doom.
We’re in the final month of the present fiscal year, and we currently sit at $1.9-trillion for this year’s deficit. With the rest of the month to go, there is no doubt we’ll stack up that final tenth of a trillion and then some. To give you an idea of the speed at which annual deficits are now stacking up, that’s 24% more than last year, which was already horrendous!
If you think these endless deficits piling into the national debt don’t create a drag on the economy, just think of what you could do with that trillion dollars in annual interest payments if we didn’t have to service the debt mountain. That’s still real money, though it may not be for long as we spend our way into self-annihilation.
The interest burden on outstanding US debt remains a major drag on the budget. Interest costs in the first 11 months of the fiscal year totaled $1.05 trillion, up 30% from 2023. Interest costs have never exceeded $1 trillion a year before now….
The national debt total, which cleared thirty-trillion for the first time during Biden’s term is now at $35.3-trillion, and neither party’s leadership shows even the slightest interest in doing anything about it. So, clearly the closest thing we have to a plan is to spend to bankruptcy and clear the debt that way.
No doubt the Biden government will find some ingenious way to doctor the year-end numbers so they don’t sound as ominous with some kind of accounting adjustment to help Kamala out. We’ll call that kind of gimmickry budget Kamouflage.
You can clearly see from an economic standpoint alone why I have no stomach for either lunatic candidate as both live in a pretend world of profligacy where you can pile up debt forever and leave it as your legacy for your kids and grandkids to worry about it. We have to be close to the end of forever as fast as we’re spinning in place in the center of the drain right now. But, hey, at least Trump has lots of experience with bankruptcy as one of the strokes of his genius brand of leadership. I’ve heard him refer to it as “another form of finance.”
So, that is clearly where we’re headed. Where this drain exhausts itself, I have no idea. I don’t think anyone has a clue because the world has never seen a pile of effluent this big dump from the a global economic trade currency that finances half the world. But I’m pretty sure it is one stinking, ugly, stormy cesspool.
(Headlines for the quotes and facts above are highlighted in boldface in the remainder of this edition:)
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