Debt & Deficits

What is taking place around the world these days is analogous to the children's game of Musical Chairs, where everyone is happily going round and round at the beginning of the game but they all know that at some point soon the music will stop and those without a chair to sit in will be out of the game! I see PMs as being the chairs and, when the current financial music stops, those without PMs will be left holding nothing but paper money and history is full of examples of paper money suddenly becoming worthless!

News events from the Crimean Peninsula have increased paranoia in the mainstream financial press and certain corners of the internet [that Russia, in response to any economic sanctions implemented by the West, might engage in some form of retaliatory financial warfare.

For the first time in U.S. history, the national debt has risen past $17 trillion. That number is a bit hard to comprehend and means little to Americans when not applied to their everyday lives. So just how does the national debt affect consumers, and why should the average American care about how much this country owes? Here's why and how.

News out of Venezuela continues to be quite grim, pointing to further economic deterioration... Here is the the latest:

Compared with Ireland, where the individual tax rate is a whopping 48%, the U.S. national average of 36.9% is not so bad. How does your country compare?

Did you know that financial institutions all over the world are warning that we could see a mega default on a very prominent high-yield investment product in China on January 31st? We are being told that this could lead to a cascading collapse of the shadow banking system in China which could potentially result in sky-high interest rates and a precipitous plunge in credit. It could be a Lehman Brothers moment for Asia and, since much of that "hot money" has flowed into stocks, bonds and real estate in the United States, that would be very bad news for the U.S. as well. [Let me explain.]

Only when derivatives are discussed by one of the ‘Real Housewives of Atlanta’ posing nude in bed with one of the cast members of ‘Duck Dynasty’ will derivatives receive the attention they deserve.

It now seems like the U.S. might be getting closer to acknowledging that it has a serious fiscal problem; or at least this is what one might infer from the strong support from Congressmen and Senators from both sides of the aisle, thousands of business leaders and economists from all stripes, as well as from fifteen Nobel Laureates in Economics, for a new bill called the Intergenerational Financial Obligations Reform Act or “Inform Act” - in spite of the fact that the proposal is being totally ignored by the mainstream media and, as evidenced by the case of Detroit, the longer we wait, the worse it gets.

The People’s Bank of China is reported by Bloomberg to have said that it will rein in dollar purchases as the country no longer benefits from increases in its foreign-currency holdings...What implications will this have? I believe that we'll see the start of a U.S. dollar collapse. Here's why

Fed Chair Bernanke vehemently denies that the Fed “monetizes the debt,” but our research shows the Fed may be increasingly doing so. We explain why and what the implications may be for the dollar, gold and currencies.