Off The Editor’s Desk – 4-14-2021
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send your username and password to you.
You owe $85,000
If my figuring is right, we all owe around $85,000 as our share of the national debt. So for a family of four that is over a third of a million dollars. Let’s all dig deep and pay it off. That’s like buying a new home. Can we all do that? I think not.
The national debt has skyrocketed $4.96 trillion since January of 2020 to over $28 trillion dollars.
As I was thinking about that debt, I concluded that with more than a hundred thousand immigrants appearing at our southern border each month, some of that debt could be placed on their shoulders and lessen our load. Like that will happen!
The following information about the debt and low interest rates come from an article written by Robert Romano who is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.
“In 2020, as the global economy was shutting down, markets were reeling and governments were organizing a response to the Covid pandemic, the U. S. dollar skyrocketed in value as interest rates collapsed, even as government spending was increasing exponentially.
“Since the start of 2020, the national debt has skyrocketed by a gargantuan $4.96 trillion amid the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and the $900 billion phase four legislation in December 2020 that was signed by President Trump, and now the $1.9 trillion Covid response bill signed by President Joe Biden.
“Some traditional views on the national debt take a supply and demand view on the topic, suggesting that as debt increases substantially, with the increase of supply, interest rates will have to rise in order for the market to compensate for the increase risk and presumed inflation.
“And yet, 10-year treasuries, at 1.65 percent, remain below where they were before the crisis began in mid-Jan. 2020 when the first Covid case arrived in the U. S., at 1.8 percent.”
When reading this story I was wondering how much of our debt is held by China? Supposedly, the public holds most of the U.S. debt. But, Romano tells a different story.
“$18 trillion out of the $28 trillion debt, or 64 percent, is held by governments: $11 trillion by the U.S. government, and around $7 trillion by foreign governments. But, nobody really cares, and so institutional media and other sources continue pretending officially reported debt ‘held by the public’ is a real statistic, even if it is incredibly misleading.
“And, yet”, Romano continues, “This is the major reason we don’t see skyrocketing interest rates or spiraling inflation, even with the debt spinning out of control. As if the spending binge already being undertaken were not enough, President Biden is now proposing an additional $2 trillion infrastructure spending bill, which he once again plans to pass through Congress on budget reconciliation with almost no Republican support.
“Of course, the economy is still very much in dire straits despite all of the spending. There still remain 7.8 million of the 25 million jobs that were lost in the pandemic last year yet to be recovered. One should expect the economy will remain on life support for the foreseeable future.”
But one thing that we all have heard is that President Biden will raise our tax load. He promised that during the campaign. You and I will be paying more to Uncle Sam and that is why, I some time ago suggested that we all save that $1,400 that we got recently from the Covid relief package, so we have something to repay that free money with. Oh, that’s right, there is no such thing as Free.
We were warned a long time ago that our economy would collapse as soon as the public got access to the government checkbook.
Thanks for reading! ~Carlton