Posted on 03/26/2020 6:29:11 AM PDT by j.argese
Okay, I’ve been trying to do some research as to when “The Dafficit” (Hat tip to Daffy Jim Sasser) became a thing. About the only people nuttier than gold bugs and audit the fed crack pots. Country will never be broke, it can do something you or I CAN’T do.
So when did this political-financial flim-flam get started and who did so?
If that were the case, why doesn’t someone just produce the audit and be done with it?
Where are the records of these audits?
You have no idea of how close we are to a depression and how that will affect millions upon millions of Middle Class and below Americans...not going into submissive lock-down is understandable, not using the newly coined “Social Distancing” is plain stupid...as is the ignorant assertion we cannot be broken.
Now the “Debt” is a global hot potato! China is insolvent, Russia is the same, The once oil rich countries, one or many will eventually get stuck with it. I highly doubt it will be the US if PJDT is running the nation, I’m bettin China, and the ChiComs know it.
Our “betters” put this all into motion about the time I was born.
PDJT recognises this stuff, If you look back at old interviews of him in the 80’s and 90’s he talks about it.
We have been running 1 trillion dollar annual budget deficits, with neither party, the media making any objections.
Is that what you’d call crossing the Rubicon?
We passed the mark after 2008.... any pretense of fiscal responsibility was totally tossed out the window after that, the national debt doubled and we are spending so much money now that we don’t have, that we have an inevitable destiny with national bankruptcy.
Realize too, that we don’t necessarily need to become insolvent, to be insolvent, only the mere honest reflection that it will happen. Because at that point, the demand for sovereign debt would diminish as buyers would know that interest and principal will not be repayed.
As soon as that realization happens, rates will go up. And when rates go up, as treasuries mature and are replaced by new ones, they’ll have interest rates that demand far greater tax income to support, until you snuff out the Goose laying the golden eggs (the national economy).
Bottom line, it’s way too late to address this now. The only answer is “every man/woman/child for themselves”. The end isn’t near, it’s here...
Re: Currently about 25% of nations tax revenue goes to pay just the interest on our national debt.
I pulled up the Treasury Monthly Statement for the first five months of FY 2020.
https://fiscal.treasury.gov/files/reports-statements/mts/mts0220.pdf
Total Receipts - $1.36 trillion
Net Interest - $162 billion
That’s about 12%.
It would be close to 25% if you exclude Social Security and Medicare taxes - but, I’m not sure why you would want to do that.
Anyway, your 25% sounded off to me, so I checked to see.
Also, the five month deficit is so bad - $625 billion - I can’t bear to even think about it.
With the Great COVID-19 Depression on our doorstep, we are probably on track for a $3 trillion deficit in calendar 2020.
Around 2025, we will hit peak expenditure for Social Security and Medicare for close to ten years.
Total insanity!
Here you go:
Federal Reserve System Audited Annual Financial Statements
Want to know what securities they've bought? Look here:
System Open Market Account Holdings of Domestic Securities
There's a lot more information available about their operations.
Is there something in particular you want to see from an "audit" that isn't already out there?
My study of the depression indicates that the decades leading up to it were similar to ours. Boom and bust.
Folks tired of that and finally elected an administration of fiscal prudence. Right man, wrong time, and when the economy failed it had a very long way to fall. And as they figured out that something needed to be done, they’d waited too long and no amount of stimulus would solve the problem. It would take a World War and a total of 30 yrs to work it out.
Yes, I think in my calculation, it’s not just the taxes, it’s entitlement programs too.
“You know, Paul, Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” - Dick Cheney to Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill
Existing bonds are non-callable. They can’t be retired.
Hmmm
Apparently there are some quite material things not included in the Fed’s internal audits.
http://www.campaignforliberty.org/audit-fed/
They're material from a policy point of view but not financially or operationally. We know where every penny comes from and where it goes.
These aren't the kinds of things audits examine, and we don't demand to see the internal deliberations of the SCOTUS or transcripts of all the meetings that take place in Trump's, McConnell's or Pelosi's offices.
This is purely to eliminate the independence of the Fed and put monetary policy directly into the hands of politicians.
Politicians aren't economists and generally know nothing about central banking. What they do know is how to use government spending and policy to buy votes.
If people want to be honest and have a discussion about eliminating the Fed's independence, fine, but as long as they hide behind the "audit" canard I'll call them crackpots.
> This is purely to eliminate the independence of the Fed and put monetary policy directly into the hands of politicians.
That is exactly the point. If the Fed is not a public office, it has no business playing the role in our monetary system that it does.
> These aren’t the kinds of things audits examine, and we don’t demand to see the internal deliberations of the SCOTUS or transcripts of all the meetings that take place in Trump’s, McConnell’s or Pelosi’s offices.
The Fed, unlike anything you mention here, is NOT a Constitutional office, it does NOT have Constitutional immunities. It is an organization allegedly dedicated to a public service.
Your instinct was spot on, though; for the privileges claimed by the Fed, enshrinement in the Constitution and no less is required. Yet such enshrinement has not occurred and will not occur. So it owes the public a full accounting of everything, not merely the parts it wishes to have public.
That's a perfectly legitimate argument to make. I disagree because we've seen the result of politicians making our fiscal policy. We've had whipsawing tax policies, a ridiculously complex tax code, huge deficits and a lot of debt all because they're looking at every decision in the light of an election no more than two years hence.
I don't want those forces dictating policy in an area they know even less about.
Regardless, an honest debate would be fine but what does it tell you when Fed opponents aren't willing to say what their real objective is and instead hide behind the audit BS?
It tells me they know their argument is a loser.
They used this artifice because at the time it was proposed, straight talk about the Fed was received about the same as talk about Area 51. Things have changed enormously since; the issue remains the same, either we the people should have political control over the institution or it should not act as a quasi-public body.
mark
So then why continue the audit talk?
Maybe the idea of abolishing the Fed hasn't caught on quite as firmly as you think.
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