$21 Trillion And Counting: Why This Time The Fiscal Wolf Is Really At The Door (Part 1)
By David Stockman
ContraCorner.com
March 19th, 2018
That didn’t take long. The $20 trillion national debt marker was crossed on September 8th, but it only took another 186 days to vault over the $21 trillion level last Thursday.
Then again, you haven’t seen nothin’ yet. The annual deficit will approach $1.2 trillion in the coming fiscal year; breach the $2.0 trillion market by the middle of the next decade at the latest; and pile a total of $17 trillion onto the national debt over the next 10 years.
Moreover, these numbers are about as locked-in as tomorrow’s sunrise. So it is fair to say that objectively the public debt is already $40 trillion and that’s just within the decade of the 2020s. And as we show below, that monstrous inflation of the public debt could not come at a worse time in the political, demographic and monetary cycle.
Still, we get slightly ahead of the story. What’s relevant in the near term is that every bit of political resistance to the growth of Federal deficits during the Obama era is now over and gone. The nation’s fiscal accounts are now actually in free fall—and for as far as the eye can see into the future.
We have been christening the Donald as the Great Disrupter all along—the political accident that will at last bring the destructive rule of the Wall Street/Washington establishment to a thundering demise. And nowhere is that more evident than with respect to the Donald’s pivotal position at the center of the fiscal calamity now unfolding.
Needless to say, Trump has finally locked-up the gears of fiscal policy tighter than a drum. That’s because he embodies a trifecta of fiscal impulses that amounts to pure madness. To wit, the Donald is pro-Warfare State, pro-Welfare State and has just slashed Uncle’s Sam’s tax take to 16.6% of GDP—-the lowest rate since 1950.
Accordingly, there is exactly zero chance of any legislative action to stem Washington’s exploding red ink (see below) until after the 2020 election, and it will be far too late by then.
The Rest…HERE
