Tag Archives: sorcery

“Unsustainable”

21 Monday Sep 2020

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It has just come to my attention, and I’ve never even heard about any of this before, that there is something called the “federal debt.” I know, I was as surprised as anyone. And, they, being the Congressional “Budget” Office, say that it is nearing unsustainable levels.

Federal debt is nearing “unsustainable” levels, but low interest rates have created a window of opportunity for policy-makers to rein it in, the Congressional Budget Office said Monday, delivering a mixed outlook for the government’s long-term outlook.

Federal spending, currently 21% of gross domestic product, will rise to 31% by 2050, with most of that increase coming from interest payments on the rising debt, said Phillip J. Swagel, CBO’s director. Federal revenue, meanwhile, stood at just 16% of GDP last year, and will only reach 19% by 2050.

The gap between those spending and revenue numbers illustrates the problem.

Those numbers, and all the others cited in the article, are a load of BS. We’re not nearing unsustainability – we’ve been there. We are nearing the point of terminal collapse, which at this late hour, is all but unavoidable. The funny thing is the forecast way out to 2050; the odds of the US existing then in its current form are about 27,000,000,000,000 to 1, AGAINST. The only good news here is that my prediction of a $40T debt by 2024 is rolling right along towards fruition.

This is part and parcel with the financial sorcery that has eaten the core out of our economy and society. Remember Fantasia? The Congress-Fed alliance is like Apprentice Mickey turning on the debt instead of the water well. Now, there is no way, short of the intervention by a benevolent sorcerer (who does not exist), to shut it off; we’re drowning in debt. We even have Antifa-BLM marching around mindlessly like those broom and bucket automatons.

We’re going to get a Jubilee one way or another, it’s just a matter of how violent the circumstances of the arrival will be. We’ll find out, probably around the time the CBO (now) says the trust funds (that don’t exist) will dry up.

Could we get some dancing hippos?

MSM Notices the Evil of Usury

13 Monday Apr 2020

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In India.

Many families will instead resort to taking out loans at high interest rates in order to survive, while others will fall deeper into debt and end up trapped in bonded labour – India’s most prevalent form of modern slavery – according to activists.

India identified at least 135,000 bonded workers in its 2011 census, while the Australian charity Walk Free Foundation put the number at eight million in its 2018 Global Slavery Index.

Dear latecomers: this is a problem, a sin everywhere and at any interest rates. Thanks for siding with the good people in India, but you could have looked around and US or European town for the same or worse. Jubilee!

We Are Rich!

09 Thursday Apr 2020

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I have some very good news for the pandemically-challenged! We Americans are just swimming in cash. So says one Jon Hilsenrath, writing in the WSJ today amount our collective and growing “mountains of debt.”

The Federal Reserve, the nation’s central bank, will play the critical role of navigating the nation through the rising tides of debt. It sways the cost of debt service, whether inflation emerges and whether banks and other financial institutions can bear the burden of lending that the nation demands.

So far the Fed is getting high marks from President Trump and many economists and investors for moving quickly to make credit widely available, though it faces challenges and uncertainties deciding how far to extend itself and when and how to pull back. On Thursday, it announced more programs to support $2.3 trillion in lending.

I for one, am not tired of the winning! This is known as borrowing your way to prosperity. And, buddy, we’re there! The nifty chart Mr. Hilsenrath embedded in his article shows the grand fact that the nominal debt (not even including the really shady stuff) is now around 250% of the precious GDP. Praise be to someone! You’ll recall that we owe this to ourselves, so we are very wealthy from the accounts receivable point of view. In addition to whatever else they might own, each and every one of our 330,000,000 people in the nation-shaped kind of place can count as an asset nearly $200,000 from that mountain of golden debt.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow—
‘Shadow,’ said he,
‘Where can it be—
This land of Eldorado?’

Right here in the good old US of Empire, Eddie! The news gets even better! The Fed has announced – maybe more than once – that they’re flooding in another $2.3 Trillion in “gold” so as to “help” us. Something about Alexander Hamilton – and he’s a cool hip-hopper from Broadway or something. This adds a new Everest to the Himalayas of debt they’re created (for us!) in the past few months.

