The key circumstance of 2026 is that the Donald Trump’s dominion depends on the bubble-era dollar...and the dollar depends on the willingness of foreigners to take it.
MAGA is not a cult; it's a mindset. There's a difference. I would still believe that 1960 America was better, and what we should be shooting for, whether Donald Trump had come along or not. The idea that Donald Trump invented what we call MAGA is fallacious. He gave it a nice, catchy name, what we today would call a "meme", but the traditional-values, conservative-minded individuals that make up what is seen and identfied as MAGA were there long before 2015. If everyone is offended that we back Donald Trump, those same people COULD have made sure a real statesman/visionary was among the candidates, but no. We went with what we had. The world has moved on (to borrow Stephen King's line), and America's best days are behind her, best meaning truer to the vision put in place at her founding, so Donald Trump is doing what he can to run the string to its end. Without him, we'd all be already back on the manor, playing the role of serf to the 1% who see themselves as lords. Best always. PM
Paul, Your very last sentence has the wrong conclusion.
It should read, "Without him, we would have an Administration that -- to use the choice of "guns or butter" -- is focused more on the latter than the former.
Our two major political parties made us chose between bad and worse.
More: We can't MAGA with imperial over reach; with a dollar declining in value and with a deficit made ever larger, one now so massive that in can never be repaid
Which I readily admit in my reference to Steven King's insightful line from "The Gunslinger" (Dark Tower Series) 1982, "The world has moved on." We are dealing with what we have now. That does not mean, in my view, that what we have now is better. Best always. PM
Frankly, I have no idea why the MAGAs roam Bill's comments - funny, it is like they are trying to "protect" the crazy Orangeman. Seems that is what entrenched MAGAs do - they are so infatuated with the magnificence of the TACO Clown. They love the BULLY. And, here they come to the comments, calling Bill out with glitter in their eyes on how wonderful the Orange Idiot is and how stupid Bill is. Unfortunately, for them, and for us - it soon will be quite evident. The roosters are coming home and the US$ is rapidly heading to the dustbin of history along with us peons. Sad......one would hope it wouldn't come to this but human nature continues to be human nature and empires slide into the past.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I voted for Trump twice. But then he lost the 2020 election and tried to stay in power with a ridiculous coup attempt that Pence refused to go along with. That automatically made him the worst president ever. Four star Marine general Kelly, his long time chief of staff, summed up Trump very well : the most flawed person he'd ever met in his life.
When I bring up some of the ridiculous things Trump does to my Trumplican friends, like his threat to invade Greenland, all they can say is,"well, the Democrats are worse".
You have to remember that we had ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots, ballots in many states sent to every registered voter, Voter registrations with tens of thousands of dead, moved, illegals, non-citizens still registered to vote, and then there was the the issue of poles being shut down early by democrats all at the same time and then the next morning hundreds of thousands of ballots showing up and counted with most of those ballots marked for Biden! Now convince me that there was not corruption gong on. Am I wrong?
It's a sad fact, and has been for quite some time, that the US presidential election is a binary choice. Either the republican or democrat nominee will win.
And as much as I generally detest the republican party, I still believe the democrat party is in fact, much worse.
However, I will admit that if the republicans cave on the illegal alien deportation issue, I will most likely sit the next election out. If the democrats take power again---so be it. We can then have that civil war that many of us think is inevitable anyway.
In 1776 the population of America was supposedly around 2.5 million. Back then we had guys like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, etc etc. Now we have a population of about 350 million - and look who we come up with as choices for President! It makes no sense.
Wow Bill, your thoughts are all over the place and mostly focused on the Big Man. Not sure where your resentments are coming from, but they are deeper than the Washington swamp. I’m sure you know that President Trump is busy building unity with our friends, and drawing out all of our globalist enemies. You’re either with America or you’re with China. Russia is in the grey. Not sure what Putin will do after the coming cleanup ends. It’s sad to see how our European friends have become enemies due to their corrupt leadership and diluted citizens. Same here with our corrupt democrat run cities and states. I hope your daily hatred and stress do not push you to become as your friends terrible fate. It may be wise to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor in a more productive and peaceful environment, maybe a permanent home in beautiful Nicaragua 🤔
Yes, it does seem excessive. But what you see on the surface with Trump might not be what is really going on. It's all part of a strategy. He wants Greenland and he has good reasons why. We'll see what eventually happens. There is never a dull moment.
How would acquiring Greenland be great for the average American? Maybe working class Americans struggling with medical education bills should consider being acquired by Greenland. At least they would have to pay exorbitant health care and college education costs.
“The media treats Trump’s idea of buying Greenland as some sort of drug-induced brainstorm. But it’s not new. In fact, Trump is the fourth president to try to buy the Arctic island. The first was Democrat Andrew Johnson (1865–1869), fresh off his successful purchase of Alaska from the Russians for two cents an acre. Johnson promptly sent Secretary of State William H. Seward —who’d brokered the Alaska deal— to Denmark, to try to buy Greenland. But the sale fell through.
Back then, critics curled their collective lips and contemptuously called Alaska, “Seward’s Folly.” What do we need all that useless ice for? Next up was William Howard Taft (R, 1909–1913). In 1910, Taft’s administration proposed a complicated land-exchange deal that would have transferred Greenland to the U.S. in exchange for concessions in other territories. But again, the deal went phut.
In 1946, after World War II and amid emerging Cold War tensions, Democrat President Harry S. Truman tried again, formally offering Denmark $100 million in gold (worth about $14 billion today) for Greenland, citing its military importance, but Denmark rejected the offer.
