Tuesday , 19 March 2024

What’s Coming: A "Fiscal Meat Grinder," A "Fiscal Cliff" and a Potential "Major Market Meltdown"! (+3K Views)

The International Monetary Fund, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, the National Association of Manufacturers and many other authorities are now warning that with the largest tax increase in U.S. history — plus the largest government spending cuts our nation has ever seen – one of the deadliest financial crises in U.S. history is set to strike the U.S. economy beginning this coming New Year’s Day. Barring a miracle in Washington…..

  • America will fall “head first into the fiscal meat grinder (JP Morgan),
  • cause America to plunge off of the “fiscal cliff” (Bernanke) and possibly
  • suffer a “major market meltdown” (former Obama Treasury official Steven Rattner)
  • tearing hundreds of billions of dollars out of the hands of U.S. consumers and companies,
  • destroying thousands of businesses and
  • vaporizing millions more jobs in every sector of the economy
  • bursting Wall Street’s stock market bubble,
  • gutting the life savings of millions of Americans.

 

So says Martin Weiss (www.moneyandmarkets.com) in edited excerpts from his original article.*

Lorimer Wilson, editor of www.munKNEE.com (Your Key to Making Money!) and www.FinancialArticleSummariesToday.com (A site for sore eyes and inquisitive minds) has edited the article below for length and clarity – see Editor’s Note at the bottom of the page. This paragraph must be included in any article re-posting to avoid copyright infringement.

Weiss goes on to say, in part:

If you think this presidential election is routine or if you believe this political season is a time for investing as usual you’d better wake up and smell the coffee because a well-known, but rarely debated, financial monster is about emerge from the sidelines and explode into the forefront of the race for the White House. I’m talking about the most dangerous and destructive flood of fiscal red ink in the history of mankind -America’s gargantuan federal deficits.

In the current election cycle, even after adjusting for inflation and measuring it in proportion to the nation’s GDP, this monster is massive – MANY times larger than during prior presidential elections. It is:

  • nearly THREE times bigger than it was just four years ago when Barack Obama defeated John McCain.
  • over SIX times worse than it was in 1996, when Bill Clinton defeated Bob Dole, and
  • almost TEN times larger than in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater.
deficit chart

There’s no way a monster this big can be covered up or buried in a presidential election campaign. In fact, it’s already pervading virtually every debate. Every time they talk about

  • Medicare reform,
  • Social Security,
  • personal tax returns or
  • extended unemployment benefits,

it all ties back to the deficit – a deficit which has been a record $1 trillion or more for THREE consecutive years, with no end in sight – DESPITE some improvements in the economy since 2009. If the economy sinks back into deep recession, tax revenues will shrink and the deficit could DOUBLE in size.

For the first time in modern history Washington’s debt load has crossed a dangerous threshold of more than 100% of GDP!

US debt

 

 

 

 

Each year that Washington runs a deficit, it must borrow more money to finance the gap so, with each year of red ink, the government’s pile of debts gets bigger and bigger. Until now, the official tally of U.S. government debts was at least SMALLER than the size of the U.S. economy but this year, U.S. government debt is growing LARGER than the entire U.S. economy. This is a critical threshold for any country and we are in the process of crossing it right now! The sorry facts are very straightforward:

  • The U.S. economy is expected to clock in at around $15.6 trillion in GDP. Meanwhile …
  • The government’s debt load (excluding Medicare, Social Security, etc.) is going to be $16.3 trillion.

The above means that:

  • even if we gathered up all the income of every citizen, resident or company in the U.S for the ENTIRE year, and
  • even if we could use EVERY penny of that income to pay back the U.S. government’s creditors,

we would still be left with a pile of unpaid debts!

Washington will owe about $1.05 in debt for every dollar of products and services produced by every local government, company or individual in the USA! These facts should be setting off major alarm bells around the world. They mean that:

  • The United States of America is at an historic threshold, beyond which global investors are prone to panic and start dumping U.S. debts.
  • The United States is passing the point of no return, beyond which any new government initiative to “end the crisis” will probably just make it worse…
[All this is] a political landmine because the deficit and debt monster are nonpartisan! They were created by both Democrats and Republicans. They can wreak havoc on any presidential campaign or president, regardless of party affiliation and, most importantly, ANY so-called solution — whether proposed by Democrats or Republicans — is likely to backfire.

Why? Consider the alternatives:

  • If Washington lets government spending continue to grow, the deficit naturally gets bigger. But …
  • Even if Washington cuts spending, it can’t solve the problem any time soon! Just as in Spain and Greece, the cuts merely help sink the economy, producing much larger deficits anyhow.

