The one-day increase for June 30 totaled $165,931,038,264.30 – bigger than the entire annual deficit for fiscal year 2007 and larger than the $140 billion in savings the new health care bill will produce over its first 10 years. The figure works out to nearly $1,500 for every U.S. household, or more than 10 times the median daily household income.
Daily debt calculations jump and fall, and big shifts are common. But all three of the biggest one-day debt increases have occurred under the tenure of President Obama, and all of the top six have been in the past two years – an indication of just how quickly the pace of deficit spending has risen under Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush.
This sort of spending would not be possible without a central bank that can create money out of thin air and loan it to Congress and charge interest on it. And the more money Congress and the Fed create, the more inflation there is, and the less the dollar is worth.
This is exactly what we do not need in the middle of an extreme recession. But until some congressmen get a spine or some voters learn a little more about proper government, it’s an inevitable spiral downward until the next crash.
Returning to the Constitutionally mandated gold standard would quickly put an end to all this irresponsible spending.
via U.S. marks 3rd-largest, single-day debt increase – Washington Times.
The Mogambo Guru comments on the rate of inflation:
You can imagine my response to this arrogance. Finally, once again, having had it Up To Here (UTH) with their insults and rude laughter, I explode in their faces “Inflation is still going up, you morons! Prices are still increasing! Watch my lips, morons! Prices are going up! The stupid CPI may show that the rate of inflation decreased by a lousy tenth of a percent lately, which I don’t believe for a second, but prices are still increasing by 2.2%! So what in the hell are you gloating about when the buying power of your money is being destroyed?”
Well, the conversation got pretty heated after I told them that this discussion about inflation was the perfect opportunity to tell them that I was, again, forced to cut expenses so that I could get a little more money to buy a little more gold, silver and oil.
and
So, I will say that I think that the real reason that the CPI is merely rising 2.2%, and not soaring as a result of all of this money being created around the world, is because the cost of housing constitutes a full 40% of the index, but now that the housing bubble has bust, the glut of housing on the market is causing the cost of housing to plummet, taking the CPI abnormally down.
via Inflation Still a Problem, Despite “Evidence” to the Contrary.
I will also add that the government “adjusts” the CPI, changing what is included and how it is counted, whenever the CPI shows that prices are increasing at a rate that they do not want to report.
After all, if the CPI goes up too quickly or too high, they have to adjust all sorts of things and benefits and payouts, like Social Security, which put the government (meaning us, the taxpayers,) even deeper in debt than it (we) already is (are).
For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.
Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.
Sounds like a good time to start tapping the nest egg. Too bad the federal government already spent that money over the years on other programs, preferring to borrow from Social Security rather than foreign creditors. In return, the Treasury Department issued a stack of IOUs — in the form of Treasury bonds — which are kept in a nondescript office building just down the street from Parkersburg’s municipal offices.
Now the government will have to borrow even more money, much of it abroad, to start paying back the IOUs, and the timing couldn’t be worse. The government is projected to post a record $1.5 trillion budget deficit this year, followed by trillion dollar deficits for years to come.
If you thought inflation was bad before, with government print up trillion dollar checks for all the banks, unions, politically connected corporations, and anyone who could claim to be creating or saving a job, just wait until we start printing up billions of non-existent dollars for retirees everywhere!
Your $1,200 check will be worth so little, Congress will have to get crazy creative with eliminating price points from cost of living calculations in order to keep your benefits down!
The government needs to return to a sound, Constitutional money. The government needs to get out of the nanny business. With an un-inflatable money supply based on gold or silver your nest egg will appreciate in value, whether or not it’s earning interest, unlike our current paper money which is constantly being devalued by the ever increasing supply of Federal Reserve Notes.
Note in closing: just two years ago, it was projected that this moment, when revenues would fall below program costs, would arrive in 2018, and the projected point at which the fund would be exhausted entirely would arrive in 2040.
So the first crisis is hitting 8 years early in the middle of our biggest recession ever. Undoubtedly, the next will hit considerably sooner than expected, and it will not be fun.
We need to free the private sector from government’s yoke so that the country can return to prosperity, before it’s too late!
via Social Security to start cashing Uncle Sam’s IOUs – Yahoo! News.
