Economist Calls Entitlements A Massive Ponzi Scheme And Says US Is Actually $211 Trillion In Debt
In an interview with NPR, former Reagan economic adviser Laurence Kotlikoff said the U.S.’s "true indebtedness" amounts to $211 trillion.
That’s more than 15 times the $14 trillion official figure.
"We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books," Kotlikoff said, naming Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid for the skyrocketing unofficial figure.
If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $211 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap…
Why are these guys thinking about balancing the budget?…They should try and think about our long-term fiscal problems.
His comments were reminiscent of a Bloomberg editorial he wrote last year, where he called entitlements "a massive Ponzi scheme."
From the interview:
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John Williams' Forecast: "Catastrophe Ahead"
In The News Today
When truth and righteousness are protected, the nation will be secure.
–Shri Sathya Sai Baba
Jim Sinclair’s Commentary
Credit where credit is due. These 25 are but only some of the reasons the third skier illustration is unavoidable.
25 Signs That The Financial World Is About To Hit The Big Red Panic Button
Most of the worst financial panics in history have happened in the fall. Just recall what happened in 1929, 1987 and 2008. Well, September 2011 is about to begin and there are all kinds of signs that the financial world is about to hit the big red panic button. Wave after wave of bad economic news has come out of the United States recently, and Europe is embroiled in an absolutely unprecedented debt crisis. At this point there is a very real possibility that the euro may not even survive. So what is causing all of this? Well, over the last couple of decades a gigantic debt bubble has fueled a tremendous amount of “fake prosperity” in the western world. But for a debt bubble to keep going, the total amount of debt has to keep expanding at an ever increasing pace. Unfortunately for the global economy, sources of credit are starting to dry up. That is why you hear terms like “credit crisis” and “credit crunch” thrown around so much these days. Without enough credit to feed the monster, the debt bubble is going to burst. At this point, virtually the entire global economy runs on credit, so when this debt bubble bursts things could get really, really messy.
Nations and financial institutions would never get into debt trouble if they could always borrow as much money as they wanted at extremely low interest rates. But what has happened is that lending sources are balking at continuing to lend cheap money to nations and financial institutions that are already up to their eyeballs in debt.
For example, the yield on 2 year Greek bonds is now over 40 percent. Investors don’t trust the Greek government and they are demanding a huge return in order to lend them more money.
Throughout the financial world right now there is a lot of fear. Lending conditions have gotten very tight. Financial institutions are not eager to lend money to each other or to anyone else. This “credit crunch” is going to slow down the economy. Just remember what happened back in 2008. When easy credit stops flowing, the dominoes can start falling very quickly.
Sadly, this is a cycle that can feed into itself. When credit is tight, the economy slows down and more businesses fail. That causes financial institutions to want to tighten up things even more in order to avoid the “bad credit risks”. Less economic activity means less tax revenue for governments. Less tax revenue means larger budget deficits and increased borrowing by governments. But when government debt gets really high that can cause huge economic problems like we are witnessing in Greece right now. The cycle of tighter credit and a slowing economy can go on and on and on.
I spend a lot of time talking about problems with the U.S. economy, but the truth is that the rest of the world is dealing with massive problems as well right now. As bad as things are in the U.S., the reality is that Europe looks like it may be “ground zero” for the next great financial crisis.
At this point the EU essentially has three choices. It can choose much deeper economic integration (which would mean a huge loss of sovereignty), it can choose to keep the status quo going for as long as possible by providing the PIIGS with gigantic bailouts, or it can choose to end of the euro and return to individual national currencies.
Any of those choices would be very messy. At this point there is not much political will for much deeper economic integration, so the last two alternatives appear increasingly likely.
In any event, global financial markets are paralyzed by fear right now. Nobody knows what is going to happen next, but many now fear that whatever does come next will not be good.
The following are 25 signs that the financial world is about to hit the big red panic button….
#1 According to a new study just released by Merrill Lynch, the U.S. economy has an 80% chance of going into another recession.
#2 Will Bank of America be the next Lehman Brothers? Shares of Bank of America have fallen more than 40% over the past couple of months. Even though Warren Buffet recently stepped in with 5 billion dollars, the reality is that the problems for Bank of America are far from over. In fact, one analyst is projecting that Bank of America is going to need to raise 40 or 50 billion dollars in new capital.
#3 European bank stocks have gotten absolutely hammered in recent weeks.
#4 So far, major international banks have announced layoffs of more than 60,000 workers, and more layoff announcements are expected this fall. A recent article in the New York Times detailed some of the carnage….
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Dear Jim,
Here is why S&P downgraded the US credit rating.
• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• National debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000
Now let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget.
• Annual family income: $21,700
• Money the family spent: $38,200
• New debt on the credit card: $16,500
• Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710
• Total budget cuts: $385
Regards,
CIGA Lew
Greenspan Says Euro ‘Breaking Down’
CIGA Eric
The Western system is breaking down. One debt/currency and restructure or Euro continues to crumble.
Headline: Greenspan Says Euro ‘Breaking Down’
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said fissures in Europe’s common currency may lead to slowing in the U.S. economy.
“The euro is breaking down and the process of its breaking down is creating very considerable difficulties in the European banking system,” Greenspan said today in Washington.
Emergency steps such as unlimited loans from the European Central Bank are keeping many banks in Greece, Portugal, Italy and Spain solvent and easing lending by other Europe institutions. Greenspan said a contraction in Europe would hurt profitability and stock values of American companies since Europe is the target market for about 20 percent of U.S. exports and about 20 percent of foreign-affiliate earnings.
A lack of confidence in euro-denominated debt is straining the region’s banks, Greenspan said. “That stuff has always been thought of as the ideal collateral and now it’s getting highly questionable,” he said in a question-and-answer session at the Innovation Nation Forum in Washington.
Source: bloomberg.com
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