FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Recession’ Category

When Barack Obama, the Federal Reserve and the mainstream media tell us that we are in the middle of an economic recovery, is that supposed to be some kind of sick joke?  According to newly released numbers, over 44 million Americans are now on food stamps.  That is a new all-time record and that number is 13.1% higher than it was just one year ago.  So how many Americans have to go on food stamps before we can all finally agree that the U.S. economy is dying?  50 million?  60 million?  All of us?  The food stamp program is the modern equivalent of the old bread lines.  More than one out of every seven Americans now depends on the federal government for food.  Oh, but haven’t you heard?  The economy is showing dramatic improvement.  Corporate profits are up.  The stock market is soaring.  Happy days are here again.

It just seems inconceivable that anyone can claim that the economy is improving when the number of Americans on food stamps continues to set a brand new record every single month.  But the food stamp program is not the only indicator that the economy is still having massive problems.  The following are 10 more reasons why the U.S. economy is simply not getting any better….

#1 Some recent statistics actually indicate that the number of unemployed Americans is still going up.  According to Gallup, unemployment in the United States rose to 10.3% at the end of February.  That is the highest number Gallup has reported since early last year.

#2 The housing industry is still a complete and total disaster.  In fact, new home sales in the U.S. in January were 11.2% lower than they were in December.  Not only that, the number of new home sales in January was 18.6% lower than the number of new home sales in January 2010.  That is not a sign of improvement.

#3 There wouldn’t even be much of a housing industry at all at this point if it was not for the U.S. government.  Right now the U.S. government is either writing or guaranteeing well over 90 percent of all mortgages in the United States.  So what would the housing market look like in 2011 if the government was not in the picture?

#4 In 2010, more than a million U.S. families lost their homes to foreclosure for the first time ever, and that number is expected to go even higher in 2011.

#5 Due to rampant economic decay and record numbers of foreclosures there are areas in most of our major cities that now look like “war zones”.  For example, the Huffington Post is reporting that there are now approximately 15,000 vacant buildings in the city of Chicago and there are approximately 60,000 vacant houses and apartments in the city of Las Vegas.

#6 According to the Oil Price Information Service, U.S. drivers spent an average of $347 on gasoline during the month of February, which was 30 percent more than a year earlier.  This represented 8.5% of median monthly income.  So what is going to happen when gas prices go even higher?  Sadly, the average price of gasoline in the U.S. has risen another 4 cents since yesterday and it is likely to go much higher from here.

#7 The U.S. trade deficit continues to grow.  The trade deficit was about 33 percent larger in 2010 than it was in 2009, and the 2011 trade deficit is expected to be even bigger.

#8 The CredAbility Consumer Distress Index, which measures the average financial condition of U.S. households, declined in every single quarter in 2010.

#9 The number of Americans that have become so discouraged that they have given up searching for work completely now stands at an all-time high.

#10 The U.S. national debt is growing faster than ever.  The Obama administration is projecting that the federal budget deficit for this fiscal year will be a new all-time record 1.65 trillion dollars.  It is hard to even imagine how much money that is.  If you went out today and started spending one dollar every single second, it would take you over 31,000 years to spend one trillion dollars.  Long ago the U.S. government should have been getting these deficits under control, but instead they are just getting even larger.

So in light of the statistics above, can anyone really claim that we are in the middle of an economic recovery?

The truth is that there is no sign that any of the long-term trends that are destroying the U.S. economy are even slowing down.

Millions of jobs continue to be shipped overseas.

The U.S. dollar continues to be devalued.

The federal government continues to go into more debt.

State and local governments continue to go into more debt.

Our trade deficit continues to grow.

Our cities continue to be transformed into wastelands as they are being systematically deindustrialized.

The number of Americans that are dependent on the government continues to soar.

The U.S. middle class continues to shrink.

I know that I harp on these themes over and over, but it is vitally important that everyone understands that the mainstream media is lying to us.

The U.S. economy is dying a very painful death and there is no hope on the horizon.

Things are not going to be getting better.  Well, they may get a bit better for the boys down on Wall Street, but for the rest of us our standards of living are going to continue to decline.

The best days for the U.S. economy are already behind us.  What lies ahead is a whole lot of pain.