President Trump first mentioned buying Greenland during Trump 1.0, so it’s not even a new idea for him. But don’t rely on the Nation’s “paper of record” to remind you about any of this bipartisan Greenland history, that would be too informative. And, well, you know: Orange man bad!
But why would the people of Greenland want to become a colonony of the US? Give up national health care and college education programs? For who, for what? I do get a kick out of the BS though - Maduro and the Mullahs are dictators, we need to bring democracy to Venezuela and Iran! As far as the people of Greenland, screw them, we need their resources.
But it's not about 350M vs. 57K population as far as who benefits. Fox News was interviewing an expert this morning. She was saying that the NATO agreement states that each country must be able to defend its own borders. Denmark cannot defend Greenland. It also doesn't have the resources to develop Greenland or make much use of it. As far as the residents, they occupy only a small part of it - does that give them the right to own all of it. They are just barely surviving there as far as I can see. Denmark subsidizes them to some extent ($600M/yr. as I understand - 20% of their budget but they depend on it) but Denmark does not have the resources to develop any infrastructure. I would expect that the Greenland population would be much better under US jurisdiction but that is incidental.
So screw the people of Greenland? You might not know this but the Tech Bros including Vance's boss Peter Theil want to set up a tech city there. It will be nice practice for our future surveillance state! But here's a question for you - if you were an average middle class citizen of Greenland would you want to become a colony of the US? That includes giving up your national health care and subsidized higher education and joining the peons here paying exorbitant prices for both.
Mr. L, Excellent comments. And Bill writes: "And while the situation could be corrected by radical Milei-style cutbacks, that’s another thing Donald Trump cannot do." There were no "radical" Milei-style cutbacks, and Milei's support dropped from 56% to 41% from voters from the modest cutbacks he did make. I praise Milei for doing even these, but he has had to hold back since then. And Bill knows, as do many of his supporting commenters know, that if Pres. Trump did radical cutbacks, that a depression would sweep the U.S., wiping out the GOP in 2026 and VP Vance in 2028. This is because of tens of millions of jobs heavily- or partially-dependent on debt spending would disappear. This debt-for-jobs nonsense propped up by the Fed spending trillions in make-believe money since 2000 is the major problem here.
Notice that Bill and those who praise him NEVER PROVIDE SPECIFICS when they cry about Mr. Trump not balancing the budget. To really bring things around to normal would result in a three- or four-year depression that Billionaire Bill and his complimenters would never have to face. And they are also sneaky leftists trying to pose as fiscal conservatives, who really want open borders and mass amnesty, just like the radical Democrats. The more govt.-dependent, third-world peasants as U.S. voters, the better for these folks. But fortunately, no one in the GOP is going to commit political suicide and make radical cutbacks, so Bill and these folks can virtue signal in a hypocritical way all they want in the Comments Section, but that's all it is.
Thank you Frank🙏 the power play President Trump is pushing is not only unbelievable and unprecedented, it’s the only way to break the cycle of insanity that the globalist have been destroying the West with for decades now. It’s over for them, and Trump will let them know this week that there will be consequences for their actions. Larry Fink has taken the helm of the most destructive and corrupt of all the three letter organizations. And I pray there will be hell to pay for their crimes. Yes Frank, all these other clowns are nothing but ignorant fools that think they’re smarter than Trump, but he’s a master manipulator who is at the top of his game. And the name of the game is MAGA, while all those who tried to destroy America will be FIRED(placed in a box for eternity)🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Steve -- Your defense of Trump is also "all over the place." It's just a litany of complaints lacking substantive justifications.
Surely you must recognize Trump's out of control. He's exacerbating -- not reducing -- the deficit; destroying NATO and emulating Putin's theft by imperiously declaring Greenland -- where we have long had a military presence -- must be ours.
And wither the Epstein files? Could his Greenland thievery and bypass of Congress be another commotion to hide the fact that the preponderance of these files haven't be released?
Surely you agree that the fact they haven't means they contain revelations about Trump that are far from complimentary?
I'm not going to argue with you about Trump being out of control. Some of the stuff he does drives me crazy.
But your comment on the Epstein files drives me crazy too.
Biden and company had access to all of those files, Jimm. If there was anything within those files that would have tainted Trump in even the slightest degree, do you actually believe that Biden/Kamala and their cronies wouldn't have revealed those things during the presidential campaign??
It defies any semblance of reason to argue in the affirmative.
We are now told there are millions of Epstein files. My guess is that no one really knows whats all in those files. It will take months, if not years to go through all of those files. What worries me, is that if the DOJ, FBI, CIA, IRS have millions of files on Epstein, what do they have on each of us? This whole record keeping on American citizens is totally out of control.. Why is all of this necessary?
You still totally baffle me Jimm. I can rarely reply with you because I just can’t understand anything you fight for, especially after serving our country. But I get it. It’s a common disease. My question is, how can you disagree with all of the positive things that our current president is doing compared to the insanity of the past? Things are so much deeper than you evidently know, and if we had another 100% corrupt election like we witnessed in 2020, we would be a total disaster and third world shithole the globalist leftist have been fighting for. Everything that President Trump is just smoke and mirrors for what we are really doing behind the scenes. So sit back, don’t stress, and enjoy the show. It’s about to get real my friend 🙏
My stress level will increase should the forthcoming elections result in more national upheaval, not less.
To date, I’m led to believe that Trump’s imperial deportment is not appealing to most voters.
Costs are up; job openings are down; long time friends ((e. g., France which was instrumental in creating our country) are now preparing to militarily confront us should we unilaterally annex Greenland, etc.
