34 Trillion Dollars of Debt
I’m not sure where to begin this post. Should I lament the crazy debt the United States has? Should I gnash my teeth and wail about it? Or should I just say fuck it and YOLO the hell out of the markets? I vote for YOLO’ing it because complaining about the debt won’t get us anywhere, after all, our elected leaders don’t care.
Right now the US Government is approaching 34 Trillion dollars in debt. The St. Louis FRED data shows our borrowing is starting to go parabolic, and parabolic moves end with a lot of pain. Nearly every stock whose price has gone parabolic has crashed and wiped out people on the way down. Why should this be any different?
Maybe it will be different because the market is one helluva Fugazi and we need to keep it going. It’s a long-term rigged machine that’s built to fleece the little guy and they can’t let it crash, because if they do, then it becomes real.
Remember the Plunge Protection Team or the Bernanke Put? All just safeguards to keep the circus going and the money flowing. It’s the backstop to make sure we keep the money flowing and borrow to cover the shortfalls.
The National Debt Is Now More than $34 Trillion. What Does That Mean?Although the debt affects each of us, it may be difficult to put such a large number into perspective and fully understand its implications.pgpf.org
We have to keep the market growing and asset prices going higher, just to be able to finance the debt. It’s like 2007/2008 where people were using their homes as an ATM and took out HELOCs to cover their spending shortfalls. Everyone expected house values to keep rising, and they did for a while.
I don’t want to sound like an old stick in the mud but this might happen here one day. I just don’t know when it’ll come crashing down but it will one day. One day after I’m dead or right before I retire, probably the latter.
What does this 34 Trillion dollars of debt mean to me? It means failure. What am I going to do about it? Nothing, I’m going to go buy more stocks.