We are going to pay the price for decades of corruption and incompetence.

An economic collapse is coming and you had better get ready.

The Economic Collapse

How in the world can anyone claim that things are getting better?  Sometimes the numbers are so clear that they simply cannot be denied.  According to the U.S. Census Bureau, median household income in the United States fell from $51,726 in 2008 to $50,221 in 2009.  That was the second yearly decline in median household income in a row.  In other words, America is getting poorer.  Just let that statistic above sink in for a little bit.  In 2009, American families had roughly $1,500 less coming in than the year before.  Not that the cost of living has gone down either.  Have you been to the supermarket lately?  Things are getting ridiculous out there.  In fact, middle class American families are being squeezed as never before.  More mothers and fathers are scrambling to find second and third jobs just to pay the mortgage and to keep the lights on and to put food on the table.  This is not a time of prosperity in America.  We are in a state of serious decline and it is time to wake up and admit it.

When you stop and analyze the new Census data, something jumps out at you right away.  You quickly realize that these income declines are not limited to just a few regions of the country – they are literally happening from coast to coast.

The U.S. economy is in deep, deep trouble and the proof is in the numbers.  The following are 12 statistics that reveal just how far the standard of living in America is declining….

1 – According to the Census Bureau, median household income dropped in 34 U.S. states in 2009, and the only state where median household income actually increased was in North Dakota.

2 – The Census Bureau data also revealed that of the 52 largest metro areas in America, only the city of San Antonio did not see a decline in median household income in 2009.

3 – 35 percent of all U.S. households now live on $35,000 or less.

4 – According to the Census Bureau, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line is the highest it has been in 15 years.

5 – The number of Americans enrolled in the food stamp program passed the 41 million mark for the first time ever in June.

6 – The number of Americans in the food stamp program increased a staggering 55 percent from December 2007 to June 2010.

7 – One out of every six Americans is now enrolled in at least one anti-poverty program run by the federal government.

8 – Nearly 10 million Americans now receive unemployment insurance, which is almost four times as many that were receiving it back in 2007.

9 – In 2009, U.S. consumer spending experienced the biggest decline since 1942.

10 – As millions of young Americans struggled just to survive, marriages fell to a record low in 2009.  Today, only 52% of Americans 18 years or older are married. 

11 – The only group that saw their household income increase in 2009 was those making $180,000 or more.

12- According to the Huffington Post, the gap between the richest and poorest Americans grew in 2009 to its largest margin ever….

The top-earning 20 percent of Americans – those making more than $100,000 each year – received 49.4 percent of all income generated in the U.S., compared with the 3.4 percent made by the bottom 20 percent of earners, those who fell below the poverty line, according to the new figures. That ratio of 14.5-to-1 was an increase from 13.6 in 2008 and nearly double a low of 7.69 in 1968.

Not that it is a bad thing to make money. 

Contrary to what our socialist friends may think, it is actually a very good thing to work hard and make money.

The point is that the game is rigged and the bottom 80 percent of us are being left behind.

The middle class is being systematically destroyed.  At the rate we are going, we will eventually have a very small group of ultra-wealthy Americans and a gigantic mountain of very poor Americans that are barely able to survive.

The answer to this is not a “redistribution of wealth”. 

What middle class Americans actually need are good jobs with good benefits.

You know, the kind of jobs that the U.S. economy used to produce.

For the vast majority of Americans, all they have to offer in the marketplace is their labor.  If they cannot get someone to hire them for a wage that will enable them to take care of their families then they simply cannot make it without government assistance.

But what our leaders have done in the name of “globalism” is that they have essentially merged our economy with the economies of nations such as China where blue collar workers are paid about a dollar an hour to do the same jobs that American workers get paid 15 to 20 dollars an hour to do.

As a result, jobs and factories are fleeing the United States so rapidly it is hard to even describe.  The deindustrialization of America is happening right in front of our eyes, but the American people have become so dumbed down that most of them don’t even seem to have the capacity to understand what is going on. 

Quite a few advocates of “free trade” (which is not “free” or “fair” at all under our current system) have left comments on my columns telling me that the American people better just suck it up because this is how it is now and the world isn’t going back.  These advocates of the globalist system say that the American people just need to toughen up and learn to compete and need to just accept that the standard of living for workers across the globe is going to be equalized and that is all there is to it.

