Tag: debt

Three (3) Reasons Why Elections Don’t Matter

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In so many ways, elections in America have become just another manifestation of bread and circuses; like watching a reality TV show when your house is on fire.  It’s why this article was almost named:

“The Inevitableness of Reality Requires Honesty and Acceptance”

Of course, the 2018 Midterm Elections will be analyzed ad nauseam, with other writers and pundits parsing it better than this blogger.  However, suffice it to say:  There was no Blue Wave and Trump has now solidified leadership of his Republican Party; at least more so than during the last two years of his administration.

In a raucous press conference the day after, Trump claimed victory and said his party “defied history to expand our Senate majority”. The president also said his focus in the days prior to the election remained on the senate and pointed out that most of the candidates for whom he campaigned had won their respective races.

Now, with Never-Trump  Republican senators like Bob Corker (R-TN) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), along with Democrats Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Joe Donnelly (D-IN), and Claire McCaskill (D-MO) all gone  – Trump has solidified the senate so as to be in a much better position to navigate any cabinet and court appointments.  Obviously, the bloodletting has already begun, starting with Mr. Magoo himself, Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

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THEY WANT YOU TO DO AS THEY SAY, NOT AS THEY DO

“Facts are threatening to those invested in fraud.” ― DaShanne Stokes

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Insiders at US companies unloaded $5.7 billion of their company stock this month, the highest in any September over the past decade, according to TrimTabs Investment Research.  Insiders, which include corporate officers and directors, sold over $10 billion of their company stock in August, also at the fastest pace in 10 years. With the stock market at all time highs and valuations, based on all historically accurate measures, off the charts, it makes sense for knowledgeable insiders to sell high. Of course, if they were expecting the profits of their companies to soar because Trump says we have the best economy in history, why would they be selling?

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A Whimper and a Bang

Guest Post by Bill Bonner

Let us begin with the former: The Whimper – a credit deflation… with falling stock prices and a recession – is inevitable. Every credit-fueled boom eventually runs out of gas… and then turns into a bust.

As for Making America Great Again… you can forget about it until this debt bubble issue is resolved.

And you’re not going to do that by increasing the military budget, cutting taxes (unless you’re willing to cut spending, too), or getting into pointless trade wars with everyone from Canada to China.

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More Debt Won’t Make America Great Again

Guest Post by Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE – Yesterday’s headline news, from Reuters:

U.S. economic growth was a bit stronger than initially thought in the second quarter, notching its best performance in nearly four years, as businesses boosted spending on software and imports declined.

Gross domestic product increased at a 4.2 percent annualized rate, the Commerce Department said on Wednesday in its second estimate of GDP growth for the April-June quarter. That was slightly up from the 4.1 percent pace of expansion it reported in July and was the fastest rate since the third quarter of 2014. […]

But the robust growth in the second quarter is unlikely to be sustained given the one-off drivers such as a $1.5 trillion tax cut package, which provided a jolt to consumer spending after a lackluster first quarter, and a front-loading of soybean exports to China to beat retaliatory trade tariffs.

We stop… and hold our breath.

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The Persistence of Their Delusion is Despicable

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

As I’ve written of before, I’m part of a group of men that meet for breakfast on some weekends as a result of our shared involvement in a community organization.  A few weeks ago, I dined with two of the men who seemed genuinely excited about the upcoming Blue Wave they believe will occur in the November midterm elections.

One of the men, a business owner self-identifying as a Republican, said that after much thought and analysis, Hillary Clinton would have made a better president than Donald Trump.  The other man, who is a physician, is by any definition a rainbow-flag waving Cultural Marxist.

When I explained to them my perspectives, they said I needed to “quit watching the lies on Fox News”.  At one point during our conversation, the RINO (Republican in Name Only) said the Deep State did not exist.  When I asked if he would acknowledge the influence of unelected government officials throughout the “swamp”, he simply stated again “there was no Deep State”.

And so began conversations that extended over the next several days.

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“Stool Pigeons” Turn on Trump

Guest Post by Bill Bonner

Trouble ahead, Lady in red

Take my advice you’d be better off dead

Switchman’s sleeping, train hundred and two is

On the wrong track and headed for you

– “Casey Jones,” Grateful Dead

POITOU, FRANCE – And so… the trains gather speed.

The Ol’ Deep State Cannonball is chugging up from Washington… and the Manhattan Money Machine is barreling down from New York – headed straight for each other.

Our guess: When the two meet up, there will be Hell to pay.

Stool Pigeons

By the end of last week, the folks on the political train had a new source of entertainment – a singing trio known as the “Stool Pigeons.”

Yes, Dear Reader, three of the president’s oldest and closest advisors have now “flipped.”

Singing tenor is Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer and former “punching bag.” And now, he’s been joined by Trump’s old pal, David Pecker, singing bass.

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Turkey Now, America Later?

Guest Post by Ron Paul

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President Trump recently imposed sanctions on Turkey to protest the Turkish government’s detention of an American pastor. Turkey has responded by increasing tariffs on US exports. The trade war is being blamed for the collapse of Turkey’s currency, the lira. While the sanctions may have played a role, Turkey’s currency crisis is rooted in the Turkish government’s fiscal and (especially) monetary policies.