These developments do not bode well for the GOP holding on to their House and Senate majorities
Again my friend, think just one minute of where we would be if the incredibly low IQed Harris and the incredibly corrupt Walz were able to steal the election like 2019. The New Democrat Party is 100% deranged communist and the Republican Party is the Democrat party of the past. Doesn’t bode well for our future. I believe the only hope for us is Trump doing exactly what is required to end the corruption in the swamp. Many democrats and RINOS need to go to jail, and hopefully the gallows, and if that doesn’t happen, We the people are doomed….
I just cannot comprehend why Trump is so fixed on owning Greenland when present agreements allow America to place tens of thousands of our troops on Greenland with their approval for protection or defense. There is the motive of exocit metals, but whats preventing American companies from exploring and mining those materials? There has to be a "hidden" agenda going on somewhere.
Could you provide a list of "friends" with whom Trump is building unity? Plus, why do you have to choose between the US and China? Elon Musk has been a star of MAGA and helped get Trump elected. But even his own Grok says this about his relationship with China : "In conclusion: the ties are very strong on an economic and pragmatic level , and Musk has cultivated an exceptionally good relationship with the Chinese government". Donnie himself is still selling his $59.99 Bible printed in China for $3 a pop. Even Trump Big Time donor Miriam Adelson makes money in China via a casino in Macau. So if we have to choose between China and America we better find another team to support.
So, when Bill wrote that he was in Nicaragua, I thought he was trying to find the perfect jungle to play his TDS infused Bongos. Nope. He drove right past the indigent locals on his way to a luxury resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In the comfort of luxury accommodations, excellent cuisine, and pampering by the staff, he set to work banging his bongos with his backup band. Yes, it's Bongo Bill and the Nabobs of Negativism who entertained the guests that night.
I am told that Bill is giving back to the fine people of Nicaragua. Education is key to upward mobility. His friend, the drooling one. Was an early investor in Somali Learing centers.
BB-it seems to me you are bragging about how successful you have been by owning property all over the world. At the same time, you see the poverty on the way to your luxurious abodes. Is it necessary to constantly keep complaining what Trump is doing. No one really knows what he is thinking. BTW, Trump may have used low interest rates to keep his business moving forward, as other CEO’s have done. He also has created JOBS for many people working his hotels and golf courses. These people spend money and increase the GDP of the country. When brain-dead Biden was president, you said nothing. Sadly, maybe it’s time for you to spend some time in a chair enjoying the views of all your properties instead of your constant TDS disease. I am confident that Trump is doing his best to keep the dollar as the world currency. Who knows how many more years it will take to have a new world currency; probably it will be a combination of several currencies; this is up to the IMF.
I find it interesting that the MSM, who turned a blind eye to an obviously incapacitated Joe Biden until his unconcealable, pathetic performance in the 2024 debates, now seems obsessed with the health of Donald Trump, a veritable whirlwind of activity. Perhaps they fear the poor man will work himself to death...
My burning question is whether people in other countries have the right to "self determination." Does our need to acquire (steal) their resources supersede their wishes? I think "national security" is insuring by any means necessary that the world keeps buying our debt. Eventually it will end in war.
I agree.He should can the security argument and go with the General Welfare Clause. Free hiking, sled dog tours, discounted fish, further racial diversity, and forced sterilization.
General Welfare been useful and popular with his detractors.
But it won't be for the welfare of the people of Greenland, that's for certain. They will have to give up their national health care and join us in paying exorbitant prices for health care. But I have read that the Tech Bros are ready to establish one of their high tech colonies in Greenland. So maybe Their and Musk are behind Trump's obsession.
It seems Trump is a genius like Jeff Bezos or Sam Altman etc. He realized the free money gave him a chance to grow. Now when the time is right he is getting rid of EU leadership, i.e. the ones who want WWIII, men in girls sports, censorship with their tech buddies, CDBCs so they can see what you are doing and then put you in jail if they don't like you opposing their climate change or censorship or 15 minute cities. He teamed up with Musk to find drastic corruption finally ended USAID and the failing department of education. No other politician has been able to make this kind of progress in the US which is obviously terribly corrupt, even the past president is getting stipends from the Chinese. If you can't see the US was heading for communism then you haven't been looking. Or we could rely on various whiners like BB to get things done in America. Sick and tired of wasting my time on Bill's comments. I thought this was supposed to be a maximum safety region for our money, not a political war room.
You must have been a great dancer when you were young. You sure can dance around a question. Have you considered going into politics? Maybe Crash Patel could use you when he's questioned about the Epstein blackmail operation files.
I am starting to think you are right about Trump. It seems that events all over the world are now all about Trump. He needs to take a rest and stop trying to control everything.
Yes, if it were not DJT it would be some other optimistic marketer touting a MAGA like message, or some Vladimir Lenin 2.0 retread like Mamdani promising that concentration of wealth control into a "righteous vanguard of the proletariat" ruling class animated by thinly disguised Sharia law which blesses looting of the non-submissive by those who have "submitted" (or the suppression of the "oppresors/white supremacists" by the "oppressed" (Somali pirates and their allies in bondage to their votes). These or similar outcomes do seem more likely in a setting where the game of outsourcing inflation to neighbors who have treated our currency as AAA assets is in the process of unraveling. Claim Greenland, if you can, but how will the Navy get its "Golden fleet" built if the USD goes the way of the Iranian or Zimbabwean or Germany 1920's national legal tender? Inquiring minds are understandably puzzled as the flesh out their various "plan B" projects. I recommend forwarding your assets to a reliable repository (and all that means for life and eternity). The usual earthly assets would be rated BBB or less if the rating agencies didn't have to "keep dancing as long as the (soothing but deadly) music plays" or have their rating assignments given to a more pliable competitor.
Here is an attempt to compare USA and Chinese household debt loads, with some filtering by household income level.