Now, don’t worry if you’re not Goldman Sachs. The money will trickle down to you little, unimportant plebs sooner or later. And, pay no attention to the negative Nancy’s talking about the worse depression ever. Just keep your eyes and your hearts set on your big piece of the mountainous pie. Tell ’em about it down at the breadline. Remember to stand six feet apart.

*Note: This column does not contain echoes when maybe it should. Sorry, I blame the (((virus))).

The Real Emergency

12 Thursday Mar 2020

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It’s not the virus. It’s the economy, the same one we were assured last night was in great shape. Economies in great shape do not require $1,500,000,000,000 in overnight banking giveaways in order to survive.

The Fed announced a bold new initiative in an effort to calm market tumult amid the coronavirus meltdown. In all, the new moves pump in up to $1.5 trillion into the financial system in an effort to combat potential freezes brought on by the coronavirus. This was the second day in a row and the third time this week the Fed has stepped in.

Heretofore, it’s been paltry daily sums, like $165 Billion per day. $1.5 Trillion is…

  • About what the government collects in income taxes in five or six months;
  • About what the federal budget was during Bill Clinton’s tenure;
  • The total amount of federal debt late in Reagan’s first term;
  • The GDP of the entire US economy as recently as 1974;
  • Enough money to pay off ALL students loans (right now, *poof*, gone);
  • Enough to buy 100 new Ford Class aircraft carriers; and,
  • If 1,500,000,000,000 6.14″ dollar bills were laid end-to-end, fashioned into a giant fiat ribbon, the ribbon would be almost long enough to stretch from the Earth to Mars, or from the Earth to Venus and back.

The last one was a ridiculous way to measure money, but these are ridiculous times. There’s no way to be sure, but let’s assume this grafting is split between today and tomorrow – $750 Bn per day. If they keep that up, then they are generating $270,000,000,000,000 per year in fake money, or $.27 Quadrillion. All with the push of a button on a computer. Or with the incantations over a crystal ball. This is financial sorcery and it brings to mind Zimbabwe or the Weimar Republic. And, they’re talking about doing even more “to help.”

Remember to wash your hands.

Confirmation Friday!

06 Friday Mar 2020

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Yesterday, I quipped: “Like a deadly virus, but to infect everything and everyone. The sorcerors couldn’t stand being away:” I’m not the only one drawing the correlation; Zerohedge noticed too.

The coronavirus is now exposing a far more deadly disease: Namely, the poisonous brew of easy money, cheap debt, sweeping financialization and unbridled speculation that has been injected into the American economy by the Fed and Washington politicians.

…

So both a renewed financial and economic crisis and an abrupt change of course lie dead ahead. The 30-year era of False Prosperity is over.

Accordingly, the Turbulent Twenties have begun. This will be a decade when the chickens come home to roost. It will be a time when the cans of delay and denial may no longer be kicked down the road to tomorrow.

To the contrary, the 2020s will mark an era when today’s economic and political fantasies are crushed by America’s accumulated due bills.

Bubbles will be burst. Speculators will get carried out on their shields. Easy money wealth will evaporate. Fiscal trauma will ensue. The national joy ride will end.

The decade of reckoning that lies ahead is rooted first and foremost in the fecklessly incurred mega-debts of the private and public sectors alike. Together they have soared to the staggering sum of $75 trillion.

That’s 5X more than the $14 trillion outstanding three decades ago.

Even Yahoo! Finance has open eyes: “Liquidity Concerns Build as Key Market Stress Indicator Surges”

Given the massive electronic paper printing of late, is this a crisis of liquidity drying up? Or is it a drought? We may soon find out.

Return of REPO BUCKS!!!

05 Thursday Mar 2020

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Like a deadly virus, but to infect everything and everyone. The sorcerors couldn’t stand being away:

Big banks’ demand for central bank cash remained very strong on Wednesday, leading the Federal Reserve Bank to add a fresh $100 billion to the financial system.

The Fed added the money via what’s called an overnight repurchase agreement operation, or repo. Eligible banks, called primary dealers, sought $111.48 billion from the central bank, exceeding the $100 billion cap the Fed places on overnight repos.

