We’re currently borrowing nearly $2 trillion annually. We spend almost $1 trillion annually just on interest on the national debt.
The State of Emergency
Donald Trump has declared a total of 21 national emergencies across his two terms as president.
- Trump: 13 national emergencies during his first term (2017–2021).
- Trump: 8 national emergencies during his second term, as reported within the first 100 days of his administration starting January 20, 2025.
- Joe Biden (2021–2025): 6
Trump’s 8 Emergencies this Term
- Southern Border Emergency (Declared January 20, 2025)
- National Energy Emergency (Declared January 20, 2025)
- Economic Emergency (Trade Deficit) (Declared April 2, 2025)
- Drug Trafficking and Cartel Emergency (Declared by April 2025)
- Fossil Fuel Production Emergency (Declared by April 2025)
- Mineral Production Emergency (Declared by April 2025)
- Tariffs on Specific Countries (Mexico, Canada, China) (Declared March 2, 2025)
- International Criminal Court (ICC) Emergency (Declared by April 2025)
Of those, I agree with numbers 1 and 6. Number 1 is now been fixed. Thank you.
National Debt Crisis
Please consider National debt is a crisis. Congress must take it seriously
No matter how you look at it — as a fiscal hawk, a market watcher, or as someone simply concerned about the future we’re leaving for our children — our ever-growing national debt has become a tremendous threat.
We’re currently borrowing nearly $2 trillion annually and our national debt is about the size of our entire economy. We spend almost $1 trillion annually just on interest on the national debt, more than we spend on national defense or children. And all of this is only projected to get worse over the coming years.
We are at the point where Congress should reject any legislation that would increase our borrowing. In fact, if there were one fiscal pledge to ask of lawmakers, it would be No New Borrowing.
And yet the reconciliation budget bill making its way through Congress now would add not just millions or billions to the national debt, it would add trillions.
House Resolution 1, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), would permanently extend the 2017 tax cuts that would otherwise expire at the end of this year; enact a grab-bag of new temporary tax cuts on tips, overtime and other priorities put forward by Congress and the president; increase spending for immigration and the border; and increase the debt ceiling by $4 trillion, all within the party-line reconciliation process.
More importantly, from a fiscal perspective, it would increase borrowing by $3 trillion over a decade, including interest costs, the result of $5.3 trillion of tax cuts and spending increases, $2.9 trillion of spending cuts and tax savings and over $560 billion of interest costs. While proponents have said the bill would produce economic growth and thus offset this debt increase, the effects are likely marginal and unlikely to reduce that $3 trillion significantly.
A price tag of $3 trillion added to the debt? That’s downright dangerous.
And if that weren’t bad enough, the bill includes various arbitrary expirations, similar to the 2017 tax cuts, that will force Congress to deal with them in just a few years and perhaps change the $3 trillion figure to something closer to $5 trillion.
No third-party modeler has looked at this bill and concluded it would produce nearly enough growth to offset that borrowing. They’ve also claimed the bill achieves historic savings in the form of spending cuts, but net of its spending increases, the House bill cuts less than 2% of spending over the next decade and less than 1% after accounting for the higher interest spending from the borrowing.
And outside of this bill, we need to have a serious conversation about the two elephants in the room: Social Security and Medicare. These are the two largest items in the federal budget (along with interest on the debt) and face serious financial problems. Instead of promising to not touch them, our leaders should have an honest conversation on how to get them under control before the trust funds for the programs face insolvency.
For Social Security, we’re talking about just eight years until retirees face an across-the-board benefit cut of 21%. That’s $16,500 for the typical couple retiring in 2033. That’s an unacceptable outcome that doesn’t get any easier by ignoring it.
Ultimately, we need to both pay for new priorities and enact significant debt reduction to prevent us from running head-on into a fiscal disaster.
The “one big, beautiful bill” in its current form is not the right approach. But it’s not too late to change course. In fact, we desperately need to do so.
The above is an Op-Ed in the Dallas News by Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.
Thank you Ms. MacGuineas.
Questions of the Day
Q: Why isn’t Trump declaring a national emergency?
