Here is where I don my tinfoil hat
Tomorrow we hit the federal debt ceiling.
I always considered the federal debt ceiling to be just political theater, nothing more.
The Treasury Department can move money around so that the debt ceiling is meaningless for months.
But then I spotted these charts.
At any other time those charts would be curious, but that's all.
That this is happening the week before the debt ceiling makes my 'spidey sense' tingle.
One week the Treasury is flush. The next week, when it actually matters, the cupboard is bare.
It's like seeing someone who owes you money buying rounds of drinks at the bar, but when you ask him for the money he owes you he's suddenly 'broke'.
So I looked around for an explanation and I found this.
As of October 24, the U.S. Treasury was flush with $435 billion of cash. That was because the department’s bureaucrats had been issuing debt hand-over-fist and piling up a cash hoard, apparently, for the period after March 15, 2017 when President Hillary Clinton would need to coax another debt ceiling increase out of Congress...
As of the Daily Treasury Statement (DTS) for March 7, the cash balance was down to just $88 billion — meaning that $347 billion of cash has flown out the door since October 24.
And I find that on March 8 alone the Treasury consumed another $22 billion of cash — bringing the balance down to $66 billion!
...
What’s different this time around is that the bureaucrats have apparently decided to sabotage what they undoubtedly believe to be the usurper in the White House.
At this point I could don my tin foil hat because this massive cash drain was clearly deliberate.
Last year, for example, during the same 47 day period, the operating deficit was even slightly larger — $253 billion. But the Treasury funded that mainly by new borrowings of $157 billion, which covered 62% of the shortfall. Its cash balance was still $223 billion on March 7. Again, that cash balance is just $66 billion right now.
Is that the case? Is the Treasury Department doing to the Trump Administration what the CIA/Deep State is doing (i.e. undermining Trump)?
I have no proof at all, but it sure is suspicious.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin doesn't appear to want a fight with Congress over the budget, but Trump might.
That's where the drawdown in cash is important.
Normally Trump would have months to battle over the debt ceiling, selling a simple (if misleading) case to the public, before the pain even starts.
By eliminating the cash reserves, that window of time shrinks, and the pain starts earlier. The argument for long-term cuts has less swaying power when agencies are already shutting down.
The raw numbers are chilling: In August, the federal government would have to cut expenditures by about $134 billion, or 10 percent of the month’s GDP. If it chose, for instance, to fund Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, supplies for the troops and interest on our bonds, it would have to stop funding every other part of the federal government. The drop in demand, when coupled with the turmoil in the markets and the general financial uncertainty, would undoubtedly throw the economy back into a recession. Also keep in mind that we have to roll over $500 billion in debt that month, and if there was uncertainty about how we were going to pay our bills, it is not clear we could find buyers for our debt at anything less than an exorbitant rate.
If this is an effort to undermine Trump, it's so subtle that it's ingenious.
Comments
Our debt is also finding fewer buyers recently.
Japanese and Chinese investors especially are looking elsewhere for places to use their cash. Aside from the dubious gleam our economic health has had since the Great Recession (when few nations' economic health looked particularly shiny), did someone overseas know something that American investors don't know in this quarter?
I'm stuck on the people involved and the motivation(s).
Who made what decisions at whose behest? It could be either side with another wild hypothesis being Bannon wants chaos and/or brinksmanship.
Microwaves...
Maddow has Trump tax returns tonight. The media agrees with HER that it is time for President Pence...
" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "
Microwaves?
What's your point here? Do you not know that there are at least 3 different ovens on the market (one microwave, one convection and one steam) that have cameras and Internet connections and are susceptible to being hacked and turned into spy devices?
Remember: shiny side out
So exactly how much is 20 trillion dollars?
http://demonocracy.info/infographics/usa/us_debt/us_debt.html
One Hundred Million Dollars
$100,000,000 - Plenty to go around for everyone.
Fits nicely on an ISO / Military standard sized pallet.
The couch is made from $46.7 million of crispy $100 bills.
US Debt 2017 – $20+ Trillion
Statue of Liberty seems rather worried as United States national debt is soon to pass 20% of the entire world's combined economy (GDP / Gross Domestic Product).
Here are some cool quotes from the founding fathers of United States of America, over 200 years ago saying the right things about the future and in a sense predicting today:
“I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and public debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared. To preserve our independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. If we run into such debts, we must be taxed in our meat and drink, in our necessities and in our comforts, in our labor and in our amusements.” – Thomas Jefferson
“If ever again our nation stumbles upon unfunded paper, it shall surely be like death to our body politic. This country will crash.” – George Washington
That's a powerful graphic, CB.
Thanks for sharing.
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
20 trillion dollars
You could create a league of ten baseball teams, each one having a stadium with about 40,000 of those chairs as fan seating.
A member of .1% elite vip-watches Big League games rubbing his butt on 50 million dollars.