So are you ready to have the same standard of living as a Chinese sweatshop worker who works 12 hours a day for one dollar an hour?

That is where we are headed.

But things did not have to be this way.  We did not have to merge our economy with communist China and allow them to keep their currency devalued 40 percent lower than it should be so that they could dump massive amounts of cheap goods on our shores.  We did not have to elect politicians that believe that “globalism” is the answer to all of our problems.  We did not have to sign on to the WTO, NAFTA and all the other “free trade” agreements that are destroying the American middle class.

Labor is now a global commodity.  American workers are now part of the global labor force.  The bargaining power of the average American worker has dropped through the floor.  Now the monolithic predator corporations that dominate our economy don’t even have to deal with American workers if they don’t want to.

Very few of our politicians admitted that merging us into a one world economy would mean a dramatic decline in the standard of living of middle class Americans.

But that is exactly what is happening.

Meanwhile, the federal government, our state governments and our local governments keep going into massive amounts of new debt in an effort to keep paying the bills. 

There are some state governments, like Illinois, that are basically flat broke.  In fact, Illinois doesn’t even bother to pay many of their bills anymore.

Of course the federal government is the worst offender of them all.  The U.S. national debt is rapidly approaching 14 trillion dollars, and most of us have gotten so accustomed to it that we don’t even talk about it much anymore.

That is how bizarre things have gotten.

As America keeps getting poorer, and as U.S. taxpayers see their incomes continue to decline, how in the world are U.S. government finances going to turn around?

The truth is that our leaders should be in full blown crisis mode in an attempt to fix this thing.  Pieces of the U.S. economy are literally falling off all around us and our leaders are pushing the debt accelerator to the floor as we head toward a giant cliff.

But instead our politicians are prancing about the countryside telling us that everything is going to be just great as long as we cast our votes for them in the fall.

And the mainstream media keeps telling us that the “recession” is over and that soon the U.S. economy will be better than ever.

Is it any wonder that faith in the mainstream media is now at an all-time low?      

According to a new poll just released by Gallup, the number of Americans that have little to no trust in the mass media (57%) is at an all-time high.

A significant percentage of the American people is starting to wake up.

What about you?

Are you awake yet?

The Economic Collapse

According to the NBER, at long last the great recession is officially over. Bloomberg reports Worst U.S. Recession Since 1930s Ended in June 2009.

The longest and deepest U.S. recession since the Great Depression ended in June 2009, lasting 18 months, the National Bureau of Economic Research said.

“The committee decided that any future downturn of the economy would be a new recession and not a continuation of the recession that began in December 2007,” the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based bureau’s business cycle dating group said today in a statement. “The basis for this decision was the length and strength of the recovery to date.” The committee is the accepted arbiter of when recessions start and end.

“The economy has begun to move forward, albeit at a slow, disappointing pace,” said Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York. “It’s a recovery that feels fragile, and still raises questions about the risks to its sustainability.” The odds of the economy falling back into another recession are about 25 percent, Kasman said.

Over 50 and Never Working Again

The New York Times comments on the Fears of Never Working Again

Of the 14.9 million unemployed, more than 2.2 million are 55 or older. Nearly half of them have been unemployed six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. The unemployment rate in the group — 7.3 percent — is at a record, more than double what it was at the beginning of the latest recession.

According to a Gallup poll in April, more than a third of people not yet retired plan to work beyond age 65, compared with just 12 percent in 1995.

Older workers who lose their jobs could pose a policy problem if they lose their ability to be self-sufficient. “That’s what we should be worrying about,” said Carl E. Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of the John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, “what it means to this class of the new unemployables, people who have been cast adrift at a very vulnerable part of their career and their life.”

Older people who lose their jobs take longer to find work. In August, the average time unemployed for those 55 and older was slightly more than 39 weeks, according to the Labor Department, the longest of any age group. That is much worse than in August 1983, also after a deep recession, when someone unemployed in that age group spent an average of 27.5 weeks finding work.

At this year’s pace of an average of 82,000 new jobs a month, it will take at least eight more years to create the 8 million positions lost during the recession. And that does not even allow for population growth.

