Understand U.S. debt levels, from $37 trillion to hidden $100 trillion, and why gold is shining brighter as a hedge against inflation.

Your National Debt Update! One way to foresee the trajectory of the gold price is to simply track the flood of US Government red ink. It’s serious! Let’s start at the beginning by defining two essential terms: the federal debt and the deficit. The federal debt is the gross debt of the US government.  It grows year after year.  The deficit is the difference between the government income and spending in each specific fiscal or accounting year.  So if the deficit is a trillion dollars, the gross debt of the government will increase by a trillion dollars. April ended seven months of the US fiscal year 2025.  The national debt is $36.2 trillion.  One year ago the national debt was $34.6 trillion.  That means that so far this fiscal year Washington has run a $1.6 trillion shortfall. That means for the full year the deficit is sure to be at least $2 trillion.   Let me put that in perspective.

Massive Increase in Debt Signals Another Reason to Buy More Gold This is serious.  “Trillions are flying by so fast they’re hard to see!” That the description of the skyrocketing national debt  from Wolf Richter at WolfRichter.com.  He is right.  The US national debt just topped $36 trillion.  It broke through $35 trillion just four months ago!  It flew past $34 trillion like a bat out of the hot place only 11 months ago! It’s not just serious.  It’s deadly serious! The astounding thing is, says Richter, “that the government has been racking up these huge debts despite the strongly growing economy. No one wants to even imagine how this debt would balloon if there’s ever a recession with falling tax receipts and surging outlays. It’s just nuts to have this during the good times.” Let us repeat that last point.  What happens in a recession?  Government tax receipts fall.  Social spending increases.  Deficits explode. Right now, the average interest

...But they will keep digging! A few years ago we warned that the Republicans and Democrats were acting like they had signed a mutual suicide pact!  That’s because they were digging us into a debt hole so deep that eventually they wouldn’t be able to climb out.   Our advice at the time:  “STOP DIGGING!” But they didn’t.  Total US debt has jumped by $473 BILLION over the last 3 weeks alone, to a record $35.8 trillion. What is your share?  Well, at the risk of shocking you, your share of America’s debt has climbed by $1,450 in just the last three weeks.   How about interest on the national debt?   The US now holds a record $103,700 of debt for every American. That means you!  In 2024, interest on the national debt soared to $1.16 trillion.  That’s the first time it has raced above $1 trillion.  Uncle Sam now owes $103,700 for every American citizen, including you, and

Washington keeps piling on unsustainable costs for Americans.  Owning gold now “increasingly important!” A new fiscal year for the Federal government began on October 1.  The acknowledged US national debt has now hit $35.6 trillion. Let us tell you what happened during the fiscal year 2024.  It began at the beginning of October 2023 with a national debt of $33.442 trillion dollars.  Then, just days ago, on October 1, 2024, when the new fiscal year got underway, the national debt had reached $35.668 trillion.   That means that the nation debt grew by $2.226 trillion during the just ended fiscal year.   You can track these numbers for yourself as they change at the US Treasury’s “Debt to the Penny” website.  If you prefer you can track the change between September 30, 2023, and September 30, 2024.  But either way that’s a lot of red ink! It’s not just because Washington is incontinent – it won’t restrain its spending –

No Wonder Gold is Flying High! Things are out of control and won’t get better!  That’s why gold is up more than 34 percent in the last 12 months! Washington’s fiscal year ends in just a couple of weeks and it’s going to be a doozie!  No wonder gold is flying! Bloomberg News: The US federal budget deficit surged in August with one month to go until the end of the fiscal year as higher interest costs continued to weigh on the overall balance. The $1.9 trillion gap for the 11 months through August was up 24% from the same period last year, Treasury Department data released Thursday (9/12) showed. For the month of August alone, the deficit was $380 billion.    That story comments on the official deficit news through the end of August.  However now, only weeks later in the middle of September, the annual deficit is already over $2 trillion!  That means the Federal government is spurting

Why we get deficits, debts, inflation, and why gold goes up! “Free stuff!  Step right up!  Get your free stuff now!” Washington politics has become nothing less than a bunch of carney barkers!   “Quick grab your Obama phone and hurry!” The House Budget Committee has gone through the Harris-Walz economic proposals, and it is a grab bag of goodies that would put your typical Washington wastrel to shame.  And that’s pretty hard to do! The report notes that “since the Biden-Harris Administration assumed office, the average family of four must pay an additional $17,169 per year, or $1,431 per month, to purchase the same goods and services.  But Kamala has more of the same in store for you. Here’s a link so you can go through their analysis for yourself if you have the stomach for it. To save some time, here are just a couple of the free stuff bullet points selected by the Committee to Restore Prosperity:

Is the United States insolvent?  By that I mean is it unable to pay its debts? The honest answer is yes.  The formal answer is no. Let us explain. Better yet, let Ben Bernanke, the former Chairman of the Federal Reserve System explain: "The US government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost." Dr. Bernanke was one of the great money printers of all time.  In other words, he was one of the great inflationists of all time: "Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and, hence, positive inflation." So, no matter how much debt the government has, it can print money to pay its creditors.  This legalized counterfeiting is a fraud.  You can’t pay off your creditors by doing the same thing without going to jail. But the government can.  Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a free

Sorry, too late. You just can’t turn a $24 trillion economy over to someone a clueless as Joe Biden and expect things to go well. How many examples do you need?  It was just last week the President claimed that inflation was 9 percent when he took office, but he got it on the run. Not even close! The big Biden lie was too much even for in-the-bag media outlets like CNN and the Washington Post which had to set the record straight.  To wit: Inflation was 1.4 percent when Biden took office.  It raced to a 43-year high of 9.1 percent in a year and a half. You just can’t entrust a $27 trillion economy to someone like Biden and expect a financial crisis to be averted. A couple more examples? Okay: Biden wants to drive people out of internal combustion engines and into electric vehicles.  But at the same time, as analyst Michael Shedlock puts it, “Biden wants

Washington is squirting red ink out from every pore.  The budget year is half over, finishing with a deficit of more than a trillion dollars.   This will end badly. We have been sounding an alarm in these posts about US debt and the fear that it would get away from us.  A few recent examples: Another Ominous U.S. Financial Update Time to Take a Look at the U.S. Fiscal Situation! Uncle Sam’s Credit Score Keeps Falling We believe the price of gold is confirming that Washington’s debt is every bit as bad as we have said. Our opinions don’t have the force of law, but to us the US national debt is a matter of criminal negligence.  Washington has been indifferent to the debt as it grew, and now it is too late:  the national debt has gotten away from us! From the Wall Street Journal:  The Congressional Budget Office reported Monday that the federal budget deficit for the

First the NY Times!  Now Chase Bank? If you aren’t panicking about the US debt picture, you may not be paying attention! Now even the most establishment of establishment figures are starting to show signs of panic, Including the most establishment banker of America’s most established bank. Jamie Dimon is the chairman and chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the US.  They like him a lot.  He’s been in that role since 2005, a job that has made him a billionaire.   Maybe Dimon isn’t panicked, but he sure is worried that we are at the brink. "It is a cliff. We see the cliff. It's about 10 years out." The US national debt is currently more than $34 trillion.  Throughout its history, US debt has averaged 30 percent of total US economic output. Today, it is 123 percent, more than four times the average. It is more than the entire annual productivity of China, Japan,