Lap of Luxury. (ticket discount available to select clientele.) lol.
"La fiesta no es para los feos. No puedes pasar por aqui."
WTF did it go
Seriously, isn't time we call for an audit?
It wasn't stolen
It got spent on legal things.
It's just the Treasury decided to suddenly "not borrow more".
It's the timing that raises eyebrows.
Whose legal things? Bill & Hillary?
Their legal fees from White Water to the present must be pretty impressive.
They've already done an audit. You and everyone in your family,
including each child, owe $65,346 as your portion of the public debt. Please make check payable to Internal Revenue Service and mail to ensure postmark before midnight May 14, 2017.
"Army Can’t Account for $6.5 Trillion in Defense Spending"
While Right-Wingers Lose Their Minds Over Social Security, Army Can’t Account for $6.5 Trillion in Defense Spending
Where are those biggest of frauds of all, the Fiscally Conservative Republicans, when you need them to answer for something that kinda, maybe, should be, right up their alley?
Imagine a world in which this might be covered as headline news, which is what this is worthy of. Maybe someday journalism will follow the lead of the great, progressive comedians of this era:
"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
- Kurt Vonnegut
Lee Camp is right. Just rename it as something to do with
national security and you can get the money.
What we need is a National Defense Health Act. As a nation, the demographic most likely to sign up to fight America's wars are the least healthy due to poverty and the resultant lack of health care. To keep America safe we need our warriors to be healthy and strong.
@CB
Well, if the US PTB would drop their hostile corporate/military take-over of the rest of the world, then America wouldn't have to attack/invade all of these other countries to steal their stuff.
Then America could have a normal-sized military, a normal-sized military budget and spend some money on maintaining the country, rather than having to worry about having enough 'healthy warriors' to fight the War Against The World being waged for the increased enrichment and power of corporate/billionaire 'American interests' - and maybe we could all live normal life-spans.
I know, unicorn dreams...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
So nine to ten times their annual budget, I'm more
than doubtful.
Maybe they shrink wrapped it
and put it on a boat. Didn't they lose a boatload of money during the Iraq War debacle? Interesting that the defense enforcers/war criminals for the global owners of the place seems to be a giant money sucking black hole. Perhaps the dark side defense contractors ate it all. These creepy crawlers including Eric Prince or Booz Allen Hamilton (parent company The Carlye Group) seem to be above any human law. Don't the spooks have a secret budget that's so deeply buried no one can know about it and no human eyes are allowed to look at it and stay alive?
It's my sincere hope that every one of these
FRightwingnuts and their neoliberal pals eat each other alive. The sooner, the better. Rec'd!!
Inner and Outer Space: the Final Frontiers.
Who needs tinfoil
when you could stick your head into the sand?
I chose concrete as I'm waiting for the three-point harness for my recliner.
Thanks as always for the shit news gjohn.
Somebody has to say it.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Off topic but I thought people would like to see this
gem of a deal that Donald's son in law just received.
Remember the hype of when Trump spoke to Beijing's president and China got upset about that? Then Trump got some type of great deal with China (sorry I have forgotten the details, but I think his business got 28 new contracts and people were upset because it goes against the Emoluments Clause)
I thought that Hillary's pay to play would have been investigated by the republicans even if she didn't become president and now I see why they aren't going to touch that.
It's the same reason why Obama didn't go after Bush for his war crimes. He knew that if he did then the next president would go after him for his war crimes.
The Trump boys are flying around the world to do business and they both get secret service details which just one trip cost us close to $100,000 .
Since the republicans are always concerned about wasted money, I would think that they would be a tad upset about how much it's costing us for their protection, the amount of money spent when Trump goes to his club in Florida and the money spent on keeping his wife and son safe in New York.
Trump spent 8 years bitching at every time Obama went golfing, remember?
And the republicans are telling us that they have to cut our social programs because there isn't enough money for them even though we have paid into it since we started working.
Too bad that there isn't a way for us to get a lump sum of the money that we had to pay for it.
Gawd I hate hypocrites.
Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.
Voting is like driving with a toy steering wheel.
@snoopydawg
Hypocrites? Or blatant thieves and scammers forfeiting any claim to qualification for public office by breaking their Oaths of Office in abusing the public trust and defrauding the American public of what they've paid for/own?
Sorry to nit-pick, but there seems to be a distinction between the terms used for politicians and other of the Parasite Class and for non-multi-millionaire members of the public when scamming large numbers of people and it kinda signifies the degree of difference in perceptions of the two classes and of the treatment received.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Sad fact is
you couldn't possibly be more right. It is a national security failure. Just as the Defense department is concerned climate change is becoming a national security issue, so to is the health of their pool of warriors.
National Security Health Act is badly needed.
Neither Russia nor China is our enemy.
Neither Iran nor Venezuela are threatening America.
Cuba is a dead horse, stop beating it.
