“Pay Up!”

A Memo for Big Gov’t. Spender [The Daily Reckoning] September 07, 2023 [WEBSITE]( | [UNSUBSCRIBE]( “Pay Up!” - How long it would take to retire the national debt… - The Keynesian “multiplier” has taken up division… - “We owe it to ourselves”… [Genesis 47:15 – For the money faileth]( Jim Rickards started out his 2011 book Currency Wars with this quotation from the Genesis: “And when the money failed in the land of Egypt, and in the land of Canaan, all the Egyptians came unto Joseph, and said, Give us bread: for why should we die in thy presence? For the Money faileth.” Now, nearly 12 years later it looks like he was exactly right… Because according to him…The money is beginning to fail. And we are on the cusp of an all-out financial war for the U.S. Dollar. And if you aren’t prepared soon…You’re going to get caught in the crossfire. That’s why he’s recorded an urgent briefing to tell you exactly what you need to do to prepare. Because with the fate of the U.S. economy hanging by a single thread… You don’t want to take any chances. [Click Here To View]( Annapolis, Maryland [Brian Maher] BRIAN MAHER Dear Reader, Reports Fox News: Thanks to a combination of high inflation, rising interest rates and unrelenting growth in the national debt, interest payments [on the national debt] are expected to triple from nearly $475 billion in fiscal year 2022 to a stunning $1.4 trillion in 2032. The nation’s debt presently runs to $32.9 trillion. And as Fox notes, this debt takes on “unrelenting growth.” As Fox likewise notes, the cost of debt service is up and away. It will likely triple within 10 years. Within 30 years the Congressional Budget Office estimates debt service will exceed $5.4 trillion. That is, within 30 years debt service will exceed Social Security… Medicare… Medicaid… and “defense” expenditures. And the lovely illusion that debt and deficits do not matter will dash against the killing rocks of actuarial reality. It is a grim calculus. Large Numbers But large numbers — such as 32.9 trillion — exert a dulling effect on the sober senses… like large bottles of wine. They are mere abstractions. They lack all tethering to common experience. A $1,000 dinner bill, for example, will freeze your blood. It is extravagant, yes. Yet you can grasp it. You are accustomed to $1,000 expenditures. But a trillion-dollar dinner bill will stun, gobsmack and stupefy you. It will glaze your eyes. That is because $1 trillion ranges beyond all fathoming, all imagination. You would laugh it away… and depart the restaurant instructing the owner precisely what he can do with this bill. Let us therefore attempt to reduce the airy abstract to solid concrete… How to Imagine $1 Trillion The nonprofit Employment Policies Institute places 1 trillion into this perspective: Let’s say someone told you to wait for something. If you waited 1,000 seconds, it’d only take about 17 minutes. If you waited 1 million seconds, you’d have to wait about 11.5 days… But if you waited 1 trillion seconds, you’d have to wait 31,688 years. 31,688 years! Let us return to our culinary example. You inform the restaurateur he will have his money in 1 trillion seconds. He may deem your offer fairly reasonable. It is, after all, expressed in seconds. Will he deem 31,688 years reasonable? Let us mix the arrangement some… [AI Discovers Breakthrough New Cancer Treatment?]( [Click here for more...]( Just recently, scientists in Canada were able to use AI to create a new cancer treatment in less than 30 days! Now, cancer alone is a significant market worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually… Just think about the implications if AI were to find a cure and take over this market. Now take a moment to picture what might happen if AI were to cure other diseases like Alzheimer’s… heart disease… and more – as I fully expect it will… It could be worth trillions of dollars of economic impact – and keep in mind we’re still only talking about one industry. The fact is, AI is the single biggest innovation in the history of humanity. That’s why I believe anyone who invests now – while this new technology is still in its infancy – could see the chance at making generational profits. [Click Here To Learn More]( Assume for the moment you are gifted command of the printing press. Each bill that comes rolling off is yours to keep. Yet you can only manufacture $1 bills. Your energy exceeds even your greed. You produce — feverishly — one $1 bill each second of each day, 365 days of the 365. You are very rapidly in clover. Yet you are not content until you collar $1 trillion. How much time will you require to print 1 trillion $1 bills? Author Bill Bryson: If you initialed $1 per second, you would make $1,000 every 17 minutes. After 12 days of nonstop effort you would acquire your first $1 million. Thus, it would take you 120 days to accumulate $10 million and 1,200 days — something over three years — to reach $100 million. After 31.7 years you would become a billionaire… But not until after 31,709.8 years would you count your trillionth dollar. Have you Job’s patience? You will require his entire reservoir — and