A: Trump is the problem. He wants to add trillions to the national debt.
Q: Why aren’t Republicans howling?
A: select few are, but the rest of them are hypocrites who only moan about the deficit when Democrats are in power.
Q: Anything else?
A: Yes, they are mostly a pack of cowards unwilling to cross Trump?
Q: And MAGA?
A: They are mostly cowards too.
The Embodiment of the Cult
You don’t build big constituencies on X or Truth Social if you criticize anything Trump says or does, no matter how ridiculous.
The Cult demands 100% loyalty. This Tweet by CatTurd2 is the embodiment of the Cult.
Cult Mentality
“I don’t care how many followers I lose, I don’t care what anybody says, you go against Trump and I’m coming after you.“
That is how you get 3.7 million followers. It’s also how to sound worse than Left cultists like AOC or Elizabeth Warren.
Some us, admittedly few, live in the real world, willing to speak our minds, politics be damned.
Musk is a prime example of what happens when you take on the Cult.
Trump Threatens Musk with ‘Serious Consequences’ if He Aids Democrats
On June 7, I commented Trump Threatens Musk with ‘Serious Consequences’ if He Aids Democrats
The Musk-Trump relationship now appears unsalvageable.
Musk said some amazingly stupid things, but the relationship was doomed from the start.
What Should We Do? Top 12 Ideas
Proposal #1: Stick to Medicaid guns. Repeal the Obama handouts to states 100 percent. Cut Medicaid funding by 25 percent. Give states a block grant. Watch the states clean up Medicaid fraud fast.
Proposal #2: Cut military spending by 25 percent. Give the money to the Pentagon as a block grant with the note “Spend it wisely”. Stupid programs would be cancelled. Unneeded bases would be canceled. Pet projects like the Golden Dome would never get started. And might I suggest we do not need more tanks because neither Canada or Mexico will attack us, and I don’t want the US to attack them either. We can close bases in Europe too, or make Europe pay us to defend them.
Proposal #3: Dramatically reduce the tax code by slashing all deductions. SALT gone. Charitable deductions gone. Mortgage interest (phase out over 10 years). Note that Trump is adding deductions and making the code more complex while moaning about the number of pages in the tax code and wanting to get rid of the IRS. The way to reduce the need for the IRS is to simplify the tax code, not make it more complex.
Proposal #4: End child tax credits and earned income credits, Make able bodied people work. To encourage people to work instead of receiving tax credits, make the first $35,000 in income tax-free for everyone.
Proposal #5: End all tariffs and subsidies except where genuinely needed for national security. Steel, autos, movies do not qualify. Microchips and rare earth elements would.
Proposal #6: Re-enact the USMCA, apologize to Canada and Mexico, join the TPP now called the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Following Trump’s withdrawal of TPP, the remaining members struck a new deal. These countries now have easier access to each other’s markets than what the US enjoys. I will do a separate post on this.
Proposal #7: SNAP (food stamp) modifications – No snacks, candy, chips, soda, on food stamps. Instead, to promote cleanliness, allow soap and cleaning supplies.
Proposal #8: Lower the corporate tax rate to 10 percent but make it 20 percent on income earned overseas. Some manufacturing will return to the US and all of the games played by drug manufacturers including the entire trade deficit with Ireland related to drug production (a massive $86 billion) would immediately return to the US. I will also discuss this in a separate post.
Proposal #9: Allow immediate corporate writeoffs of expenses, but only for expansion in the United States.
Proposal #10: Lower the individual tax rate and set the automatic deduction at $35,000. To make up for revenue lost, have a modest VAT but no tax on food, medicine, or shelter, the latter up to a base rate indexed for inflation. I have previously proposed a national sale tax, exempting food and medicine, but John Mauldin and Erica York at the Tax Foundation convinced me a VAT was a better idea.
Proposal #11: Heavily tax all executive stock options and pay over $1,000,000 with more of a focus on options and free shares that constitute shareholder dilution.
Proposal #12: Balance all of the above proposals to the required levels to stabilize debt levels while ensuring the middle class gets the biggest benefit from tax policy changes. I am willing to phase all of this in over time, if necessary, to reduce the likelihood of economic shocks, as long as it gets done
Five-Point Synopsis
- I dramatically simplify the tax code, eliminating much of the need for the IRS.