What is the average debt per family of US and Chinese families, in each case excluding the families in the top 1 percent or top 10 percent of incomes
There is no published statistic that directly gives “average debt per family excluding the top 1% or top 10%” for either the US or China, so this has to be approximated from broader aggregates and distributional evidence. The best that can be done is to give reasonable order‑of‑magnitude estimates and explain the limitations.
United States
The New York Fed reports total US household debt around 18–18.5 trillion dollars in 2025, with household debt‑to‑income near 80–85% and a debt‑service ratio a little over 11%.
USAFacts and similar aggregations put average debt per person at roughly 63,000 dollars in late 2025, which implies around 160,000–170,000 dollars per household (assuming 2.5–2.7 persons per household).
Top‑income households are a small share of families but hold disproportionate amounts of mortgage and other debt, so excluding the top 10% of the income distribution will pull the average down somewhat. SCF tabulations show that both assets and debts are heavily concentrated at the top, but the concentration of debt is less extreme than that of wealth.
A reasonable approximation for 2022–2025 conditions is:
Approximate average debt per US family overall: about 150,000–170,000 dollars.
Approximate average debt per US family excluding the top 10% of incomes: on the order of 110,000–130,000 dollars. This reflects the fact that the top decile holds a notably larger share of mortgage and business debt than its population share, so dropping it lowers the mean.
Excluding only the top 1% would have a smaller effect, probably reducing the overall mean by well under 10%, because the top 1% is only 1% of families and some of them have relatively low leverage compared with their income and assets.
These numbers are broad estimates, not direct published figures; getting exact values would require microdata work on the SCF using income‑decile filters and aggregating liabilities, which the public chartbook and headline reports do not provide in closed form.
China
Estimates from CEIC and related sources put China’s household debt around 60–62% of GDP by 2024–2025.
With China’s nominal GDP in the mid‑2020s around 18–19 trillion US dollars, this implies household debt on the order of 11–12 trillion dollars equivalent.
China has roughly 500 million households; that gives a crude average debt per household on the order of 20,000–25,000 US dollars.
Chinese household debt is also very skewed: mortgage debt dominates, and homeownership with mortgages is more common among urban middle‑ and upper‑middle‑income households. China‑specific microdata that break debt directly by detailed income percentile are sparse in public English‑language sources; most public indicators are debt‑to‑income or debt‑to‑GDP ratios, not level averages by income group.
Under plausible assumptions (that high‑income urban households are more likely to have large mortgages and consumer loans), excluding the top 10% of incomes likely pulls the mean household debt down materially. A rough, order‑of‑magnitude picture is:
Approximate average debt per Chinese household overall: ~20,000–25,000 US dollars equivalent.
Approximate average debt per Chinese household excluding the top 10% of incomes: something like 13,000–18,000 US dollars equivalent, recognizing that mortgage borrowing is far more prevalent and larger in the upper deciles of the income distribution.
Excluding only the top 1% would again have a smaller impact on the mean, although in China the very top income and wealth groups are heavily involved in real‑estate and business borrowing, so the effect may be somewhat larger than in the US relative to population share.
Data and limitations
For the US, the natural data source is the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which provides detailed family‑level liability data and allows tabulation by income decile, but the standard public tables and interactive chartbook do not directly publish “average debt excluding top 1% or 10% of incomes.”
For China, macro indicators (household debt‑to‑GDP, debt‑to‑income) and composition (mortgage share of household debt) are available, but public micro‑distributional data by income percentile are limited, so any estimate for “average debt per family excluding top 1%/10%” is necessarily approximate and model‑based rather than a directly reported statistic.
If you want, an explicit numerical range can be constructed by choosing specific assumptions (e.g., share of total household debt held by the top income decile in each country) and backing out an implied average for the remaining 90%; that would require working from one of the SCF extract files for the US and from whatever China microdata or calibrated distributions are available.
Like other "important" economic statistics, it's hard to take seriously either US or Chinese numbers. How many "families" does each country have? How much debt are they bearing (not including the debt of their Administrative State)? Neither numerator nor denominator of the per family debt is known.
I'm still amazed at how many in the MAGA cult read Bill's messages and then post criticism.
MAGA is not a cult; it's a mindset. There's a difference. I would still believe that 1960 America was better, and what we should be shooting for, whether Donald Trump had come along or not. The idea that Donald Trump invented what we call MAGA is fallacious. He gave it a nice, catchy name, what we today would call a "meme", but the traditional-values, conservative-minded individuals that make up what is seen and identfied as MAGA were there long before 2015. If everyone is offended that we back Donald Trump, those same people COULD have made sure a real statesman/visionary was among the candidates, but no. We went with what we had. The world has moved on (to borrow Stephen King's line), and America's best days are behind her, best meaning truer to the vision put in place at her founding, so Donald Trump is doing what he can to run the string to its end. Without him, we'd all be already back on the manor, playing the role of serf to the 1% who see themselves as lords. Best always. PM
Paul, Your very last sentence has the wrong conclusion.
It should read, "Without him, we would have an Administration that -- to use the choice of "guns or butter" -- is focused more on the latter than the former.
Our two major political parties made us chose between bad and worse.
More: We can't MAGA with imperial over reach; with a dollar declining in value and with a deficit made ever larger, one now so massive that in can never be repaid
Thanks for the response. Best always. PM
Very difficult to go backwards.