Paying off government bonds
Wow! Sounds great in principle (no pun intended) but it actually paid the wealthy, who actually are the major buyers of Treasury bonds, besides foreign interests. So, like good little gluttons, the 1% are switching from T-bills to stocks. They can see (smell?) what's coming. That's partly why the stock market is on an expanding bubble. These allegedly brilliant economic masterminds, you know the ones who didn't see the real estate bubble bursting in 2008, do not realize that they are helping to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. How are we, with ever-decreasing income, going to buy the goods and services they want to sell us, if we haven't got any money? Consumer borrowing is as high as 78% of consumer income--that is simply unsustainable.
Don't understand a word and am too lazy to read it again
(may be later in the day) but all I know is that there are supposedly German gold reserves in the vaults somewhere in the US. Trump could just steal those. We don't believe anyhow anymore that the US would give them back. I think Angela should ask him, but who knows what he would do to her? Don't touch the German women at the wrong place, Sir Donald. You might get the combined fury of German insulted manlyhoods back at you. /s (yack, may be it's not snark, who knows)
Sounds to me that we've become the new Greece.
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
@Lily O Lady
We are all Greece; we are all disposables. Once the Parasite Class have everything and we and the planet are toast, they'll just buy a new planet with oxygen and everything to live immortally and happily every after. Technology will save them at their last gasping minute, somehow, if Super-Jesus doesn't. I'd call it magical thinking, if I believed that there was any real thought involved, beyond the delusion that 'enough money fixes everything'...
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
As my daughter said when she was a toddler, "You read my head."
"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"
Double that tin foil
Reducing Treasury cash would have the effect of making the March 15 debt crisis more acute. Why do this? I think that both Hillary and Donald are on the same page. They want to reduce spending on social programs. Trump has already signaled that he wants to increase the Defense budget, setting it up to be a non-negotiable part of government spending decreases. Lets face it, if you are running the government and you look at what you can do with the money that you have, then it becomes really clear that social spending is a massive resource to draw away from. Every president since Reagan has considered this, from both parties.
This upcoming crisis is a setup. As we approach the debt ceiling Republicans in Congress are going to fight raising it (on principle, yeah right). They are going to demand a decrease in the government spending in return. The more acute the crisis the more intense the pressure will be to do something immediately. Ironically government spending on social programs is the major factor that kept the great recession from becoming a depression.
Be prepared to protest this Spring and Summer.
Capitalism has always been the rule of the people by the oligarchs. You only have two choices, eliminate them or restrict their power.
@The Wizard
(Obviously, this is kinda general, if in response to the information in your highly important post.)
Why wait until spring? Do it now. Tell them that the people know what they're doing and why and that this set-up and the usual excuses don't work any more and never did, the way they so ignorantly thought they did.
Let them know that the American people are not going to take this lying in a prone position and waiting to literally die because of social cuts and the defrauding of the American public of pensions into which they've paid life-long, for further corporate/billionaire/pet politician enrichment, and even more-unsafe food, water, air and products to allow corporations to get away with even more cost-cutting knowing and obvious murder.
Why wait, yet again, until it's a 'done deal' and the increased for-profit suffering and dying begins?
They apparently believe all of the people are conned by their propaganda - disillusion the suckers. And let them know that you aren't going to take it any more. If the American people don't, who will?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
There's only one thing
that can spend more money than a Democrat.......
David Stockman
quoted in an article by Tyler Durden of Zero Hedge. Today is the budgetary doomsday and I believe that both the Dems and the Republicans wanted this to happen. It makes what would be a very unpopular decision with the American public written in stone. Both parties (or should I say both wings of the same party) can wash their hands and claim that there is nothing they can do about it. It was a nice neat little package left at Congress' doorstep courtesy of Boehner and Obama.
This is not something that just happened by accident. It was purposefully put ion to wreck the social safety net and all of Congress knows just that. There will be a lot of gnashing of teeth and hands flying up in the air in dramatic fashion, but I truly believe that most of Congress really wants this.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Me too gulfgal
who knows what they are up to with the deficit but god knows they are doing it again. The longer Trump is in office the more I think he is just a good foil for the powers that be to get what they want without the blow back. So far the Demorat's are pretty lame and have kicked into over kill with the Putin is going to getcha bs. Who knows where this funny money went but I'm sure it's another scare tactic to deflect their complicit finagling of public funds that somehow end up being dire to the health of the empires con.
@shaharazade
Kinda wondering if they used that money to buy another False Flag disaster within America to 'justify' nuking all and sundry, starting with Russia, China, Iran and a few others on the PTB 'To Do In' list, completing absolute global destruction in short order? If so, we'd better practice oxygen-free breathing in a radioactive environment without food, water or power, in case we aren't lucky enough to be at Ground Zero.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
@gulfgal98
Won't it also wind up putting America in the hands of international finance, like Greece?
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.