- I encourage people to work by changing how Medicaid works, by tax code, and elimination of credits.
- I encourage business expansion in the United States via expense writeoffs and a lower corporate tax rate in the US than overseas.
- I reduce trade barriers by rejoining USMCA and joining the TPP replacement.
- I raise revenue at the extreme high end while lowering taxes for the middle class.
I am open for discussion and welcome other ideas. Trump is seriously on the wrong path on most of this.
The idealist Mish would scrap the bill and start all over along the lines of my May 25 post, What Should We Do to Get Government Spending Under Control?
That’s the question I was asked today. 12 Ideas.
Since then I have added item 13. We need to tackle medical expenses. Too much money is wasted in the last few month’s of people’s lives when they are doomed to die within a year.
There is no skin in the game once deductibles are reached.
The pragmatic Mish would settle out of court right now for $2.0 trillion in cuts despite the fact such a bill would still add to the deficit. But we can improve that further by killing no tax on tips, killing no tax on overtime, and eliminating SALT deductions entirely.
Do all of those things and you have the start of something sensible.
Alas, my prediction: $1.7 trillion in cuts, up from $1.5 trillion, not at all beautiful, but definitely big. Even fewer cuts would not be surprising.
Mish,
Below is the first paragraph of today’s Debt update. Two of your three important numbers are once again incorrect and therefore make it hard to understand how dire our situation is
“We’re currently borrowing nearly $2 trillion annually and our national debt is
about the size of our entire economy. We spend almost $1 trillion annually
just on interest on the national debt, more than we spend on national defense
or children. And all of this is only projected to get worse over the coming
years.”
First: Our Last year our Debt increase was $2.297 trillion*, VS your “nearly $2 Trillion”.
Second: Our debt to GDP ratio is not “about” 100%”, it is 122.9%**
Third: You got this right**
Data From: *US Treasury , and **USDEPTCLOCK.ORG
the only one that is even remotely an emergency is the southern border.
how do we have a fossil fuel emergency when the US has been breaking production records??
the critics are absolutely right, he is blatantly lying about emergencies so he can use extraordinary powers reservd for short term emergency use.
and of course the so-called freedom-loving MAGA love him for it.
Magnets only… Rare earths ~ broadly are not included?
Look at the details because that is the tell.
???
Farmers remain screwed as they are working on it… NOT!
The third rail. No one dares touch it.
Balance the budget today and there will be a recession tomorrow, from the collapse of government spending in excess of the tax receipts.
The Great Reset, The Great Taking, The Fourth Turning, Kick the Can, Bread and circuses, are all symptoms of the end of a long term debt cycle. Who gets the last chair when the music stops?
Inertia. A body in motion, continues in motion, until acted upon by an opposing force. The system is operating on inertia, until the math imposes it’s opposing force, as it always does at the end of the cycle. Collapse is inevitable, whether it is due to that of debt, or value of currency. As it is, a dollar is only worth 3 cents of its value in 1913, the year before WW1. No country wants a strong currency.
If Trump was remotely serious about fulfilling his obligation to tame the deficit he would do it NOW! That means tax revenues must rise and the economy must remain stable and if possible growing. Tariffs are additional taxes (albeit poorly hidden) but they destabilize businesses ability to plan ahead or commit capital. This hurts growth and tax revenues.
Reducing taxes while simultaneously raising tariffs is simply nonsense.
Trump will never have a majority in the house and senate again if he has been lying to the American people about reducing the deficit.
How can it make sense to the MAGA’s for trump to roll over and do exactly the opposite of what he campaigned on?
Debt has no constituents.
Incorrect. Debt is owned by bond holders who are generally wealthy and influential constituents.
Bond holders are financially interested in reaping ever more passive interest from the taxpayers, so long as the debt remains “money good”.
As for the other side, so long as interest payments are low, everyone wants to borrow, but … as we are seeing now (and saw repeatedly from 1950s-2001), when interest payments get large enough to force spending constraints elsewhere, things change. Debt becomes everyone’s political enemy.
