Today brings news of the latest federal budget proposal, a $4.75T presidential wishlist doomed to defeated in the House that spends money we don’t have.
Perhaps most striking is that we are on pace to shatter the all-time debt-to-GDP record established in 1946 — when the country was in the midst of the life-or-death crisis of World War II — for no other reason than politicians lying to us about what the country can afford.
One unrealistic promise after another campaign exaggeration from Democrat and Republican alike, one after the next, has gotten us here.
Interest rates are still near historic lows. As the US economy begins to slow, the Fed knows that by capitulating to demands to keep the Everything Bubble inflated at all costs, by ceasing interest rate hikes, they’ve left themselves scant few tools to combat the coming recession.
So few, in fact, the Fed has already started jawboning negative interest rates as part of our future economic landscape. QE 4, and 5, and 6, and beyond…they’re already all but fait accompli.
Because this path has been walked before, and there are no offramps. The Japanification of not just Europe, but the US, is well underway. A society unwilling or unable to elect politicians who conduct themselves in a fiscally responsible manner will be punished by inescapable mathematical reality.
Japan knows this quicksand all too well. The US, immersing itself deeper by the day, will come to understand the power of this policy trap it wading into, with eyes wide open, soon enough.