Assuming it does take 8 more years to create 8 million jobs, of one accounts for population growth, unemployment will be 8% or more all the way to 2020.

Indeed America has Lost One Decade – Another One in Progress Now

Lost Decade Lowlights

• Americans living in poverty rose sharply to 14.3% from 13.2% in 2008
• Poverty level is the highest since 1994
• 43.6 million Americans are living below the official poverty threshold
• Inflation-adjusted income of the median household fell 4.8% between 2000 and 2009
• The number of 25-to-34-year-olds living with their parents rose 8.4% to 5.5 million in 2010 from 2008
• Child poverty rose to 23.8% for kids under six in 2009, compared to 21.3% a year earlier

What America Really Needs

Given the structural problems in the US, there is no strong reason to think this decade will be much better than the last. I talked about those structural problems in Response to Nouriel Roubini regarding “America Needs a Payroll Tax Cut”

Roubini says “America Need a Payroll Tax Cut”.

I say what America needs most right now is an honest appraisal of the sorry economic mess we are in, politicians who will work in genuine bipartisan effort to tackle our numerous structural problems, and willpower from everyone to make short-term sacrifices for the long-term benefit of the country.

To date, all the Fed and Congress have done is bail out the banks and the bondholders (in other words the wealthy), at the expense of the middle class.

Given the problems are numerous and deep, the solutions will undoubtedly require a series of across the board sacrifices. Those sacrifices need to start with public unions, the gigantic military complex, government employees in general (Congress and state legislatures in particular), as well as anyone bailed out or benefiting from the numerous and massive fiscally unsound policies of the Fed and Congress.

So far, we do not even have an admission by the President, by Congress, or by most economists as to what the problems are. Instead everyone wants to “stimulate” something, typically by throwing money at problems.

This is why the problems are unlikely to be fixed, and this is why we are likely to remain in a stagnant economy that produces few jobs for the remainder of the decade.

While the recession is over, it certainly does not feel like it. Moreover, because we fail to address the structural issues, the odds of slipping back into another recession are exceptionally high.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Like most politicians, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner likes to talk out of both sides of his mouth, generally saying contradictory things in sound bites that may sound reasonable at first glance, but look idiotic upon closer inspection.

For example please consider Private sector must drive economy: Geithner

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Geithner also said the government has big plans for reforming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the housing finance giants that now stand behind most of the mortgages in the U.S. after being bailed out by taxpayers during the 2008 financial crisis.

Geithner said Sunday that he doesn’t expect a double-dip recession, citing encouraging signs in the economy. “The most likely thing is you see an economy that gradually strengthens over the next year or two,” he said. Watch Geithner on Meet the Press.

Businesses are still “very cautious” and are trying to get as much productivity from current employees as possible, Geithner explained.

“They are in a very strong financial condition though. I think that’s very promising because there’s a lot of pent-up demand and there’s a lot of capacity still for them to step up and start to invest and hire again,” he added. “The government can help but we need to make this transition now to a recovery led by private investment.”

There’s a “good case” for the government to support small businesses, the unemployed and help states keep teachers in classrooms, but the transition to growth led by the private sector must happen, Geithner said.

Still, he stressed that the current system of housing finance has to change.

“We’re not going to preserve Fannie and Freddie in anything like their current form. We’re going to have to bring fundamental change to that market,” Geithner said.

There’s still a good case for the government preserving some type of guarantee to make sure that people can finance a house even in a very damaging recession, he explained.

“We’re also going to have to take a look at the broad set of policies we put in place to help encourage home ownership and particularly help low income Americans get access to affordable housing,” Geithner said. “We’re going to take a very broad look at how best to do that.”

No Pent Up Demand

For starters Geithner is wrong about pent up demand. The only pent up demand is in the opposite sense Geithner suggests.

Pent Up Demand Reality

• There is pent up demand for baby boomers to save more
• There is pent up demand for baby boomers to downsize
• There is pent up demand for banks to dump shadow housing inventory on the market and that will further suppress housing
• There is pent up demand for anyone with credit card bills to pay them down given outrageous interest rates banks charge for revolving credit vs. what one can make in CDs.

Although those are all necessary, nothing in that list remotely have anything to do with a private sector recovery in the manner Geithner presumes. Indeed, I expect a Expect Second-Half Housing and Durable Goods Crash.

