Tag: debt

US Credit Card Defaults Soar To Crisis Highs As Inflation Storm Crushes Working-Poor

The party is long over for the bottom third of US consumers, as maxed-out credit cards and depleted personal savings have pushed credit card loan defaults to their highest level since the 2008 financial crisis.

Financial Times cited new data from BankRegData revealing that credit card companies wrote off $46 billion in “seriously delinquent loan” balances in the first nine months of the year—an alarming 50% increase from the same period last year and the highest level in 14 years.

US credit debt recently surpassed $1 trillion and continues to expand rapidly. Making matters worse, annual percentage rates (APRs) on credit card debt have hit record highs, compounding the financial misery for cash-strapped consumers in the era of failed ‘Bidenomics’. 

Despite the interest rate cut, the average APR on credit card debt reached a new record at the end of the third quarter. 

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Understanding The ‘Raising The Debt Limit’ Scam

Last week President Trump tweeted, “I requested that Mitch M & Paul R tie the Debt Ceiling legislation into the popular V.A. Bill for easy approval. They didn’t…Could have been so easy-now a mess!”

Trump seemed awfully cavalier about raising the debt limit, didn’t he? Isn’t raising the debt limit a really big deal? Isn’t it capitulation by all conservative-minded Americans? Isn’t raising the debt limit tacit approval for the US Government to even further exceed its Constitutional boundaries? Well, maybe. But more importantly, the ‘raising the debt limit’ debate is just another scam on the American people, perpetrated by those we elected to represent us in DC, another reason they all must be replaced. 

The periodic raising of the so-called “debt limit” is simply the natural order of things anytime a national government chooses to carry out its financial responsibilities under a private banking system rather than a truly sovereign, national monetary system. The banking system in our case is that of the Federal Reserve.
Although it could if it chose, the US Government does not create and issue dollars…AKA, money. Instead private Fed member banks do, the largest of which are on Wall Street. Importantly, however, those banks only issue dollars when someone promises to pay them back, with interest. And because the banks do not issue the dollars to pay the interest, the only way for a society as a whole to pay back what has already been borrowed is to keep borrowing more and more, and pay off older loans with new, larger loans. The entire American economy ($68 trillion in debt), including the US Government ($20 trillion in debt) is testimony to that fact. There is no mathematical solution for this system. It cannot be paid off from within. And while the system runs, the bankers get richer and richer, the population gets poorer and poorer, and the Government goes more and more in debt. It is a covert, wealth transfer mechanism-the biggest scam in the history of mankind. And as long as the Federal Reserve System stays in operation, it will remain mathematically impossible for America to become a nation other than one that is increasingly encumbered in debt.

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Unsustainable: Yellen resigns, leaving behind over $36 TRILLION in debt — the highest in U.S. history

The federal deficit has reached unsustainable levels, with the U.S. national debt surpassing $36 trillion, largely due to reckless fiscal policies under the Biden administration.

– Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen acknowledged concerns over the lack of progress in reducing the deficit, admitting that the deficit needs to be brought down amid rising interest rates.

– The Biden administration’s fiscal approach, including $3 trillion in economic stimulus, led to runaway inflation and a ballooning deficit, with interest expenses now exceeding defense and health spending.

– The incoming Trump administration, with Treasury Secretary nominee Scott Bessent, aims to prioritize fiscal responsibility, focusing on reducing government spending, reforming entitlement programs, and promoting sustainable economic growth.

– The U.S. faces an urgent need to address its fiscal crisis to avoid a future debt crisis, with the Trump administration tasked with restoring fiscal sanity and rebuilding public trust in responsible financial management.

As the Trump administration prepares to take the reins of government, the nation faces a stark and urgent reality: The federal deficit has ballooned to unsustainable levels, threatening the long-term stability of the U.S. economy. The outgoing Biden administration, led by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, leaves behind a staggering national debt that has surpassed $36 trillion, a figure that underscores the reckless fiscal policies of the past several years.

Yellen herself has acknowledged the gravity of the situation, expressing concern over the lack of progress in reducing the deficit. During a recent event organized by the Wall Street Journal, she stated, “I am concerned about fiscal sustainability and I am sorry that we haven’t made more progress. I believe that the deficit needs to be brought down, especially now that we’re in an environment of higher interest rates.” These words, though belated, are a stark admission of the fiscal irresponsibility that has characterized the Biden administration’s tenure.

The numbers tell a damning story. Under Yellen’s watch, the U.S. debt increased by an astonishing $15.2 trillion, representing 42% of all U.S. debt ever issued. This unprecedented accumulation of debt was facilitated by years of ultra-low interest rates and massive government spending, much of it aimed at pandemic relief and economic stimulus. While these measures may have provided short-term relief, they have sown the seeds of a future financial crisis.

The Biden administration’s approach to fiscal policy was marked by a dangerous overconfidence in the ability of government spending to solve economic problems. Yellen, in her role as Treasury Secretary, endorsed the administration’s 3 trillion in economic stimulus, including the 1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. She justified this approach by arguing that “the smartest thing we can do is act big. In the long run, I believe the benefits will far outweigh the costs.” However, the reality is that this strategy has led to runaway inflation and a ballooning deficit, with interest expenses now surpassing defense and health spending.