then another. How Long Would It Take to Retire the National Debt? Yet you turn from personal ambition. Your sole concern is the national welfare. You therefore consecrate yourself to retiring today’s $32.9 national debt. For ease’s sake we will round the thing to $33 trillion… which it will soon register. In that case, you multiply the preceding by 33. Here is what you find: Rinsing away today’s $33 trillion debt would require 1,046,423.4 years of ceaseless labor. That is… over 1 million years of ceaseless, second-by-second labor. Assume Almighty God grants you your threescore and 10 — 70 years on Earth. In 14,948.9 lifetimes, you would complete the business. Hell, indeed, can wait. Alas… so must heaven. How do you like it? The Keynesian “Multiplier” Has Taken up Division The United States required 205 years to post its first $1 trillion debt. That debt scaled $32 trillion this January. It will soon scale $33 trillion. That is, what was previously the work of two centuries… is now the work of months. Here is progress — of a very peculiar and exotic sort. Is economic expansion maintaining pace with this galloping debt? It is not. [“The Mainstream Media Is Lying To You!”]( The media would have you believe that the worst of the supply chain issues are over. But the opposite is true… Behind the scenes, things are getting much, much worse. Bob Biesterfeld, CEO of one of the biggest logistics firms in the world, warns “the pressures on global supply chains have not eased, and we don’t expect them to any time soon.” This is going to impact every American’s life in a potentially major way… And I’m urging everyone I can to prepare now… [Click Here To Learn How]( Set to one side the rebound year of 2021. Not since 2005 has the gross domestic product exceeded 3% annual growth. The Congressional Budget Office projects average 1.8% annual growth through 2033. Debt races, growth creeps. Thus the Keynesian “multiplier” — the miracle of water into wine — is reduced to a sad, sad caricature. The multiplier has taken up division. It remains a multiplier only in the economics departments of ivied institutions and castles very high in the sky. Debt-to-GDP Economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff have demonstrated that annual economic growth slips 2% per year when the debt-to-GDP reaches 60%. At 90%, growth is “roughly cut in half.” What is America’s current debt-to-GDP ratio? Some 124%. Here the Peterson Institute paints the scene in very dark colors: Spending and revenues are severely mismatched, and spending is projected to continue to outpace revenues in the absence of intervention from lawmakers. From 2023–2053, annual revenues are projected to average 18% of GDP, while spending is projected to average 26%. That mismatch between revenues and spending will lead to an average deficit of 7.5% of GDP… The economic outlook for the next three decades anticipates economic growth, but that growth will not be enough to match the growth of the national debt. Over the next 30 years, real GDP is projected to grow by 66%, about a third as much as the period after [World War II]. Pay Up! These are of course projections. As we are fond to state, climate is what a fellow can expect. Weather is what he actually gets. Perhaps we are in for lighter weather than the forecast projects. Perhaps emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence can vault us into a vastly productive future. Perhaps the future will be a future of expanding prosperity. It is a happy possibility we must consider. Yet we fear the debt burden constitutes too great a strain. We fear the economy cannot push along under the load. Thus we fear a future of limited growth… slender prospects… and false starts. In brief, we expect to gutter along. Of course… the spenders maintain the nation’s debt is not a menace because “we owe it to ourselves.” Yet one anonymous scalawag is out to collect. “Note to self,” he writes: “Pay up.” Regards, [Brian Maher] Brian Maher Managing Editor, The Daily Reckoning [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) Editor’s note: You’ll probably find [this message]( disturbing. It even references a biblical warning made nearly 4,000 years ago. And it points to an [economic nuke]( that’s potentially set to hit the markets just a few short weeks from now. If you’re worried about the state of the U.S. economy, and the strength of the U.S. dollar… We suggest you watch this message now. Because if [this crisis hits the way Jim Rickards fears it will…]( it will soon be too late. [Go here]( to judge for yourself if you agree with Jim’s assessment. Thank you for reading The Daily Reckoning! We greatly value your questions and comments. Please send all feedback to [feedback@dailyreckoning.com.](mailto:feedback@dailyreckoning.com) [Brian Maher] [Brian Maher]( is the Daily Reckoning's Managing Editor. Before signing on to Agora Financial, he was an independent researcher and writer who covered economics, politics and international affairs. His work has appeared in the Asia Times and other news outlets around the world. 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