Simon Black, a financial analyst and founder of Sovereign Man, puts it bluntly:
The hard reality that most people don’t seem to get is that the U.S. government is bankrupt. This isn’t some wild assertion or conspiracy theory; their own financial statements show that the government’s ‘net worth’ is NEGATIVE $17.7 trillion. And yes, the U.S. is already borrowing money just to pay interest.
The U.S.’s debtees:
- $2.4 trillion owed to the Federal Reserve.
- $1.2 trillion owed to China, in U.S. treasury bonds.
- The biggest debts that are owed by the US government are the obligations they owe to us — Social Security and Medicare. The government’s own numbers estimate these obligations at nearly $42 trillion, completely dwarfing the debts owed to China or anyone else.
In fact, the combined expenses of interest on the national debt plus mandatory entitlements like Social Security nearly exceed the government’s entire tax revenue. In other words, you could eliminate nearly everything we think of as government– the EPA, the IRS, Homeland Security, etc. — and it wouldn’t make a dent in the national debt.
Black concludes:
When things get this dire, it doesn’t matter who sits in the chair. You might as well elect a chimpanzee in the hopes that Mister Bubbles might accelerate the decline. Donald Trump may very well be that chimpanzee. Especially given his unparalleled experience in declaring bankruptcy [4 times].
Nations that pass the economic point of no return can’t rebuild until they hit rock bottom. And the U.S. is way past that point. So let’s get on with it already and hit the reset button.
Instead of Bubbles the chimp, who is now 32 years old, living in an animal sanctuary in Florida and described by the sanctuary’s keepers as “huge and ugly,” how about my cat Gabe? He’s a lot cuter.
~Éowyn
