Sheriff Joe
DA
Nice to see your newly found concern for spending.https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-04-11/moment-truth
Is This The Moment Of Truth?
- Congress has enacted the Trump tax cut, which blows a $1.5 trillion hole in the budget deficit. The belief that tax cuts will stimulate enough growth to pay for themselves is a sheer fantasy shared by Larry Kudlow, Art Laffer, and very few others.
- Congress has also removed discretionary spending caps on domestic and defense spending that have been in place since 2011. At the same time, Congress reinstated “earmarks” that allow members to spend money on pet projects. These two acts will add another $300 billion per year to the U.S. deficit.
- Student loan defaults are now running at 20% per year and the volume of student loans exceeds $1.5 trillion, far more than the amount of junk mortgages in 2007, and with a much higher default rate. Covering these losses will add another $200 billion per year to federal deficits for years to come.
- The U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio is now over 105%. This is well past the 90% “danger zone” identified by economists Ken Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart. Once in the danger zone further borrowing actually causes growth to decline rather than acting as a “stimulus.”
- Russia, China, Iran, Turkey and other adversaries of the U.S. are stockpiling thousands of tons of gold as a hedge against the inflation they expect as the U.S. tries to print its way out of its non-sustainable debt.