How US National Debt Could Lead To A Death Spiral

Silver appears to be easier to buy now than it has been the last couple of years. Premiums are way down; dealers are stocked up and of course it didn’t shoot up to $3000 an ounce like many predicted. However, the decrease in popularity I believe has something to do with the media and their portrayal of the US economy. 

If you’ve read any financial news lately, the headlines are nothing but praise for the US economy and the Federal Reserve. Headline after headline read, “Inflation has been beaten”, “The Jobs market is too strong”, and one of my personal favorites, “The Consumer is resilient”.

However, like usual the mainstream financial news is not telling the whole story. There’s been a couple of events that have happened recently I want to discuss. 

The first is the comments by the black swan author Nassim Taleb. Taleb spoke at a conference and mimicked what JP morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said recently: The US national debt is unsustainable and will spiral out of control. While Dimon said it would be around 10 years before things started to break, Taleb didn’t predict when. One thing he did note though was, this would be a white swan event not a black event. This is significant because here he is saying we know it’s coming; we just can’t stop it. Both Dimon and Taleb have compared the debt graphically to a hockey stick, meaning when it goes up it will shoot up exponentially (How to solve wasteful government spending?- read here).

One other notable story has to do with Jerome Powell appearing on 60 minutes. The market dropped significantly the day after the interview as Powell indicated there would probably be no rate cut in March. He did indicate they needed to see more evidence that inflation was down before deciding to cut rates. One of the more frustrating things I found with this interview was that Scott Pelley tossed Powell a lot of softball questions.

It would be great to hear him, or someone push on the accuracy of the statistics as well (Why Unemployment rate is flawed) as mentioned things like shrinkflation. There was no real discussion of the debt and consequence, although I have to say that much of the debt is the result of reckless spending by the government.

It’s all but certain at this point the national debt is going to cause either hyperinflation or some other type of economic disaster. After the disaster hits, there’s various thoughts on what will happen (7 prepping tips- read here). Many believe a Central Bank Digital Currency (Why you should be skeptical of CBDCs) will come; others think that people will flock to a cryptocurrency like bitcoin. It’s obviously tough to know, but I believe like so many others it’s just a matter of time. 

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