Treasury chief says 'debt ceiling will be raised'

Thanks for that book suggestion———none of this debt business makes sense to me.

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It was designed right from the beginning not to be easily understood by the average person. They couldn't have gotten the scam through Congress otherwise.

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

“It was designed right from the beginning not to be easily understood by the average person. “

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The older I get,the more “used” I feel.

I despise politicians now.

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“This is the result of an unbacked, fiat, debt-based currency, courtesy of the Federal Reserve.”

Nice try, but it was Nixon and Congress that got rid of the last vestiges of the gold standard. The Federal Reserve has no say in whether or not we operate with a gold standard.
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It is the culmination of BOTH illegal acts; Congress having no authority to abscond its authority over monetary policy to any other entity (w/o an A.), nor the Pres/Congress removing said last constraints (not as if they bother to even uphold the Constitution anyway).

The 1st allowed Socialism to root in the U.S. The last will be noted as being the killing stroke.

Yet the elected will continue to enjoy the pillaging of the Treasury while looking perplexed as the house of cards *finally* falls, “How’d THAT happen? *wink wink*”

In trying to formulate a response to your question; I don’t think it is *ever* wrong to save.

We save to either (1) buy things, (2) invest in what we think might yield more dollars than we put in, (3) to purchase education to make us better at what we do or to make what we do easier; or (4) certain services we need or want (5) for entertainment.

(1) I am engaged now and again with people who handle distressed properties and in some cases need to dispose of houses full of goods. A couple of these properties were what I (and anyone else) would call “hoarder houses”; and I can tell you that some of these places I/we have charged between $5000 and $15000 to throw out absolute crap that very clearly represented $300,000 or more to buy. No exaggeration. It was defined as crap because no value could be extracted from it that did not fall short of what we would have billed to market and sell it. (on ebay, for example) Also, a few years ago I handled my folks’ estate and had to dispose of their accumulated “stuff”. Of course, there are people who go around and look for stuff they can sell on ebay and actually enjoy that and I hope I am clear, there can be nothing wrong with that. I cannot do it 37,189 things each of which would have to be researched and marketed and photographed and boxed and shipped to derive the value. They just go into the garbage and believe me, I see the stuff go by and can’t stop to do anything about it.

The lesson I have learned from these exercises is that large piles of material goods (and I am not trying to go Zen on you) ultimately form a prison that the owner pays to put themselves into. I’ll just leave it at that.

(2) as for investment, there are times when this appears to be possible, but for clear examples, real estate is really really high and the market is at all times highs or a mere 1-2% off and the upside doesn’t look all that attractive. Fair enough. (that observation does not preclude one from looking to bet on the decline of the market, but I realize that not everyone has the requisite skills and they are not trivial) That too, does not preclude one from finding niches. I have become very interested of late of investing in real estate notes. I have not done any.

(3) I don’t think it is ever wrong to buy education at value that fulfills the “make you better/make life easier” specification. Nor do I think that (4) buying services that make your life easier are bad uses for money. <<—money will never NOT have these uses, therefore it is not bad to save to acquire them.

(5) entertainment is pissing money away but if you enjoy it, that’s worth something, particularly if (unlike me) you can “weld” the enjoyment you get from the entertainment as a reinforcement for doing the thing that you do that earns the money you use to pay for the entertainment. In other words, reward yourself for a job well done and thus commence a feedback loop where you self-reward. I am terrible at this.

So my view is don’t not save, just improve the intelligence with which you spend what you can save.

Nice try, but it was Nixon and Congress that got rid of the last vestiges of the gold standard. The Federal Reserve has no say in whether or not we operate with a gold standard.

You missed the point. No gold standard allows the central planners at the Federal Reserve (and all central banks) to monetize debt at will, because there is absolutely nothing to stop it from doing so. The Fed's balance sheet is $4.5 Trillion of Treasury and Government Agency debt, and it has suppressed interest rates on US government debt to 2% or less. There is NO WAY the Fed can/will ever sell that debt, and in the next economic downturn, they will buy even more. So if you are Paul Ryan or Mitch McConnell. It is obvious - raising the debt ceiling has ZERO consequences. Every social-engineering and nanny-state scheme will get funded and we thus have a uniparty who all agree to keep the spending taps wide open

Its not just the Federal Reserve either, but every single central bank in the world is printing money like mad. Japan's Central Bank owns at least 10% of every nearly every major Nikkei stock and holds public and private debt at 70% of Japan's GDP. The Bank of England now holds 25% of British Gov't bonds, while the ECB owns nearly 33% of >2 year German Bunds. The world is awash in debt from governments trying to keep themselves afloat.

Don't let it get you down. They've owned the system since before we were born - but we are finally, thanks in large part to the internet, waking up to their lies and their scams. Their magic-money-machine (read the book) is at the base of their power and it requires an exponentially growing pile of debt to keep running. They've known since they set the scam up that it would come to an end and they made their plans based on that fact. We were supposed to be completely emasculated by now (no guns) and completely at their mercy for our daily bread - but things didn't quite work out for them. Bill Clinton's term in office was their high point in their grab for our guns and he screwed up by not getting the registrations in place (zipper problems kept him busy with other things) and now the internet is allowing us to educate ourselves and spread our knowledge among other like minded people outside of their well controlled media silos. They didn't get done what they needed to do and now the clock is ticking down on their money-machine. It's going to be a race to the wire - freedom or serfdom hang in the balance for us. Read the book and pass it around - you'll never look at a greenback the same ever again.

“The only question is when the Day of Reckoning comes; for it is surely coming.”

A the sound of the last trump. IMHO..

How about we cut the budget and get the debt paid off. That’s how it is done in this taxpayer’s house but what do I know.

Big mistake. It is already too high.

Call your members and tell them to stop this.

Cut the spending!!!!!!!!!!

“The Fed’s balance sheet is $4.5 Trillion of Treasury and Government Agency debt”

It’s plenty big, but not quite that large. Treasury + Agency debt holdings total 2,472,000 millions of dollars as of 8-23-17 according to the FRED data at the St Louis Fed.

If they ever decide to let interest rates rise they will start selling that horde into the banking system to soak up cash.

But the bond market has more power to set long rates than the Fed, as the Bond Vigilantes showed time after time in the late 70s. At least in normal times without QE at work. And that stopped a year or two back.

We need to implement a plan when every day Congress overspends they get a pay cut.