The key reason is consumer spending plans have crashed as noted in Consumption Inflection Point – No One Wants Credit; Consumer Spending Plans Plunge

Thus, in regards to pent up demand Geithner is a fool, is lying, or both.

Geithner Hypocrisy

If that was not bad enough, we have to suffer with Geithner talking out of both sides of his mouth. While I certainly agree that the private sector needs to drive the economy, note his many statements to the contrary.

• “The government can help but we need to make this transition …”.
• “There’s a good case for the government to support small businesses …”
• “There’s still a good case for the government preserving some type of guarantee to make sure that people can finance a house even in a very damaging recession …”

How long is the “transition”?

Geithner does not say, so I will offer a translation: Forever.

Geithner is a clueless Keynesian clown who has no idea how the economy works. Not only do we have to put up with his blatant lies, we have to deal with his hypocritical never-ending government solutions.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
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The war against the middle class is silent and has grown since the recession started.  We don’t hear much about this because in large part, those falling out of the middle class don’t have the funds to purchase airtime with the media who is wedded to Wall Street.  40 million Americans now receive food assistance.  How often do we hear about this?  Each month we add tens of thousands to this number yet we are somehow in a recovery?  A recovery for which group of people is the question we should be asking.  Clearly the middle class isn’t feeling this recovery.  Nearly 17 percent of our population is underemployed.  But then we add 20 percent of those who are employed who are part of the working poor.  If we look at the top 10 occupational sectors in the U.S. we start to realize that many in the middle class are giving up higher paying jobs to service the needs of a tiny elite class.

Take a look at the top 10 occupational sectors in the U.S.:

Source:  BLS

Keep in mind this group is part of the “fully employed” class.  When we think of those who are employed we tend to think that most work in sectors that offer them a decent wage.  That is not the case at all.  In fact, when we look at the median household income of $52,000 we realize that most people are working in the service sector with lower wages and only boost the stat higher because of the two income trap.  9 out of 10 of the above jobs from cashiers to janitors make median wages from $8 to $14.

“To even reach the middle class median income, someone would need to make $25 an hour.  So even looking at the higher end of the above pay scale for these jobs, you would need to have two people making the top $14 to squeak out the necessary $25 per hour to make the $52,000 median income figure.  Keep in mind the above is the top employment sectors in our economy.  In the past where we had a bulk of our population working in manufacturing making the median income wage with one job, now we have given that up for two jobs in service sector work.  I’m not sure many in the middle class wanted to make that trade off.”

Wall Street wouldn’t mind if most Americans were part of the working poor so long as they can keep their exploiting ways going.  In fact, these banks want to sink these people even further by creating this large class of middle class debt serfdom.  Enormous mortgages, student loan debt, and credit cards are the new chains to keep the working and middle class stuck in financial purgatory.  Keep in mind the money the banking industry funnels out is largely taxpayer dollars so the prison we are creating is largely with our own money.  Wall Street investment banks and the too big to fail financial sector is broke.  They would be nonexistent if it weren’t for the complete and generous handout from the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve.  How do they repay the people for this?  They begin by squeezing every ounce of productivity of those still working:

Now this is a fascinating chart.  Even in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression somehow, we are able to become more productive.  Interestingly enough labor costs have fallen at the same time.  Of course the above translates to middle class workers having to put up with stagnant or falling wages while the bottom line keeps getting better.  But better for who?  The banking industry is juicing this game by gambling on Wall Street and not lending money out to the public.  This money was given to them under the pretense of keeping the loan channels alive for American workers.  So we have record foreclosures and bankruptcies while banks keep making billion dollar profits.  The raid on the middle class is like pirates taking the loot in broad daylight.

Yet the spin is out in full force.  Last month the rise in employment was largely from the government sector:

In fact, we can say that the entire rise in employment last month came because of temporary government work.  These Census jobs fall into the trend that we are seeing.  The middle class has to deal with transient work with no security and in order to have access to any semblance of a middle class lifestyle, must enter into a deal of debt serfdom with the banking elite.  We can see that we have hit an absolute structural tipping point in our society with the amount of long-term unemployed:

This is the largest percent of long-term unemployed in modern record keeping history.  What has happened is essentially the last hit against the middle class.  Without any security whatsoever, many are now unable to find work in a highly service oriented world.  The playing field is not level.  The banking sector fills the air with propaganda of the “free market” yet received trillions of dollars in handouts.  The hypocrisy is incredible and many Americans realize this.  This is why satisfaction with both Democrats and Republicans are at all time lows.  Both parties are beholden to the banking and Wall Street elite that work as a leech and are siphoning off every ounce of productivity from the American working and middle class.