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Some Questions to Ask on Thanksgiving

What if the government’s true goal is to perpetuate its own power? What if the real levers of governmental power are pulled by agents, diplomats, bureaucrats, donors, central bankers and arms manufacturers? What if they have power no matter who is elected president or which political party controls either house of Congress?

What if the frequent public displays of adversity between Republicans and Democrats are just a facade? What if both major political parties agree on the fundamental issues of our day?

What if the leadership of both political parties believes that our rights are not natural to our humanity but instead are gifts from the government? What if those leaders believe the government that gives gifts to the people can take those gifts away?

What if the leadership of both parties gives only lip service to Thomas Jefferson’s assertions in the Declaration of Independence that all persons “are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” and that when the government assaults our natural rights, we can “alter or abolish” it?

What if the leadership of both parties quietly dismisses those ideas as Jefferson’s outdated musings? What if Jefferson’s words are core American values that all in government have sworn to uphold?

What if the leadership of both political parties believes that the constitutional requirement of due process somehow permits mothers to hire doctors to kill babies in their wombs, out of fear or convenience? What if the leadership of both political parties believes that the president may lawfully kill any foreigner out of fear, because due process is an inconvenience?

What if the last four presidents — two from each political party — have used high-tech drones to kill innocent people in foreign lands with which America was not at war and claimed that they did so legally, relying not on a declaration of war from Congress but on erroneous and secret legal arguments that claim American presidents can kill with impunity?

What if the Constitution requires a congressional declaration of war or due process whenever the government wants anyone’s life, liberty or property, whether convenient or not, and whether the person is American or not? What if due process means a fair jury trial, not a secretly ordered killing?

What if most members of Congress from both political parties believe in perpetual war and perpetual debt? What if the political class believes that war is the health of the state? What if the leadership of that class wants war so as to induce the loyalty of its base, open the pocketbooks of the taxpayers, gain the compliance of the voters and enrich its benefactors? What if the government has been paying for war by increasing its debt?

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Report: Harris Campaign ‘$20M In Debt,’ Staffer Blames Campaign Concerts

According to surfacing reports and claims from a staffer, Vice President Kamala Harris’ unsuccessful presidential campaign was left with more than $20 million in debt.

Christopher Cadelago, left-wing outlet Politico‘s California Bureau Chief, originally made the assertion on X on Wednesday night.

“Based at the Capitol, Cadelago covers elections and political power, from the governor’s mansion to the players in Los Angeles, the Bay Area and Silicon Valley,” his bio reads.

“A Kamala campaign staffer who saw these posts called me just now and said there is a massive scandal here worthy of an audit. The $20 million debt thing is real. Rob Flaherty, this staffer said, is currently shopping around the Kamala fundraising email list to anyone who wants it to try to raise the money back. This includes other campaigns and outside groups,” said Matthew Boyle, Bureau Chief for Breitbart.

“Flaherty is the deputy campaign manager and reports to Jen O’Malley Dillon. Jen blew through a billion dollars in a few months and it was all Jen’s idea to do all the concerts.” — [a] Kamala campaign adviser told me,” he continued.

The over-the-top spending was attributed to campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon, who prioritized “‘concerts,’ like Katy Perry, Lizzo, Eminem, Bruce Springsteen et cetera, at the expense of ‘prioritizing and spending money on social media and other campaign priorities,’” Boyle explained.

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Kamala Harris Campaign Fell $20 Million in Debt in Final Week

Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaign fell $20 million in debt during the final week of her campaign, according to several sources.

Christopher Cadelago, the California bureau chief for Politico wrote in a post on X that Harris’s campaign had “ended with at least $20 million in debt,” according to two sources familiar with the situation.

“Harris raised over $1 billion and had $118 million in the bank as of Oct. 16,” Cadelago added in his post.

A Kamala campaign staffer confirmed to Breitbart News that the reports that Harris’s campaign was “$20 million” in debt “is real,” adding that Jen O’Malley Dillon, the Harris campaign chair reportedly “blew through a billion dollars in a few months.”

The concerts that the Harris campaign held with celebrities such as Katy Perry, Lizzo, Eminem, and Bruce Springsteen were reportedly “all Jen’s idea,” the campaign staffer explained.

“Jen blew through a billion dollars in a few months, and it was all Jen’s idea to do all the concerts,” the campaign staffer said.

As a result of being $20 million in debt, Rob Flaherty, the deputy campaign manager for Harris’s campaign is reportedly “currently shopping around the Kamala fundraising email list to anyone who wants” to try to raise the money back for the campaign, the staffer told Breitbart News.

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King Biden & Queen Harris Overrule Supreme Court On Student Debt Forgiveness

Biden repeatedly acts like he is above the law. So who’s the threat to Democracy?