As you can see, the deficit and debts are going to have a far bigger impact on politics and the economy than ever before… Although this historic deadline — January 1, 2013 — is still weeks away, it is already having a profound effect on the U.S. economy:

  • CNBC recently reported that corporate America is on hold — cutting hiring and expansion plans. And most are even refusing to provide any earnings guidance on conference calls — all due to the massive dangers this great fiscal cliff poses for them.
  • At the same time, millions of investors are frozen in fear, refusing to buy or sell anything until they get a clearer picture of how this unprecedented new crisis will impact the markets.

While these and other authorities are issuing warning after warning, they are not telling YOU what you should be doing right now to protect your wealth. My team and I are changing that…[Visit my site to learn how.]

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*http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/big-surprise-dead-ahead-in-race-for-white-house-50315

Editor’s Note: The above post may have been edited ([ ]), abridged (…), and reformatted (including the title, some sub-titles and bold/italics emphases) for the sake of clarity and brevity to ensure a fast and easy read. The article’s views and conclusions are unaltered and no personal comments have been included to maintain the integrity of the original article.

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3 comments

  1. As humans we have become accustomed to the fast easy everything on tap life. Consider how many electric gadgets you own and what they do. Then consider how many you actually need. They may simply be idiotic eg. electric tin opener or simply require a design change. Or my personal favourite. The electric soap dispenser. (this one kills me!) Tiles or wooden floors instead of carpets – no vaccuum cleaner. This ever increasing consumption of Finite resources to make products that are in effect garbage, products which even worse consume finite electricity and resources and to top it all then get binned. This is the fundamental problem. You have to understand why this lunacy prevails. Our Greed growth based capitalist system that we have been brain washed since birth to love has a fundamental flaw. The flaw is starting to manifest itself as cracks in the foundations right now. The flaw lies in the very fundamentals of the capitalist equation. Infinite growth with finite resources driven by unsustainable populations. The first cracks would always be in the financial system. Countries are no longer sustainable in their own right. They have forgotten the fundamentals of security of life. Food water shelter and health. Instead we are in a headlong rush to produce nonsensical wasteful products and services and yet no single country can sustain itself in it’s own right. Eventually what happens and it’s happening, is countries can no longer sustain themselves even in a global sense. i.e. selling and exporting good is still insufficient to cover local demand. (Only so many people can be supported in any economic model.) Then the countries borrow……eventually they borrow so much that even the interest payments are a problem. Forgetting about the principal. They long ago gave up the concept of repaying the principal! (it’s a snowball system) That in itself proves my point. In a nutshell the financial crisis is a crack in the wall. What is coming ito of the resources crunch is a wrecking ball. The world (with us as a part of it) can only survive with about 1 billion people and very few of us will have an office job, drive a car or even have electricity the way you now understand it. We have to fundamentally change the way we think about society and life. The fossil fuel binge is almost over. Unfortunately politicians (another fundamental flaw) only think 3 years in front of them. I fear though that even that even time frame has caught up with them. Deal with reality before reality deals with you.

  2. Losing a good paying job and replacing it with a “summer job” is still a job on a Gov’t. chart, but it is quite different for the economy, which is why I believe that the US is in TWICE as much trouble as the Gov’t. stats seem to say…

    Until the Fed MAKES the Big Banks lower mortgages rates so Seniors (who have no jobs) and those with good mortgage payment histories can all refinance at lower rates, our financial situation will continue to get worse. The Fed can either do this by asking the Big Banks to loosen their too strict requirements or simply set up a national lending mechanism to do it and under cut the Big Banks…

    Until the Big Banks are forced to “Do Business” they will just continue to enjoy almost free money to pay with and invest it GROWING bigger, what incentive do they have to CHANGE?

  3. As every more “real” people begin to understand what is now happening here in the USA, hopefully they will start asking their elected Leaders (on the record) what they purpose doing about and when!

    Here is one of the best explanations of the “euro” crash that now is also going to be happening in the USA to the US$ BUT TO A LARGER DEGREE! http://youtu.be/8PX6zdQ9cd0

    It is scary to me that they are now focused on these 4:
    Medicare reform,
    Social Security,
    personal tax returns or
    extended unemployment benefits

    When they together make up only about 6% of the 2013 budget while the Military makes up about 60% of the budget. (Great Fiscal chart: http://www.OneMinuteForPeace.org) The Ultra Wealthy via their “owned” elected Leaders, are now picking on those most unable to defend themselves, a practice that I think we all should call Un-American!

    Instead The Gov’t needs to end the Wars (including the War on Drugs) that we are not winning and get back into making things better in the USA by rebuilding our infrastructure ASAP, before China* buys all the Earths raw materials needed to do it with.

    *See the book: Red Alert, for much more on that.