The youth of our country are feeling this deeply:

The above chart would seem positive.  More students are taking summer school as opposed to working.  Yet this trend isn’t happening by choice.  It is happening by force.  There are little jobs for teens since they are competing with adults for low pay service sector jobs!  This is the idea of recovery in the new America.  A banking sector that is swimming in gold coins like Scrooge McDuck while middle class Americans find themselves competing with their own children for lower paying service sector jobs.

So what is the solution then?  How the argument is framed is completely false and the Federal Reserve is merely a protector of the banks.  They want to force austerity on the majority of Americans while banks and their predator executives still manage to keep their taxpayer subsidized yachts.  There is money but it went to the banking sector.  The game is fixed for most in the middle class.  Until we break up the too big to fail banks and have a government that truly represents the people’s best interest, there is little reason to believe that the overall trend will reverse.  The fact that 9 out of our top 10 job sectors are from the low paying service sector is not good news.

My Budget 360

There Is NO Economic Recovery Happening

Posted by Karl Denninger

Look folks, this is really quite simple.

Economic Stability and Recovery = Credit Expansion.

We cannot recover until we purge the excess debt from the system, and the longer we take to do that, the longer the pain will last and the worse it will be.

President Obama and Tim Geithner know this – that’s why they are constantly harping on banks to “lend more.”

Well, they may want banks to lend more but the people are fed up with being debt slaves and are borrowing less.

Today, we got the latest from The Fed on this subject:

Consumer credit decreased at an annual rate of 8-1/2 percent in November. Revolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 18-1/2 percent, and nonrevolving credit decreased at an annual rate of 3 percent.

I have updated the charts, and this is where we are as of November:

Non-revolving debt (basically auto loans) has pretty much stabilized since mid-year.  But consumer revolving debt – credit cards – continues to accelerate in its rate of decline.

The longer-term view looks like this:

These rates of decline are unprecedented and they are not slowing down.

The drop in credit card debt outstanding is on the largest on record since The Fed started keeping those records in 1943!

Consumer recovery? 

There is none!

It is axiomatic that you can pump yourself full of speedballs (e.g. government spending) and stay up for days at a time.  It is also true that if you do too many speedballs you will have a heart attack and die, and there is no way to know precisely which is the “one too many” until you shoot it – at which point it’s too late to change your mind!

The so-called “recovery” has been driven by pump-priming, which has had at its root one primary intent – to drive citizens into herd behavior and get them to spend more and more (that they don’t have!)

But at the same time this has been the message credit card rates have been ramped and lines slashed.  So now Joe Six Pack is faced with a 30% interest rate on his credit card – if he has any open line left!

There is no possible way for this program to work, since the entire problem originally - what began this recession – was people that were unable to make their debt payments in the first place!

Small business will not hire until their debt load comes down to a reasonable level.  This will take literal years if we don’t quit trying to prevent the contraction of both asset prices and credit levels.  In the mean time millions of Americans will remain in destitution!

There is no way to avoid the bankruptcy of those firms and individuals who are over-levered.  The best solution (take the pain now!) will not prevent the bankruptcies, but it will get them over with and let the nation begin to emerge from the morass within 12-18 months.  For every month we keep trying to prevent the liquidation of insoluble debt we add months of additional time to that required to resolve the bust and deepen the amount of pain that must be suffered, since all we are doing is adding more debt upon existing debt.

It is time for Washington DC, including The Fed and Congress along with President Obama to embrace the facts – we must finish the de-leveraging that is necessary to return the citizens and corporations of this nation to fiscal health.  At the same time the government must stop spending twice what it takes in in taxes.

We have consumed too many speedballs, our heart rate is now 160, and if we don’t cut it out the bond market is telling us that we are about to have a fatal heart attack.