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My February birthday fund-raising campaign for this website, Behind the Black, is now over. Despite a relatively weak initial three weeks, the last week was spectacular, making this campaign the second best ever.

 

Thanks to every person who donated or subscribed. It continues to astonish me that people who can read my work for free like it enough to donate money voluntarily. Words cannot express my appreciation for that support, especially in these uncertain times.

 

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Federal debt tops $20 trillion

The coming dark age: Because of the Democratic/Trump deal raising the debt limit, the federal government’s debt officially topped $20 trillion last week.

From March 16 through Sept. 7, every Daily Treasury Statement showed the total federal debt subject to the legal limit opening and closing each day at $19,808,747,000,000. That was because the previous suspension of the debt limit had expired on March 15 and the debt limit had been reset at the level the debt reached at the close of business that day–which was $19,808,772,381,624.74. The Treasury then started using what it calls “extraordinary measures” to keep the debt subject to the limit about $25 milion below the limit.

This is all a fraud. Not only do they cook the numbers to make the debt ceiling appear legal for as long as possible, the debt is actually far larger, as this doesn’t include the raids to the Social Security trust fund that Congress has routinely been making for the past few decades, and never paying back.

But hey, who cares? What is really important is that we call looters “heroes” and any cops who try to arrest them “racists!”

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

10 comments

  • Cotour

    Related:

    This statement by Janet yellen either gives you great comfort………or great fear.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-yellen/feds-yellen-expects-no-new-financial-crisis-in-our-lifetimes-idUSKBN19I2I5

    If it gives you great comfort then $20 T in debt may seem a good idea. (And keep in mind the the CIA had no idea that The Soviet Union was about to collapse. I suppose we will see one way or another over time.)

    I think this may generally remain true as long as 1. America remains the reserve currency of the planet and 2. America remains the one and only true military force on the planet. (For this reason alone our military spending must continue at the level that it is) Confidence and true underlying economic value is imperative for a fiat currency to exist, and both things that I have pointed out in previous comments IMO seem to remain true, for the moment.

    I don’t think anyone wants to be around if and when this worlds financial / military paradigm changes. This I believe is what “Globalism” is about and how it is sold and enforced. Don’t rock the boat and trade your security / sovereignty for “Progress” and stability. Things are so big and interconnected and real time that it may force agreement between the big players and so it remains so. For the moment.

  • sayoamra

    I’ve always wondered if debts don’t matter why should government even have taxes? Either budgets matter and we need to bring this under control (which is the side I would take) Or they don’t and just let everyone be richer and put it all on credit card. When the yearly taxes cover so little of the budget I have never heard anyone bring up this point.

    Granted taxes are a tool of control and the government isn’t big on giving up control.

  • ken anthony

    It’s funny when news reports that doctors in Russia are paid with manure dumped on there front yard… but the last laugh will be that BS actually has real value paper money doesn’t!

    How many people will die during a financial reset? That’s why I live hundreds of miles away from any big city surrounded by farmers and ranchers. In a small town where half the town has a religious requirement to have years of emergency food supplies in their homes. My friends even have full solar power and water wells. This little town will be fine.

  • wayne

    For some striking visual evidence of what the Federal Reserve has been doing, since 2008, to artificially prop up the ‘economy,’ take a look at:

    https://cdn.snbchf.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/US-Federal-Reserve-balance-sheet-total.jpg
    (through 2016, but its only gotten bigger the last 9 months.)
    >It’s the Mortgage Backed Securities & Treasury Debt they’ve issued, that are the most worrisome.
    “That’s not normal,” even for a Central Bank.

  • Wayne: That is a frightening graphic. It doesn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already, but it surely does make it plain. Since Obama’s gigantic stimulus bill and the forced continuing resolutions that forced its continuation after, the federal government’s budget and debt has gone completely out of control. Bad things are coming, and no one in the government really cares.

  • wayne

    The companion chart to the one above.
    (This is not “normal,” even in Central-Banker Land. And you can’t grow your way outa this mess.)

    Adjusted Monetary Base
    (1984 to sept 1, 2017)
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/BASE

    “The Adjusted Monetary Base is the sum of currency (including coin) in circulation outside Federal Reserve Banks and the U.S. Treasury, plus deposits held by depository institutions at Federal Reserve Banks.”

  • Wayne: Notice how the lines on all the graphs go up like a shot in 2009. That was when the Democratic Congress and Obama put us in a very deep hole, which started the tea party movement. Unfortunately, the tea party movement has so far failed to make enough of a wholesale change in Congress to actually change anything.

  • wayne

    “I’m shocked, shocked to find there is gambling going on in here!”

    This (current) debt-load is going to kill us and we aren’t even thinking of the $120 trillion in unfunded liabilities going forward.
    -10K baby-boomers retire every day and will do so into the entire decade of the 2020’s.

    http://www.usdebtclock.org/

  • Cotour

    The level of general outrage in the country that resulted in the Tea Party has resulted in the election of Trump. So I will have to respectfully disagree with your characterization that the Tea party has been a failure. Trump, like him or not, I consider real progress in American politics.

    As to the fiat money situation that is a result of the political realm attempting to over do their social engineering. Their social engineering as I understand it started in earnest with B. Clinton reemphasizing the Community Reinvestment Act initially started by Carter which forced money lending in “red lined” communities. The abuses of good monetary practices that this Clinton manipulation began built the philosophy of just basically giving money away to those who might not be as qualified as they should have ideally been. The Clinton administration forced banks to participate in these bad money practices or else through threats and manipulations.

    The end result being the creation of bad paper by these bankers who came to understand that they no longer had any real risk seeing that the government was essentially guaranteeing anything they wrote and packaged together in the now famous “Collateralized Debt Obligations” and the other “Products” that they thought up to make massive amounts of money.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collateralized_debt_obligation

    When it all began to unravel, because that is all it could do, the FED was driven to cover them all and created the funds and the manipulations to do so. And now the FED sits on top of the interest rates unable to do anything other than wait it out. And the now debt appears too big to grow out of. And the low interest rates that not everyone has access to has been pumped into the stock market which in turn has created great increases in “Value” and insane stock prices.

    This is my fundamental understanding of this mess that has grown exponentially due to irrational government interference in the economy (Read: Best intentions).

    (As a form of full disclosure I want to point out that after years I came to understand that I was a recipient of these government policies in the 90’s. My bank at the time offered me $30K in the form of a business loan, they just threw it at me and I took it. (They had to make required loan placements in my neighborhood as per government requirements) It was a real head scratcher for me at the time, I did not know what was going on. I bought my current building with the majority of it. I was not aware of any of these things that I am now fairly well trained in on. I was barely conscious, never mind aware of government involvement, just looking to survive.)

    So the lesson? Government can be only one thing, corrupt and a threat to us all. Its only a matter of degree, no matter how good their intention might be. Once things like this are unleashed they are difficult to reign in because politicians become invested in them and they are always using other peoples money.

  • Edward

    Would it be legal for businesses to use the same or similar “extraordinary measures” to make their books look like their debt were more controlled that they are?

    If I understand wayne’s link to the Federal Reserve chart, the money supply quintupled over the course of Obama’s first six years.

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