The Wall Street Journal reports Biden Snubs the Courts Again on Student Loan Forgiveness

‘That didn’t stop me,” President Biden declared after the Supreme Court blocked his $430 billion student loan write-off in 2023. It sure didn’t. After striking out in court with three debt forgiveness schemes, the Administration on Friday unveiled another. Take that, judges.

The Education Department says its proposed rule would authorize forgiveness for some eight million borrowers experiencing “hardship.” Under the rule, the department can discharge debt if it calculates a borrower has an 80% likelihood of defaulting on payments within the subsequent two years based on 17 factors such as income, debt balances and assets.

The rule would effectively let the department forgive debt of any borrower any time it wants. The administration says high child-care costs could qualify as a hardship. How about high auto loan or credit-card payments? Did someone say moral hazard?

In April the department released a plan that cancels accrued interest for 25 million borrowers and forgives debt of those who entered repayment over 20 years ago or who “enrolled in low-financial-value programs”—meaning, forprofit colleges. The plan also promised to waive debt for borrowers with a “hardship.”

A federal court last month blocked that plan, but the department says its new rule “would operate separately and distinctly.” Courts are playing whack-a-mole with the Administration’s debt write-offs that end-run Congress, which never authorized such broad-based debt forgiveness.

Such lawlessness is one reason so many Americans discount the left’s assertions that Donald Trump endangers democracy. Mr. Biden acts like he’s king, and Democrats and media voices cheering him on have no standing to object if Mr. Trump follows the Biden precedent.

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Thanks To The Cost Of Living Crisis, U.S. Household Debt Has Soared To The Highest Level Ever Recorded

Our entire economy is fueled by debt.  In fact, if going into more debt was suddenly banned the U.S. economy would instantly hit a brick wall.  For the vast majority of us, our lifestyles simply cannot be funded by what we actually make.  So we use debt to bridge the difference, and this has particularly been true during the cost of living crisis.  Total household debt has now reached a grand total of 17.8 trillion dollars, and we continue to pile up more with no end in sight…

A quarterly report published this month by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on household credit and debt found that between the first quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2024, credit card debt surged 48.1% while household debt — which includes mortgages and auto loans — rose by 21.6%.

In dollar terms, credit card debt rose from $770 billion in early 2021 to $1.14 trillion in the most recent quarter, while household debt increased from $14.64 trillion to $17.8 trillion in the same period.

I did not realize that credit card debt had risen by more than 48 percent since the first quarter of 2021.

That is extremely alarming, because it indicates that millions upon millions of households are literally living on the edge of financial disaster.

And the fact that delinquency rates have been climbing just underscores how serious things have become…

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US National Debt Hits $35 Trillion Milestone

In a historic fiscal milestone for the federal government, the national debt rose to $35 trillion for the first time, according to the latest Treasury Department Debt to the Penny data.

Current debt levels are equal to $105,000 per person and $266,000 per U.S. household.

Washington accumulated another $1 trillion in debt in less than seven months. Over the past 12 months, the national debt has spiked by nearly $2.35 trillion, an average of about $6.4 billion per day.

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is calling the announcement “another dubious milestone in the fiscal decline of the most powerful and prosperous nation in its history.”

Since January 2021, the national debt has increased by about $7.3 trillion.

The immense growth of red ink flooding the nation’s capital has captured the attention of public policymakers.

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The National Debt Is Making Us Poorer

Many Americans are unhappy about years of higher-than-normal inflation that have sapped buying power and reduced standards of living.

Now, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) demonstrates that a difficult culprit will make you feel poorer over the next few decades: The nearly $35 trillion (and growing) national debt.

At its current trajectory, the rising national debt—and the increasing burden of making interest payments on it—will reduce Americans’ future income growth by 12 percent over the next 30 years, the CBO projects in a new report. That means the average person will earn about $5,000 less annually than they would in a scenario where the debt was not growing.

“This is the result of crowding out, whereby a higher national debt reduces private investment and slows income growth,” explain the number crunchers at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB), a nonprofit that advocates for reducing the federal deficit. “With additional debt, income growth would slow further.”

If the national debt grows faster than the CBO currently expects—something that could happen due to wars, pandemics, or simply because lawmakers in Washington can’t cure their addiction to borrowing—the average person could miss out on $14,000 annually in future income gains that won’t materialize, the CRFB predicts.

That crowding-out effect is a serious threat to future economic growth. There are a finite number of dollars in the economy in any given year, and each dollar that has to be taxed away to make an interest payment on the debt is a dollar that cannot be invested, spent, or paid to an employee.

The costs of rising debt can be a bit difficult to understand because we don’t see reductions in potential earnings as obviously as we see price increases at the grocery store. Still, the effect is pretty similar. Americans’ experience with inflation in recent years is helpful in understanding how the cost of the national debt depresses living standards.

In the CBO’s baseline model, average earnings are expected to climb from about $84,000 this year to $123,000 in 2054, 30 years from now. That sounds great, except for the fact that average earnings would have climbed to about $128,000 by 2054 in a scenario where the national debt was stable and not growing.

To someone living in 2054, that $5,000 won’t feel real because it never existed. But it would have existed, if not for the poor decisions by federal officials in the 2010s and 2020s.

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