debt

Authored by Paul Craig Roberts:

Do not be misled by what you see around you, or be influenced by what you see. You live in a world which is a playground of illusion, full of false paths, false values and false ideals. But you are not part of that world.
— Sai Baba
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel Boorstin
You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.
— Buckminster Fuller

Chicagoans have no idea how much pension debt Illinois politicians have placed upon them, a staggering total of $130,000 billion, which leaves each household on the hook for $125,000. People are getting what they voted for, but are not yet aware of the magnitude of the crisis. [...]

Georgia Democrat, Stacey Abrams, a former state representative, acknowledged that she owes more than $200,000 in personal loans, credit card debt, and IRS back taxes.  She even admits that she did not understand that credit cards incur interest.  In spite of this, she has gained strong popular within influential Democrat circles. [...]

In the name of the fight against terrorism, the United States is currently waging “credit-card wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. Never before has this country relied so heavily on deficit spending to pay for its conflicts. The consequences are expected to be ruinous for the long-term fiscal health of the U.S., but they go far beyond the economic. Massive levels of war-related debt will have lasting repercussions of all sorts.

MINNEAPOLIS – Over a decade ago, a disturbing trend among farmers in India captured headlines, as suicides among Indian farmers began to spiral out of control.

Introduction

The US economy and its financial structures have never recovered from the great financial meltdown of 2008 despite the passage of ten years. Little discussion has been given to the fact that the Republican Congress last year abandoned the process of mandatory budget cuts or automatic sequestration that had been voted in a feeble attempt to rein in the dramatic rise in US government debt.
The post America is In a Debt Trap Death Spiral appeared first on BSNEWS.

From the standpoint of Russia’s dilemma, this is an important column.  Putin’s partial impotence via-a-vis Washington is due to the grip that neoliberal economics exercises over the Russian government. Putin cannot break with the West, because he believes that Russian economic development is dependent on Russia’s integration within the Western economy. That is what neoliberal economics tells the Russian economic and financial establishment.

It’s called “Vollgeld Initiative” – in German, meaning more or less “Referendum for Sovereign Money”. What is “Sovereign Money”? It’s money produced only by the Central Bank, by the “Sovereign”, the government, represented by its central bank. Money created in accordance with the needs of the economy, as contrasted to the profit and greed motives of the banking oligarchy, what it is today; money creation at will, by private banking.