We only know if things are worth doing when and if people — of their own free will and with their own real money — pay for them. Otherwise, the transaction is likely to be a scam or a mistake.
Earl, the problem with common sense is - it isn't common. So, their best guess today is this BBB might increase U.S. debt by $26T in a decade. And, there is something like $28T in treasuries coming due through 2028 needing to be refinanced. Pondering this I am having a tough time grasping what a measly $1T looks like. Then consider what if the numbers are understated. Our government wouldn't intentional lie to us - would they? Maybe I am ol' and slow but something smells...............
Dan - how do we know that chart showing M2 is accurate? Aren't we relying on the same people who fudge every single government statistic now. There is no oversight of the Fed and by law they can hold private meetings where no recordings, minutes or records are kept. They know the only thing keeping the house of cards up is more and more liquidity - the markets certainly show every sign of being continually inflated by a never ending supply of money. What if M2 is actually far greater than shown and the Fed has been secretly injecting far more liquidity than admitted to...
Way back in 1978, when the term was GNP(Gross National Product) instead of GDP, my economics professor wrote on his blackboard ‘GNP = Gross National Phantasy’. He explained to his students that it is simply a measure of the production of money in an economy, nothing more. He also explained why money should never be conflated with goods and services, reason number one being inflation. He was an honest economist, a rare breed even ~ half a century ago.
Gather around, ye trembling mortals, for the God-Emperor Trump, the walking, talking burning bush himself has spoken: growth is salvation, debt is freedom, and you best bow before his radiance or he’ll deport you straight back through your bloodline like a cosmic vacuum cleaner. Don’t you fret about them “all-time highs” and market rallies riding shotgun with B-2 bombers, the almighty Donald J. Trump, in his infinite, divinely bestowed omnipotence, hath declared growth holier than Moses’ burning bush!
President Trump don’t need your piddly fundamentals or silly ol’ revenue streams, he’ll smite overhead resistance with a single tweet and part the Red Sea of market volatility faster than a Wall Street intern can snort his annual bonus. You dare question him? He’ll fudgecake deport you straight to the biblical sandbox where even Adam and Eve didn’t have 401(k)s, and don’t think that four generations of apple pie heritage will save you, President Trump’s gonna rewind your lineage like a VHS tape ‘til you’re dust blowin’ across the Garden of Eden. You think your grandpappy’s grandpappy got you citizenship? Tough biscuits, cupcake! The Chosen One will trace your DNA back to Eve’s rib and exile you to a pile of cursed sand where your stock options are worth less than a wooden nickel in a wildfire. And don’t think Bill Clinton’s saxophone or Sleepy Joe’s teleprompter will save ‘em either, they’ll both be on a one-way hayride to County Ireland or wherever their forefathers got too frisky with a sheep.
So rejoice, oh ye faithful! The Senate’s Big, Beautiful Budget Abomination promises to multiply our debts like Jesus with loaves and fishes, only the bread’s made of derivatives and the fishes are hollowed-out mortgage-backed securities. Growth is our Jehovah, our Yahweh, our Alpha and Omega; the parties clasp hands in unholy matrimony, worshipping the GDP as if it’s the Ark of the Covenant itself. And if that growth don’t fill your gut with prosperity, don’t you worry, Uncle Sam’s got a shiny shovel with your name on it so you can dig canals for full employment Soviet-style, proving once and for all that the American Dream ain’t dead, it’s just been repackaged into a trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme with bipartisan support!
The BBBA will pass in the early hours by our Holy House tomorrow and Lord Trump will sign it before the 7/4 deadline. It won’t tiptoe America into fiscal darkness, it will pole vault it face-first into the abyss, racking up debts bigger than Goliath’s hemorrhoids while both parties squeal like pigs at the trough of growth-worship. Why solve real problems when you can inflate everything like a Macy’s balloon and call it “abundance?” They’ll spend a million bucks per cardboard shack in California and praise it as economic genius while they drag this country’s rotting carcass around like a weekend-at-Bernie’s sideshow. So let’s Keep cheering that fake GDP, because when the smoke clears and the canal between Mexico and Kansas is done, will have a shovel in one hand, a pink slip in the other, and the sweet serenade of the Holy Garden Snake hissing “Growth…Growth…GROWTH!” in our ears as we dig our own fiscal grave.