Which I readily admit in my reference to Steven King's insightful line from "The Gunslinger" (Dark Tower Series) 1982, "The world has moved on." We are dealing with what we have now. That does not mean, in my view, that what we have now is better. Best always. PM
Frankly, I have no idea why the MAGAs roam Bill's comments - funny, it is like they are trying to "protect" the crazy Orangeman. Seems that is what entrenched MAGAs do - they are so infatuated with the magnificence of the TACO Clown. They love the BULLY. And, here they come to the comments, calling Bill out with glitter in their eyes on how wonderful the Orange Idiot is and how stupid Bill is. Unfortunately, for them, and for us - it soon will be quite evident. The roosters are coming home and the US$ is rapidly heading to the dustbin of history along with us peons. Sad......one would hope it wouldn't come to this but human nature continues to be human nature and empires slide into the past.
I'm embarrassed to admit that I voted for Trump twice. But then he lost the 2020 election and tried to stay in power with a ridiculous coup attempt that Pence refused to go along with. That automatically made him the worst president ever. Four star Marine general Kelly, his long time chief of staff, summed up Trump very well : the most flawed person he'd ever met in his life.
When I bring up some of the ridiculous things Trump does to my Trumplican friends, like his threat to invade Greenland, all they can say is,"well, the Democrats are worse".
James
Trump does verbalize a lot. Some I like and some I don’t like. As far as the Obama and Biden years we found out their agenda after the fact.
As far as the 2020 election, it’s hard for me to believe that brain-dead Biden got more votes than Trump
You have to remember that we had ballot harvesting, mail-in ballots, ballots in many states sent to every registered voter, Voter registrations with tens of thousands of dead, moved, illegals, non-citizens still registered to vote, and then there was the the issue of poles being shut down early by democrats all at the same time and then the next morning hundreds of thousands of ballots showing up and counted with most of those ballots marked for Biden! Now convince me that there was not corruption gong on. Am I wrong?
Yup, that pretty much sums it up, but it's lost on the totally irrational Trump haters on this page.
"𝙖𝙡𝙡 𝙩𝙝𝙚𝙮 𝙘𝙖𝙣 𝙨𝙖𝙮 𝙞𝙨,"𝙬𝙚𝙡𝙡, 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝘿𝙚𝙢𝙤𝙘𝙧𝙖𝙩𝙨 𝙖𝙧𝙚 𝙬𝙤𝙧𝙨𝙚"."
So what makes that sentiment false??
It's a sad fact, and has been for quite some time, that the US presidential election is a binary choice. Either the republican or democrat nominee will win.
And as much as I generally detest the republican party, I still believe the democrat party is in fact, much worse.
However, I will admit that if the republicans cave on the illegal alien deportation issue, I will most likely sit the next election out. If the democrats take power again---so be it. We can then have that civil war that many of us think is inevitable anyway.
It wasn't so much a deliberate coup attempt but a stage play scripted by the CIA, FBI, et. al.
Right......I laughed and laughed. Trump went right along with the play as that gang of simpletons trashed our Capitol.
At this point in time your friends would be right.
It's a shame for a nation that has had more than a few great presidents, the choices its been left with of late.
In 1776 the population of America was supposedly around 2.5 million. Back then we had guys like Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Hamilton, etc etc. Now we have a population of about 350 million - and look who we come up with as choices for President! It makes no sense.
Wow Bill, your thoughts are all over the place and mostly focused on the Big Man. Not sure where your resentments are coming from, but they are deeper than the Washington swamp. I’m sure you know that President Trump is busy building unity with our friends, and drawing out all of our globalist enemies. You’re either with America or you’re with China. Russia is in the grey. Not sure what Putin will do after the coming cleanup ends. It’s sad to see how our European friends have become enemies due to their corrupt leadership and diluted citizens. Same here with our corrupt democrat run cities and states. I hope your daily hatred and stress do not push you to become as your friends terrible fate. It may be wise to sit back and enjoy the fruits of our labor in a more productive and peaceful environment, maybe a permanent home in beautiful Nicaragua 🤔
... up until now I have (as many others) held my nose and closed my eyes to some of Trump's shenanigans.
Most all of DJT's policies are pro-America good.
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However, his latest move to tariff EU countries opposed to U.S. acquisition of Greenland may a bit too much...
Not that I disagree; acquiring Greenland would be great for the U.S.
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But there are limits to what tariff's should be used for, and this use is outside of basic economic trade.
Abusing tariffs, give tariffs a bad wrap...
Yes, it does seem excessive. But what you see on the surface with Trump might not be what is really going on. It's all part of a strategy. He wants Greenland and he has good reasons why. We'll see what eventually happens. There is never a dull moment.
How would acquiring Greenland be great for the average American? Maybe working class Americans struggling with medical education bills should consider being acquired by Greenland. At least they would have to pay exorbitant health care and college education costs.
“The media treats Trump’s idea of buying Greenland as some sort of drug-induced brainstorm. But it’s not new. In fact, Trump is the fourth president to try to buy the Arctic island. The first was Democrat Andrew Johnson (1865–1869), fresh off his successful purchase of Alaska from the Russians for two cents an acre. Johnson promptly sent Secretary of State William H. Seward —who’d brokered the Alaska deal— to Denmark, to try to buy Greenland. But the sale fell through.
Back then, critics curled their collective lips and contemptuously called Alaska, “Seward’s Folly.” What do we need all that useless ice for? Next up was William Howard Taft (R, 1909–1913). In 1910, Taft’s administration proposed a complicated land-exchange deal that would have transferred Greenland to the U.S. in exchange for concessions in other territories. But again, the deal went phut.
In 1946, after World War II and amid emerging Cold War tensions, Democrat President Harry S. Truman tried again, formally offering Denmark $100 million in gold (worth about $14 billion today) for Greenland, citing its military importance, but Denmark rejected the offer.