In the past seven years, Turkey’s central bank has tripled the money supply and pushed interest rates down to 4.5 percent. While Turkey’s government did not adopt Ben Bernanke’s proposal to drop money from helicopters, Turkish politicians have taken advantage of easy money policies to increase subsidies for key voting blocs and special interests.

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Turkey: A Glimpse of America’s Future

Guest Post by Bill Bonner

POITOU, FRANCE – Coming into focus is a fuller picture of the worldwide financial crisis.

This week, we began looking at Turkey, but only because Donald Trump sent an extraordinary tweet last Friday.

In it, the president broke with tradition and common sense in a remarkable way. He used a crash in the Turkish lira to justify a new attack in the trade war.

Instead of soothing words that might have calmed the crisis situation, his tweet made it worse. And instead of coming to the aid of an ally in difficulty, he piled on.

We had never previously spent even two minutes thinking about Turkey or its finances. But then, after the president roused our curiosity, we saw what we think was a glimpse of the future.

In it, we see huge defaults… stock crashes… chest-pounding… threats and counterthreats… populism… betrayal… trade wars… and currency wars… as the world reckons with $115 trillion in excess debt.

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Trump’s funny math on tariffs and the debt

Guest Post by Paul Brandis

I’m so old I can remember when Republicans squawked that 1) deficits and the debt were bad and 2) that tariffs were harmful to the economy.

Yet we now have a president who is making the first problem much worse than it already is and seems to think that the second is some kind of magic elixir. Guess who’s already paying for these boneheaded moves—and will pay even more in the years to come? You.

President Trump inherited a monstrous problem: $20 trillion in debt. Sidebar: Before you go blaming one side or the other for this, I’ll irritate you by saying that your side, whatever it is, shares the blame. Yes, Barack Obama was president from 2009-17, but Congress, which controls the pursestrings, has been run by Republicans—both the House and Senate—since 2010. Shared responsibility, shared blame.

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A Fork-in-the-Road Approaches: The Short List – 95 Revelations from July, 2018

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Beginning in May of this year (for April), this blogger had the idea to track linked internet headlines from various link-aggregating websites as documented transitions and arrange them into catalogued anthologies. The goal was to map a veritable road, if you will, on the way toward future revelations.

Beyond that, the series of encyclopedic atomization was meant for posterity, a means to compare tracking from previous months, and assembled in outright defiance against increasing internet censorship and memory-holed search engine results.

Predictably, like dots formulated into patterns on a grid, or in a matrix, so too have trends come into better focus as we continue our monthly trek toward the 2018 Midterm Elections.

As stated by this blogger before, President Donald Trump is the manifestation of one of the following three possibilities:

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Truth & Bullshit in the Digital Advertising Age

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

In sales and advertising it’s always a numbers game.  That is to say the more people are impressed upon with a certain pitch, or spiel as it were, the larger the response will be during any given campaign or promotional event.

In advertising, “points” measure percentages of given populations and can be targeted to select demographics (called Target Rating Points) or even subjective measurements (called Index Rating Points) like the propensity to purchase in any given market.

Furthermore “Gross Impressions” quantify the approximate number and cost per thousands of duplicate people reached within a certain demographic; whereas “Reach” and “Frequency” represent math equations based upon algorithms involving unduplicated people impressed upon within a certain demographic and how many times they were imprinted with any given ad or message.

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Spending Our Way to a Fiscal Crisis

Guest Post by Ron Paul

According to financial writer Simon Black, the federal government is spending approximately 52,000 dollars per second. This, not last year’s tax cuts, is the reason why the national debt has reached a record 21 trillion dollars, which is more than America’s gross domestic product (GDP).

Another ominous sign is that this year both Social Security and Medicare will have to draw down on their reserve funds to be able to pay benefits. The Social Security and Medicare trust funds will both soon be bankrupt, putting additional strains on the federal budget and American taxpayers.

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Happy Birthday America: 144 Revelations from June, 2018

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

Just as destination is determined by direction, so too are transitions roads to revelations.  In other words, today’s trends are tomorrow’s historical markers.  With that in mind, and for the purposes of cataloguing news articles in outright defiance against increasing internet censorship and memory-holed search engine results, the following disclosures occurred between the dates of June 1-30, 2018.

Although the list may be overly comprehensive for some, this blogger desired encyclopedic documentation for posterity, as well as to compare tracking from previous months.

For the reader’s convenience, the revelations are again sorted into the same category headings that were utilized for May, 2018; and, for those in a hurry who wish to bypass the entire “trifling minutia”, there are some concluding comments and questions at the end:

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When Running From the Devil You Better Be Faster than Hell

By Doug “Uncola” Lynn via TheBurningPlatform.com

 

In these sentiments, sir, I agree to this Constitution, with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government, being incapable of any other.

– Benjamin Franklin

 

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

– John Adams

 

I’m of the opinion that many today are throwing the “baby out with the bathwater” when they claim the conservative versus liberal (right vs. left) construct is phony, or bogus.

Conservatives have lost political ground because they have accepted the moral premises of the Political Left. However, liberals use deception to hide their real motives while, simultaneously, blackmailing conservatives by means of conservative values.

How typical was the mainstream media’s “poor immigrant children” narrative that played the emotional heartstrings of dummies everywhere, like violins.

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