When a $100 BILLION!!! (OVERNIGHT!) falls short.

Sorcerors Conjur Up Cure

28 Friday Feb 2020

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I knew it! Here comes the fake money carpet-bombing to solve the ills of the Coronavirus plague.

Former Federal Reserve Governor Kevin Warsh said Friday he expects the Fed and other central banks around the world to act soon in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Warsh, occasionally rumored to be a candidate for Fed chairman after Jerome Powell’s term expires, spoke Friday morning to CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” He recommended the Fed act as quickly as Sunday to assuage financial markets that have been in an aggressive swoon all week as the virus has spread.

Too Ill to Fail:

Guggenheim Partners global CIO Scott Minerd tells Axios the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak could be “worse than the financial crisis.”

Why it matters: Minerd called out the “cognitive dissonance” in markets as stock prices hit new all-time highs in mid-February, saying in an open letter that he had never “seen anything as crazy as what’s going on right now.”

The intrigue: As a member of the New York Fed’s investor advisory committee, Minerd says he’s been contacted by officials and is expecting a statement regarding “some sort of monetary coordination.” This likely means the world’s central banks are planning to provide interest rate cuts or additional stimulus.

I assume that this means it’s already a done deal. My estimate is for at least $10 Trillion in new funny money – for the banksters. The people, infected, sick, dying, or otherwise, will receive their usual allotment: $0.00 or 0.00%.

Trillion-Dollar Deficits are Here to Stay

30 Thursday Jan 2020

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Praise be to Washington. David Horowitz on the trend.

When Obama took office in 2009 and racked up trillion-dollar deficits, it shocked the nation and spawned the Tea Party movement to push reductions in spending. Thanks to passage of the Budget Control Act under a GOP Congress, deficits declined to roughly $400-$600 billion during Obama’s second term in office.

Fast-forward to the new decade, and despite high revenue and record low unemployment, annual deficits will forever remain above $1 trillion, barring major structural reforms to government, according to the latest budget and economic outlook from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

According to the 2020 budget outlook released on Tuesday, the deficit for this year is projected to reach $1.015 trillion. There will be no turning back from there, as deficits are slated to grow every year for the remainder of the 10-year budget window, topping $12.4 trillion of cumulative new deficits by the end of the decade.

Perhaps the most shocking element of this report is the fact that unemployment is so low, yet deficits are as bad as they were during the worst times of the Great Recession. “Not since World War II has the country seen deficits during times of low unemployment that are as large as those that we project — nor, in the past century, has it experienced large deficits for as long as we project,” said CBO Director Phillip L. Swagel in a press conference on Tuesday.

It’s no coincidence that since the debt has exploded over the past generation, we’ve never achieved solid economic growth, despite record low unemployment. Previously, during years in the 1960s, mid-1980s, and late 1990s, periods of low unemployment coincided with years of 4-5% GDP growth. Yet despite the lowest unemployment rate in half a century, the economy is growing right around 2%.

…

The time for growing our way out of the debt bomb seems to have long passed, as the debt itself is acting as a wet blanket on economic growth and efficient investments, even during a period of job creation.

Then, it’s time to cut the debt bomb loose, before it really explodes and takes the economy with it. But, people who bragged about only having half-trillion-dollar deficits and now own the whole T figures, aren’t going to do that. The price of sorcery is measured in more than just dollars.

Is This the Annual Repo Number???

27 Friday Dec 2019

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I’ve been morbidly interested in the Fed’s latest act of national homicide for whatever reason. It’s been more than difficult to keep track of exactly how much fake money they’ve pumped out. This could be it:

Global stock markets have been on a torrid run in 2019, adding more than $17 trillion in total value, according to Deutsche Bank calculations.

The value of global equities began the year just under $70 trillion but has now surpassed $85 trillion, according to a chart from Deutsche Bank’s Torsten Slok.

The banner year for equities has been helped by easier monetary policy and political developments around the globe.

Central banks around the world have taken a more dovish approach, boosting markets. The Federal Reserve has cut its benchmark interest rate three times this year, and the European Central Bank cut its already negative rates even further.

$17 Trillion in dove shit! Ridiculous, I know. The real number is probably much higher.