President Trump first mentioned buying Greenland during Trump 1.0, so it’s not even a new idea for him. But don’t rely on the Nation’s “paper of record” to remind you about any of this bipartisan Greenland history, that would be too informative. And, well, you know: Orange man bad!
We shall see.”
But why would the people of Greenland want to become a colonony of the US? Give up national health care and college education programs? For who, for what? I do get a kick out of the BS though - Maduro and the Mullahs are dictators, we need to bring democracy to Venezuela and Iran! As far as the people of Greenland, screw them, we need their resources.
...well, we do need the territory to distance our adversaries.
New shipping routes due to melting Arctic ice.
Control over these routes are in the U.S. economic, security interests and influence in global trade.
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57,000 people live in Greenland.
Seems that's a tiny number compared to the 350 million people that would benefit from Greenland colonization.
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Besides, no one wants to deal with Brussels.
But it's not about 350M vs. 57K population as far as who benefits. Fox News was interviewing an expert this morning. She was saying that the NATO agreement states that each country must be able to defend its own borders. Denmark cannot defend Greenland. It also doesn't have the resources to develop Greenland or make much use of it. As far as the residents, they occupy only a small part of it - does that give them the right to own all of it. They are just barely surviving there as far as I can see. Denmark subsidizes them to some extent ($600M/yr. as I understand - 20% of their budget but they depend on it) but Denmark does not have the resources to develop any infrastructure. I would expect that the Greenland population would be much better under US jurisdiction but that is incidental.
And let us not forget ’Seward’s Folly.’ The purchase of Alaska. Might that be considered a fortuitous endeavor - looking back in hindsight?
So screw the people of Greenland? You might not know this but the Tech Bros including Vance's boss Peter Theil want to set up a tech city there. It will be nice practice for our future surveillance state! But here's a question for you - if you were an average middle class citizen of Greenland would you want to become a colony of the US? That includes giving up your national health care and subsidized higher education and joining the peons here paying exorbitant prices for both.
Mr. L, Excellent comments. And Bill writes: "And while the situation could be corrected by radical Milei-style cutbacks, that’s another thing Donald Trump cannot do." There were no "radical" Milei-style cutbacks, and Milei's support dropped from 56% to 41% from voters from the modest cutbacks he did make. I praise Milei for doing even these, but he has had to hold back since then. And Bill knows, as do many of his supporting commenters know, that if Pres. Trump did radical cutbacks, that a depression would sweep the U.S., wiping out the GOP in 2026 and VP Vance in 2028. This is because of tens of millions of jobs heavily- or partially-dependent on debt spending would disappear. This debt-for-jobs nonsense propped up by the Fed spending trillions in make-believe money since 2000 is the major problem here.
Notice that Bill and those who praise him NEVER PROVIDE SPECIFICS when they cry about Mr. Trump not balancing the budget. To really bring things around to normal would result in a three- or four-year depression that Billionaire Bill and his complimenters would never have to face. And they are also sneaky leftists trying to pose as fiscal conservatives, who really want open borders and mass amnesty, just like the radical Democrats. The more govt.-dependent, third-world peasants as U.S. voters, the better for these folks. But fortunately, no one in the GOP is going to commit political suicide and make radical cutbacks, so Bill and these folks can virtue signal in a hypocritical way all they want in the Comments Section, but that's all it is.
Thank you Frank🙏 the power play President Trump is pushing is not only unbelievable and unprecedented, it’s the only way to break the cycle of insanity that the globalist have been destroying the West with for decades now. It’s over for them, and Trump will let them know this week that there will be consequences for their actions. Larry Fink has taken the helm of the most destructive and corrupt of all the three letter organizations. And I pray there will be hell to pay for their crimes. Yes Frank, all these other clowns are nothing but ignorant fools that think they’re smarter than Trump, but he’s a master manipulator who is at the top of his game. And the name of the game is MAGA, while all those who tried to destroy America will be FIRED(placed in a box for eternity)🙏🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
Steve -- Your defense of Trump is also "all over the place." It's just a litany of complaints lacking substantive justifications.
Surely you must recognize Trump's out of control. He's exacerbating -- not reducing -- the deficit; destroying NATO and emulating Putin's theft by imperiously declaring Greenland -- where we have long had a military presence -- must be ours.
And wither the Epstein files? Could his Greenland thievery and bypass of Congress be another commotion to hide the fact that the preponderance of these files haven't be released?
Surely you agree that the fact they haven't means they contain revelations about Trump that are far from complimentary?
Jimm,
I'm not going to argue with you about Trump being out of control. Some of the stuff he does drives me crazy.
But your comment on the Epstein files drives me crazy too.
Biden and company had access to all of those files, Jimm. If there was anything within those files that would have tainted Trump in even the slightest degree, do you actually believe that Biden/Kamala and their cronies wouldn't have revealed those things during the presidential campaign??
It defies any semblance of reason to argue in the affirmative.
We are now told there are millions of Epstein files. My guess is that no one really knows whats all in those files. It will take months, if not years to go through all of those files. What worries me, is that if the DOJ, FBI, CIA, IRS have millions of files on Epstein, what do they have on each of us? This whole record keeping on American citizens is totally out of control.. Why is all of this necessary?
My guess is that those files contain things that NEITHER party wants out, which is why we've had general stonewalling from both administrations.
You still totally baffle me Jimm. I can rarely reply with you because I just can’t understand anything you fight for, especially after serving our country. But I get it. It’s a common disease. My question is, how can you disagree with all of the positive things that our current president is doing compared to the insanity of the past? Things are so much deeper than you evidently know, and if we had another 100% corrupt election like we witnessed in 2020, we would be a total disaster and third world shithole the globalist leftist have been fighting for. Everything that President Trump is just smoke and mirrors for what we are really doing behind the scenes. So sit back, don’t stress, and enjoy the show. It’s about to get real my friend 🙏
My stress level will increase should the forthcoming elections result in more national upheaval, not less.