Right, you are Casual Observer. I had a meeting with a retired US Congressman and asked why congress continues to overspend with no consideration about the debt. He said, “The debt has no constituency”. WHAT? What he is saying here is there are no votes in addressing the debt. This despite the glaring impact our national debt has on growth and future generations. This is negligence and a complete leadership void. Congressional leaders that think like this should be ousted and replaced with leaders that recognize that it is their responsibility to look forward, see the opportunities and pitfalls that lie ahead and plan accordingly. However, politicians respond to votes not the reality that they are leading us and our youth to a dire future.
Proposal 1 would make the “peaceful” California riots look like Woodstock, in 1/2 the country….. Nothing else could get done because of proposal #1
Lets be honest. That is what the Democratic party will never give into.
And not saying I disagree with it. But it aint happening in Mish or my lifetime
Off Topic:May CPI 2.4%
TACO tariff inflation arrives when?
8 of the 10 articles on Page 1 refer to Trump/MAGA.
Not sure this is necessary
Who else has majority control of all branches of the federal government? Who else is named daily in the upper left corner of the front page every news site? Whose tax and spending bill is pending? Whose tariffs and trade negotiations are dominating the topic?
Eliminate the cap on Social Security Tax. Replace the minimum wage with a maximum wage based on 12 times the lowest paid employee with necessary blocks to workarounds by corporations. Limit personal wealth to $2B anything over remit to the treasury. Medicare for all, not free but payment indexed to income. Prescription drugs treated like utilities with profit linked to cost of production.
To all those propositions I have the same question. Why?
The intention, I assume, would be to smooth outcomes: put a floor under some, and a ceiling over others: a pretty strong version of socialism. I assume in that scenario there would have to be more public takeover of means of production. I think it would mess up incentives at the high performance end, and incentivize loafers at the low end. Whatever we subsidize, we get more of, and whatever we tax, we get less of.
Classic socialism.
Hybrid socialism the ONLY future without internal strife and possibly war.
To improve the life of everyday Americans.
Can I get $10,000 for a used toilet seat and $500 for a garage sale hammer if I turn them in at the Pentagon?
Sorry cutting the budget by 60% over four years. You could sell a good drone for $500 though.
The Cap on SS 100% alined with the cap on SS benifits. Tru again.
I don’t care. The rich steal the wealth of the working class, time for them to give some back.
If you earn less than $200K per year you should join me.
WTF is wrong with the American working class and poor, we outnumber the rich by the millions but still allow them to walk all over us.
The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Eliminates the Office of Financial Research—Threatening the Stability of the Treasury Market
https://www.crisesnotes.com/the-one-big-beautiful-bill-act-eliminates-the-office-of-financial-research/
“From RFK jr
“A compliant child must take between 69 and 92 vaccines to stay in school in some states, and not one of them has been safety tested in a pre-licensing placebo-controlled trial. And that is just malpractice. So the people who are in charge of that are now gone.”
Don’t worry, you can just take horse paste if you get sick! Make polio great again!
Can you recommend some good pharma stocks I can making a killing on?
Wow! A meme from four years ago just resurfaced. Do you have any others? I am nostalgic.
Not to mention that polio and smallpox were actually dangerous – with infection fatality rates of 25-40% in the 19th century. Covid was 1/100th as deadly overall, and almost totally innocuous for anyone under 50 unless they were morbidly obese. More children died of the flu in 2020 than from Covid, and those who did die “of Covid” were almost exclusively leukemia patients with their immune system deactivated by chemotherapy. Requiring children to be “vaccinated” against Covid made (and makes) zero sense – and that was obvious by early 2020.
It was the greatest failure of public health institutions in living memory.
Your source? I do not believe that claim. I’m saying, without a source, it blatantly appears fabricated. Only a subnormal education would induce someone to believe or to repeat it (especially, disrespectfully to readers, with no source, but a claimed quotation). But I can see our society and popular media are decaying in that direction.
Grow up…
From RFK jr
https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1932580198198964241?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Hahahaha!
Love it!
