The Real National Emergency is the National Debt – Ep. 445

The U.S. stock market continues to rally on basically the exact same news story that keeps on getting replayed.  Today, it was the absence of another government shutdown.  I guess now, this is final when it comes to no more government shutdowns, although that should have been obvious to everybody when Trump caved the last time and decided to pay everybody and temporarily end the shutdown. I said on my podcast at that time that that was it; that there was no way that there was going to be another government shutdown – yet the market continues to celebrate when they think that the shutdown’s not going to happen.

Well now they know for sure it’s not going to happen.  Everything’s signed, it’s a done deal and Trump is getting his wall anyway because he has now declared a national emergency, and so now because it’s a national emergency, we are now going to pull these funds from other parts of the budget and we are going to build the wall.

Of course, the real national emergency is not the lack of a wall, the failure to build the wall, but building up the national debt. The $22 trillion national debt.  We eclipsed that dubious milestone earlier in the week.  And again, when you talk about the national debt at $22 trillion, we’re talking about the tip of a huge iceberg. This is just the funded portion of the debt.  This is where the U.S. sells a bond and somebody owns that bond.

It doesn’t include liabilities like what the government owes for Social Security, or guaranteed bank deposits, or mortgages or student loans – that’s not there.  Those are contingent liabilities.  They’re just as real. They’re not even part of the national debt. So, when you look at all the liabilities that the U.S. government is on the hook for, you’re talking about well over $100 trillion – so $20 trillion is maybe d5 or 10 percent of the debt. But that debt is the real national emergency.