To date, I’m led to believe that Trump’s imperial deportment is not appealing to most voters.
Costs are up; job openings are down; long time friends ((e. g., France which was instrumental in creating our country) are now preparing to militarily confront us should we unilaterally annex Greenland, etc.
These developments do not bode well for the GOP holding on to their House and Senate majorities
Again my friend, think just one minute of where we would be if the incredibly low IQed Harris and the incredibly corrupt Walz were able to steal the election like 2019. The New Democrat Party is 100% deranged communist and the Republican Party is the Democrat party of the past. Doesn’t bode well for our future. I believe the only hope for us is Trump doing exactly what is required to end the corruption in the swamp. Many democrats and RINOS need to go to jail, and hopefully the gallows, and if that doesn’t happen, We the people are doomed….
I just cannot comprehend why Trump is so fixed on owning Greenland when present agreements allow America to place tens of thousands of our troops on Greenland with their approval for protection or defense. There is the motive of exocit metals, but whats preventing American companies from exploring and mining those materials? There has to be a "hidden" agenda going on somewhere.
Could you provide a list of "friends" with whom Trump is building unity? Plus, why do you have to choose between the US and China? Elon Musk has been a star of MAGA and helped get Trump elected. But even his own Grok says this about his relationship with China : "In conclusion: the ties are very strong on an economic and pragmatic level , and Musk has cultivated an exceptionally good relationship with the Chinese government". Donnie himself is still selling his $59.99 Bible printed in China for $3 a pop. Even Trump Big Time donor Miriam Adelson makes money in China via a casino in Macau. So if we have to choose between China and America we better find another team to support.
To have such delusions…What planet are you on??
So, when Bill wrote that he was in Nicaragua, I thought he was trying to find the perfect jungle to play his TDS infused Bongos. Nope. He drove right past the indigent locals on his way to a luxury resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean. In the comfort of luxury accommodations, excellent cuisine, and pampering by the staff, he set to work banging his bongos with his backup band. Yes, it's Bongo Bill and the Nabobs of Negativism who entertained the guests that night.
I am told that Bill is giving back to the fine people of Nicaragua. Education is key to upward mobility. His friend, the drooling one. Was an early investor in Somali Learing centers.
Lots of cash down there now.
$5.00 each?
🤣
BB-it seems to me you are bragging about how successful you have been by owning property all over the world. At the same time, you see the poverty on the way to your luxurious abodes. Is it necessary to constantly keep complaining what Trump is doing. No one really knows what he is thinking. BTW, Trump may have used low interest rates to keep his business moving forward, as other CEO’s have done. He also has created JOBS for many people working his hotels and golf courses. These people spend money and increase the GDP of the country. When brain-dead Biden was president, you said nothing. Sadly, maybe it’s time for you to spend some time in a chair enjoying the views of all your properties instead of your constant TDS disease. I am confident that Trump is doing his best to keep the dollar as the world currency. Who knows how many more years it will take to have a new world currency; probably it will be a combination of several currencies; this is up to the IMF.
I find it interesting that the MSM, who turned a blind eye to an obviously incapacitated Joe Biden until his unconcealable, pathetic performance in the 2024 debates, now seems obsessed with the health of Donald Trump, a veritable whirlwind of activity. Perhaps they fear the poor man will work himself to death...
Those so called chickens are rapidly on their way home to roost.
Then America will be cooked.
wake me up when Trump comes for Religion and Guns!
You’ll be sleeping a long time. You may need a ‘princess’ charming to wake you.
My burning question is whether people in other countries have the right to "self determination." Does our need to acquire (steal) their resources supersede their wishes? I think "national security" is insuring by any means necessary that the world keeps buying our debt. Eventually it will end in war.
I agree.He should can the security argument and go with the General Welfare Clause. Free hiking, sled dog tours, discounted fish, further racial diversity, and forced sterilization.
General Welfare been useful and popular with his detractors.
But it won't be for the welfare of the people of Greenland, that's for certain. They will have to give up their national health care and join us in paying exorbitant prices for health care. But I have read that the Tech Bros are ready to establish one of their high tech colonies in Greenland. So maybe Their and Musk are behind Trump's obsession.
It seems Trump is a genius like Jeff Bezos or Sam Altman etc. He realized the free money gave him a chance to grow. Now when the time is right he is getting rid of EU leadership, i.e. the ones who want WWIII, men in girls sports, censorship with their tech buddies, CDBCs so they can see what you are doing and then put you in jail if they don't like you opposing their climate change or censorship or 15 minute cities. He teamed up with Musk to find drastic corruption finally ended USAID and the failing department of education. No other politician has been able to make this kind of progress in the US which is obviously terribly corrupt, even the past president is getting stipends from the Chinese. If you can't see the US was heading for communism then you haven't been looking. Or we could rely on various whiners like BB to get things done in America. Sick and tired of wasting my time on Bill's comments. I thought this was supposed to be a maximum safety region for our money, not a political war room.
Agreed wholeheartedly
Bill B. believes in SECULAR PREDESTINATION … interesting.
You must have been a great dancer when you were young. You sure can dance around a question. Have you considered going into politics? Maybe Crash Patel could use you when he's questioned about the Epstein blackmail operation files.
I am starting to think you are right about Trump. It seems that events all over the world are now all about Trump. He needs to take a rest and stop trying to control everything.