Let’s go back to bloodletting, enemas, blended squirrels, and sacrificing virgins.
Regarding point 2: Energy emergency.
The US does not have an energy emergency yet. But we may be heading towards one.
After decades of slow growth in electricity consumption, we are entering a period of high growth in consumption due to the coming buildout of AI data centers, crypto, EV/PHEV charging, proposed new Aluminum smelters, and an increasing reliance on electricity for industrial processes plus residential.
Where will this big increase in electricity production come from. Not hydro (as it is all built out). Not nuclear (as we have no new conventional nuclear plants planned, and SMRs are too expensive and being pushed out farther into the future). Not coal (too expensive and dirty). Not offshore wind (too expensive and controversial).
That leaves natural gas, solar, and onshore wind. They are the three least expensive options, as well as the cheapest and fastest to build.
But Trump is doing his best to stop solar and onshore wind.
Which leaves natural gas.
Buy coal stocks???
Sure. Please list the ones you are buying.
trump is a petty tyrant with zero sense of how the govt should work. he obsesses over his vengeance issues.
As long as politicians can expect the Fed to buy federal debt in unlimited quantities, they have no incentive to do (politically) painful spending cuts or tax increases. What the US needs right now is an IMF-type program that breaks the bailout-link between the federal budget and the Fed’s balance sheet. There is some poetic truth in the fact that the US now needs the very economic medicine that it has routinely prescribed to other countries through IMF programs.
Novel idea!
Raise taxes by 2% and cut all spending by 5% across the board.
Trump does not have to worry about getting re-elected ~ so why not actually solve some of our problems?
Oh, I get it, he wants of make enough money so that his weasel son can take over…
Can Joe Biden run for office in 28.Can use the auto pen and get everything done!!!
IMO there is no real political will to address because extremely painful and probably won’t be reelected. Personally I believe they are hoping one of the other world dominoes falls first so they can assign blame with everything being so interconnected globally.
That is why it is so pathetic that Trump is not taking the deficit spending on. He can not be re-elected because of the two term limit.
He also has the house and senate at his disposal.
The sad fact is that Republicans are a talk only party. No spine in the MAGA world.
Hypocrisy rules!
The taco gestapo is happy they’re trampling brown people in the streets with horses and batons. Everything beyond that is just too complicated to think about!
Proper thanks for that demographic swinging 30% his way. And the beaten girlfriend racial demographic comes back for more, willingly.
Trump can be re-elected. He can run and take it to SCOTUS, six of them will be ebullient to authorize him to rule for life. Why would they cite the Constitution?
From the looks of him now, he won’t be in any shape to do anything in a few yrs.
Exploding national debt will never be an emergency as long as someone is willing to loan money to the Government (ie buy treasuries / bonds).
Now if they ever hold treasury actions and there are no buyers, THEN we’ll have an emergency like no other.
The Federal Reserve can always buy them. Literally to infinity!
Got dividend paying gold mining stocks?
Their margins make the most profitable AI growth stocks pale in comparison!
Park your money in those metals miners and let us know how your returns are.
Sincerely, BTC vs Gold since Sep 2011
Most have already sold forward their production so limited upside.
And hold gold mining stocks in a Roth IRA! Tax free rocks!
That’s called a long-tailed auction, and that day is coming. When, I don’t know, but we can’t sustain $2T+ annual deficits.
The biggest impediment to this date’s arrival is all the liquidity the Fed pushes out via QE. This floods the system with money to buy treasuries, when the Fed isn’t officially buying. If the Fed wasn’t doing this, then we’d already have a major problem with long-tailed auctions.
Before the end of the month, the treasury is expected to start borrowing again. The National Dept was growing all the way until Trump took office, and then it stopped completely. We’ve been @ $36.215T’ish since 1/20/2025.
The ON RRP’s have been hovering in the low $100B, down from $2.7T, which has been a substantial source of money buying treasuries over the past 3 years. That gravy train is over, which is why the Fed is about to lower its supplemental leverage ratio for banks, so they can start buying more treasuries. It’s all a big shell game / Ponzi scheme.
The buyers will always show up for Higher Rates and Shorter Maturities. But when you see that happening it will be to late to fix things.
