Build Back Better? With What Resources?
by Chris MacIntosh via International Man
Here’s the current budget deficit.
The blue is good and the orange is bad. You can see a lot of orange, and after 2008 things have been decidedly “orange.”
Since there is no actual cash in the piggy bank the US government has to borrow it. Meanwhile, debt spirals higher. Total US debt now tops $90 trillion with unfunded liabilities clocking in at $169 trillion.
Folks tend to forget that a government doesn’t produce anything. It merely sucks up resources from the productive and redistributes those resources. The most “productive” governments manage to do this with the least amount of friction or capital stripped from the system, while allocating the resources the most efficiently. And since governments are awful at both of these things, the most “productive” governments are those who do the least, instead leaving it to the private sector to cater to the wants and needs of society.
In any event, the ever-continuous intrusion into citizens’ lives while “providing” for them things such as education, healthcare, pensions, and myriad other things which governments should have no hand in cost money. A lot, especially when the allocation of resources is not governed by the cruel hand of the market. Profligacy abounds in these situations, and so as the debt spirals out of control so does the printing of money.
One reason I have been saying that the probability that a debt reset is in the offing is because the numbers are just too egregious to be managed at this point. Median income per household in the US in 2020 was $67,521. Now consider that when doing simple math by taking US debt and dividing it by citizens we clock in at $778,000 per citizen (not per household). Now, not all citizens are contributing to the pie so to speak. Babies, for example. A more accurate take therefore is dividing this number by the number of US tax-paying citizens. When doing so we clock in at over $2 MILLION per citizen.
Do you understand now how hopeless this situation is?
So there are now only two solutions I can think of. One is a hyperinflation of the currency and the other is a debt reset.
This brings up other probabilities.
Those in power know that a hyperinflation would likely see them being replaced. History shows us this is true. No, rather they will try to self detonate the system, have an enemy to blame it on (Covid, Russia, etc.) and retain control… or dare I say gain even more control. This is what the entire WEF plan is all about. Right now they’re still using the mask of democracy, but as we’ve seen in the last two years this is merely a mask. Leaders all over the world have been bought and pressured or murdered (Magafuli) when not complying. The corruption is now increasingly brazen and blatant. The energy put into masking it grows weaker each day while the excesses and theft grow more egregious. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This is the fourth turning.
Something else to consider is that while the Biden administration is sending tens of billions of dollars to thugs in what is arguably THE most corrupt Eastern European country (ostensibly to fight a bad man), they can’t actually afford it. The US military may well be the largest in the world, but as is the case with all militaries it requires funding. Cut off the funding, and no army can or will fight. This is true even if gender confused soyboys in San Francisco champion “taking it to Putin” while placing Ukrainian flags in their bios… right next to their pronouns.
And that means that the acceleration of the collapse of the US government and indeed the European Union (who are just as broke) is being accelerated.
What you choose to own in such a coming storm is going to be critical if I’m even half accurate.
At risk of sounding like a prepper, I continue to believe that energy at its base level is a no-brainer, if only because every single thing that makes our lives more comfortable, more easy is some derivative of fossil fuels. Then moving down the chain of needs, naturally food/agriculture and in this space fertilizer is in critical shortage. Precious metals are a hedge against total collapse in currency markets, though I don’t think we’re there yet.
Is the West Ceding Everything to China?
China is 18% of the world’s people and GDP. But it makes roughly 50% of the world’s metals, 60% of its wind turbines, 70% of its solar panels and 80% of its lithium ion batteries.
The first question is this. Will these woke politicians permit the mining of the elements required for the production of “renewables?”
The second question is will the manufacturing capacity and capabilities be built in Western nations to turn the lithium, cobalt, nickel, copper etc into said renewables?
Will it be done in time?
Look around you at the “leaders” and what they’re saying. We are still in the denial stage and double down stage of ideological stupidity. And that probably means we the West cede not only fossil fuel energy security to Russia and China, but also “renewable energy” capacity.
Reprinted with permission from International Man.