Yes, if it were not DJT it would be some other optimistic marketer touting a MAGA like message, or some Vladimir Lenin 2.0 retread like Mamdani promising that concentration of wealth control into a "righteous vanguard of the proletariat" ruling class animated by thinly disguised Sharia law which blesses looting of the non-submissive by those who have "submitted" (or the suppression of the "oppresors/white supremacists" by the "oppressed" (Somali pirates and their allies in bondage to their votes). These or similar outcomes do seem more likely in a setting where the game of outsourcing inflation to neighbors who have treated our currency as AAA assets is in the process of unraveling. Claim Greenland, if you can, but how will the Navy get its "Golden fleet" built if the USD goes the way of the Iranian or Zimbabwean or Germany 1920's national legal tender? Inquiring minds are understandably puzzled as the flesh out their various "plan B" projects. I recommend forwarding your assets to a reliable repository (and all that means for life and eternity). The usual earthly assets would be rated BBB or less if the rating agencies didn't have to "keep dancing as long as the (soothing but deadly) music plays" or have their rating assignments given to a more pliable competitor.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%206:19-21&version=esv
https://nypost.com/2026/01/17/opinion/how-cea-weavers-racism-and-tinker-toy-marxism-infects-all-mamdanis-housing-plans/
https://nypost.com/2026/01/19/opinion/how-radical-islamists-and-the-far-left-united-to-fight-america-everywhere-and-all-the-time/
https://geopoliticalfutures.com/confession-i-cant-figure-out-trumps-latest-move/
Interesting fact on debt per family in USA. Would be interesting to know what a similar figure per family is in China.
Here is an attempt to compare USA and Chinese household debt loads, with some filtering by household income level.
What is the average debt per family of US and Chinese families, in each case excluding the families in the top 1 percent or top 10 percent of incomes
There is no published statistic that directly gives “average debt per family excluding the top 1% or top 10%” for either the US or China, so this has to be approximated from broader aggregates and distributional evidence. The best that can be done is to give reasonable order‑of‑magnitude estimates and explain the limitations.
United States
The New York Fed reports total US household debt around 18–18.5 trillion dollars in 2025, with household debt‑to‑income near 80–85% and a debt‑service ratio a little over 11%.
USAFacts and similar aggregations put average debt per person at roughly 63,000 dollars in late 2025, which implies around 160,000–170,000 dollars per household (assuming 2.5–2.7 persons per household).
Top‑income households are a small share of families but hold disproportionate amounts of mortgage and other debt, so excluding the top 10% of the income distribution will pull the average down somewhat. SCF tabulations show that both assets and debts are heavily concentrated at the top, but the concentration of debt is less extreme than that of wealth.
A reasonable approximation for 2022–2025 conditions is:
Approximate average debt per US family overall: about 150,000–170,000 dollars.
Approximate average debt per US family excluding the top 10% of incomes: on the order of 110,000–130,000 dollars. This reflects the fact that the top decile holds a notably larger share of mortgage and business debt than its population share, so dropping it lowers the mean.
Excluding only the top 1% would have a smaller effect, probably reducing the overall mean by well under 10%, because the top 1% is only 1% of families and some of them have relatively low leverage compared with their income and assets.
These numbers are broad estimates, not direct published figures; getting exact values would require microdata work on the SCF using income‑decile filters and aggregating liabilities, which the public chartbook and headline reports do not provide in closed form.
China
Estimates from CEIC and related sources put China’s household debt around 60–62% of GDP by 2024–2025.
With China’s nominal GDP in the mid‑2020s around 18–19 trillion US dollars, this implies household debt on the order of 11–12 trillion dollars equivalent.
China has roughly 500 million households; that gives a crude average debt per household on the order of 20,000–25,000 US dollars.
Chinese household debt is also very skewed: mortgage debt dominates, and homeownership with mortgages is more common among urban middle‑ and upper‑middle‑income households. China‑specific microdata that break debt directly by detailed income percentile are sparse in public English‑language sources; most public indicators are debt‑to‑income or debt‑to‑GDP ratios, not level averages by income group.
Under plausible assumptions (that high‑income urban households are more likely to have large mortgages and consumer loans), excluding the top 10% of incomes likely pulls the mean household debt down materially. A rough, order‑of‑magnitude picture is:
Approximate average debt per Chinese household overall: ~20,000–25,000 US dollars equivalent.
Approximate average debt per Chinese household excluding the top 10% of incomes: something like 13,000–18,000 US dollars equivalent, recognizing that mortgage borrowing is far more prevalent and larger in the upper deciles of the income distribution.
Excluding only the top 1% would again have a smaller impact on the mean, although in China the very top income and wealth groups are heavily involved in real‑estate and business borrowing, so the effect may be somewhat larger than in the US relative to population share.
Data and limitations
For the US, the natural data source is the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, which provides detailed family‑level liability data and allows tabulation by income decile, but the standard public tables and interactive chartbook do not directly publish “average debt excluding top 1% or 10% of incomes.”
For China, macro indicators (household debt‑to‑GDP, debt‑to‑income) and composition (mortgage share of household debt) are available, but public micro‑distributional data by income percentile are limited, so any estimate for “average debt per family excluding top 1%/10%” is necessarily approximate and model‑based rather than a directly reported statistic.
If you want, an explicit numerical range can be constructed by choosing specific assumptions (e.g., share of total household debt held by the top income decile in each country) and backing out an implied average for the remaining 90%; that would require working from one of the SCF extract files for the US and from whatever China microdata or calibrated distributions are available.
Like other "important" economic statistics, it's hard to take seriously either US or Chinese numbers. How many "families" does each country have? How much debt are they bearing (not including the debt of their Administrative State)? Neither numerator nor denominator of the per family debt is known.