Trump can’t do anything hard – like cutting spending or ceasing support for Ukraine in our proxy war on Russia. Some republicans would be mad at him. That’s why “TACO” (Trump Always Chickens Out) fits him. He never got his wall built in his first term because he was unwilling to extort it out of congress by shutting down the government. I’ll say this for Biden: he got us out of Afghanistan. People can quibble about how it happened, but if Trump had won in 2020, we’d still be in there and would have lost a lot more men.
Taco needs to understand that the US can’t default on its debt like he has been known to do with his real estate deals.
Why can’t it default? Of course it can default, but the question is will it.
Correct.
However, at that time the dollar would become the U.S.’s problem, not everyone else’s.
You can be more pedantic than that, that was amateur hour
No reason it would but for new issues then we might run into a problem of finding buyers at reasonable interest rates at some point but we are not there yet.
FWIW the plan all along is to destroy the economy and let billionaires buy up everything. At some point people will understand that this isnt about making America great. It is about making the richest 0.1% even richer. More economic disparity will lead to something Trump wants. Eventually the unrest will lead to martial law.
—Alfred Henry Lewis
I would remind everyone that there are an estimated 393 million civilian-owned firearms in the United States. Cheap drones have made most fighting vehicles and platoon size ground forces obsolete.
And 95% of those are owned by Trump supporters.
Problem is the government will have infinitely more cheap drones than homeowners will (do you know anyone who has a drone capable of carrying a gun or other weapon, those are large drones, not small ones).
The other problem is that 95% of those private gun owner imagine they are going to be John Wick and single handedly hold off government forces. The truth is that unless you’ve got military / police training to act in concert with other gun owners you’ll be easy pickings for actual military forces.
The people of Iraq and Afghanistan had less weapons than in the US and no drones at all yet the beat us in both wars.
Cheap FPV drones carry explosives enough to take out a Russian tank when flown by experienced pilots.
Add to that a lot of American military will refuse to fight against their own.
Lesser revenues ahead for the Feds. Tech was a huge reason for it. That will end now. Billionaires will get their tax cut . I predict we hit
$50T in federal debt before the end of 2025.
https://www.techspot.com/news/108230-how-little-known-tax-change-sparked-tech-layoff.html
Trump really revealed what a phoney he is when he supported increasing government spending and the national debt. Now there’s nothing he can say that shouldn’t be scrutinized. It’s too bad there is all this strife in politics and people’s opinions. It wasn’t like this years ago. Democrats and republican voters used to be friends. Hell, most of the time you had no idea how someone voted whereas now it is our entire identity.
When you were young, did you care how a girl voted before you asked her out? Did you care that your best friend’s parents were bigots? People used to be much more tolerant of each other’s opinions.
Too much internet.
A few months ago I was taking a ‘wait and see’ approach to whether the deficit spending would be cut. The answer now is pretty clear.
I don’t have the exact recent quote from Trump, but he basically said cuts to spending will come in the future. Does anyone believe him at this point?
#8 is a mine field for discussion, but I’ll go ahead. Your position on that comes down to whether you support Israel no matter what they do, even if it violates international laws. I do not.
Also regarding #8, attacks on courts are a worrying trend. Without the courts, there is no rule of law.
To clarify, I was referring to #8 of the Trump emergencies.
Mencken’s hobgoblins.
Problem: Your household budget is $4,900 a month but you have to spend $4,986 to maintain your standard of living. What do you do? Cut $86 or make more money? Well, that is the situation we are in with one big exception – you do not pay for insurance for anything that you own. (i.e. no defense budget) https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61181 2024 Federal Budget:
-4900 Tax Revenue
1500 Social Security
865 Medicare
618 Medicaid
370 Income Security Programs
752 Other Mandatory Spending
881 Interest
86 Over Budget with just mandatory spending
I have not included the defense budget(insurance) at 1800.
