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“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked. “Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.” Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, 1926. The financial position of the federal government of the United States has been gradually deteriorating for decades. It is now rushing headlong to the financial tipping point that will cause it to default onRead more

In 1992 a book entitled “Bankruptcy 1995: The Coming Collapse of America and How to Stop It” hit the nation by storm. Written by Harry Figgie, a prominent businessman who had built a Fortune 500 company, and Gerald Swanson, an economics professor with expertise in public finance, it forecast that the US federal government wouldRead more

In the first two months of the current fiscal year that began on October 1st, the US national debt has grown $320 billion. That is $21 billion more than the same 2-month period last year, which illustrates that the growth of the national debt continues to accelerate.

The rise in commodity prices over the past several months has been unrelenting. Equally unrelenting has been the stream of central bank apologists aiming to re-direct the blame for soaring prices to almost everything imaginable except the real cause, which of course is unrestrained money printing.

So despite the fact the Fed will be purchasing $600 billion of US government debt instruments, T-bond and T-note yields are climbing, a clear sign that investors are rushing to sell their US government paper. Why? Because they know the purchasing power of the dollar is being debased by QE, and more importantly, will continue being debased.

Inflation is coming back. In fact, it never really left, although there was a brief moment after the Lehman Brothers collapse when it appeared that the dollar would slip into a deflationary collapse. But after peering over the precipice, Bernanke and his central bank cohorts around the world did not like what they saw. So pump they did, and the dollar and other national currencies have been losing purchasing power ever since. But the loss of purchasing power is about to gain momentum.

Hyperinflation results when a country’s central bank turns government debt into more currency than is demanded in economic activity. It is unfortunately impossible to measure precisely the demand for currency. Nevertheless, the rate at which the government is borrowing can be used as a general guideline to determine if too much currency is being created.

The US Treasury has taken another step on the road leading to hyperinflation. It announced that it will borrow $200 billion and leave this money on deposit with the Federal Reserve. The announcement was made with bald disinformation aimed at camouflaging the true impact of this step.

If the US government cannot attract enough savings to meet its borrowing needs, it has to ‘print’ the dollars it wants to spend, which is of course what quantitative easing is all about. But this printing comes with a cost, just like every episode of government currency creation throughout history. It is the cost of inflation, and eventually, hyperinflation.

The government spends more money than it is receiving in taxes, which forces it to borrow. As these deficits grow, they eventually exceed the market’s capacity or willingness to lend money to the government.