What do you do? You Dave Ramsey your budget. You cut spending and you make more money (raise revenue). The only way out is to raise revenue since your mandatory spending exceeds your revenue. How? Tariffs (which are deflationary not inflationary), keep taxes low and get rid of regulation to spur growth and income, invest in capital projects that have a positive return not electric cars and solar panels, lower interest rates to make the dxy lower and make American products more competitive. This sounds a lot like Trump, my God he may be a genius. With plain and simple household budgeting tools, after all he is a billionaire.
Dave’s principles only work at a micro individual level. It never works at the macro level. Fiat money systems need a continuing addition of debt for the Ponzi Scheme of late stage capitalism to not fail. It will eventually fail under the weight of its necessary debt.
Smoke and mirrors. Your argument holds no water. Tariffs are taxes, just a different type. Try again. And don’t eliminate defense spending next time.
An answer would be to get a better-paying job instead of stagnating in the old one. For a government it would be something akin to investing in infrastructure to increase GDP growth.
“investing in infrastructure” Isn’t that what Biden was doing and Harris was going to continue?
Yes and the present administration is continuing.
Other than the projects from the IRA that Trump cancelled. Mostly in red states. And mostly projects that would have added to our electricity supply within 2-3 years. Instead he is promoting nuclear, which is far more expensive and won’t be built in the next 10 years.
You could have the Fed buy bonds and fund you. This is something the government can do that you cant. You’re equivocation of the government being a household is false.
Great list, Mish.
#4 Child credits. I’d simplify the various child/education/etc. credits down to a huge deduction for kids.
The big kahuna of federal spending is social-security/medicare. Those with no kids should cover much of the cost to raise the kids who will support us all when we’re old.
Since taxes are computerized nowadays, make them easy to compute and smooth out all transitions. No hard, magical $35000 trigger level, for instance. Such sharp transitions lead to sharp disincentives at arbitrary dollar levels.
The big kahuna of federal spending is social-security/medicare
And what of the military?
I don’t have any strong opinion of Mish’s #2 (Military Spending). That subject is wonderful food for thought, though. For instance, do you remember any deep public discussion when the Soviet Union broke up as to who would be the world’s policeman?
If you’re asking whether US military spending is a bigger kahuna than old folks, why are you asking me?
At 2.9% of GDP budgeted for 2025 military spending as a percentage is at a multidecade low. You would have to go back to 1999 to see a similar level as it is today. Maybe cutting it more is not the wisest move in the world today.
A high deduction for kids is necessary especially now with denatality a growing problem. The childless often do not see its utility but fortunately the majority does.
Let me propose a new metric: treasury auctions, coverage, and who are the buyers.
Some greater fools must be out there, or the system is broken universally.
Or both…
The national debt is bad but what’s worse is Trump’s degrading mental and physical health.
What’s with Trump’s catheter?
https://www.irishstar.com/news/us-news/alarming-donald-trump-health-fears-35369344
Stumbling on stairs?
Sleep Don is not looking too good.
He still looks in better condition than the previous president did while RUNNING for president in 2020. Glad you’re now concerned.
Check back in a few months from now 😉
What put options should I buy?
Whatever meets your financial goals…….
I am waiting on this “deal” with China to finalize before I buy more puts myself. I will target SPY ATM puts for January ’26 after the “deal surge” rally. I will probably sell OTM calls on IWM too for same time frame.
Hmmmmmmm, I would think that the markets would go up dramatically if trump passed. That said, Vance would be another disaster of epic proportion.
I think the catheter is because trump gets moody when he wets himself.
“health fears” Maybe prayers being answered?
I wish him no harm but his quite painless death would not upset me. The cost of a parade down Pennsylvania Ave in a flag draped coffin would be his last fu to America.
Google Government Bustout
“There are two ways to conquer and enslave a nation. One is by the sword. The other is by debt.”
― John Adams 1826
Read: “As We Go Marching”.. (https://www.google.com/books/edition/As_We_Go_Marching/3icI7NLox4EC?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover) By John Flynn.
It lays out how Fascism develops and operates. While it’s a bit more complicated in the US due to our separation of powers, all the elements align.
I have to wonder if Fascism is the culmination of all successful economies, regardless of how they begin and how they see themselves. Someone has to run things. The Producers or the government. Generally, it results in a joint venture.