Why don't you for once please drop the cute schtick and write something that passes for exposition? I'd like to understand what you think you're saying. Best always.
Oh, you wanna drop the “cute schtick” and hear it raw? Buckle up Sheepie, ‘cause here’s the expositional napalm you been begging for.
Both these greasy, two-faced parties are deep-throating the Holy GDP like it’s the last cannoli on Earth, ballooning debt so fast it’s making bookies jealous. The Orange Don’s out here tweeting like a caffeinated banshee, parting the markets like Moses on crank, and selling the rubes the fantasy that we can buy eternal prosperity on Uncle Sam’s busted credit card.
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s snorting the Fed’s free money like it’s pure Bolivian, and Main Street’s getting mugged in broad daylight by senators who’d whack their own grandmothers for a PAC check. The Senate’s Big Beautiful Budget Abomination is a radioactive turd wrapped in a stars-and-stripes bow, detonating America’s finances with more drama than a Thanksgiving at Carmela’s. The only growth we’ll see is the black hole where our economy used to be, and when the house of cards comes crashing down, we’ll be standing there with a shovel and pink slip, digging our own graves while they laugh all the way to the Cayman Islands.
OK, I'll play: Can you be specific about exactly how the "BBBA" as you call it is going to "detonate America's finances"? Most of the tax cuts are already in place and if the new ones do what tax cuts usually do the revenue to the Treasury is going to increase (at least that's what has happened every time tax cuts have been implemented).
There is too much spending for sure, but there's another round of rescission to go. How does this tank the country in the short run if what Biden did (which was far more egregious) didn't? I'm serious, educate me.
Well bless your sweet summer optimism, glad you’re ready to play.
The BBBA isn’t just a random spending spree, it’s a steroid shot to the debt that’s already ballooned past 34 trillion bucks, and this time it’s turbocharging interest payments to a level where the Treasury’s annual debt service will soon eclipse defense spending. That means Uncle Sam will soon be borrowing to pay interest on what he already borrowed, turning America into a cosmic hamster wheel of compounding doom.
You’re right, tax cuts can boost revenue if they spur productive investment, like the Kennedy or Reagan cuts that coincided with rising labor force participation and productivity. But guess what’s missing now? We’re neck-deep in demographic decline, productivity growth is flatter than roadkill on Route 66, and corporate buybacks are soaking up cheap debt instead of building new factories. Meanwhile, the BBBA’s cuts favor short-term sugar highs for Wall Street rather than long-term wage growth or capital expansion.
As for rescissions? Congress hasn’t stuck to a serious one since dial-up internet was a thing, every rescission is a Public Relations stunt that gets quietly neutered faster than a stray tomcat at a PETA convention. And if you’re hanging your Stetson on Biden’s overspending as the bar for acceptable fiscal insanity, you’re missing the cosmic joke. Biden’s blowout just warmed the seat for this bipartisan debt orgy, and each party now tries to outspend the other to prove their growth-worship bona fides while Social Security and Medicare liabilities loom like a black hole ready to swallow it all.
So how does it tank us? By locking us into a doom loop of structural deficits bigger than Goliath’s hemorrhoids, with rising interest payments that crowd out everything else, paving the road to the day global investors finally get the yips about U.S. Treasuries, spike our borrowing costs, and send the dollar’s reserve status into hospice. That’s when the fireworks start, the BBBA turns America’s finances into a crater, and the only thing left will be your shovel, a pink slip, and the Holy Garden Snake whispering ‘growth…growth…GROWTH’ as we dig our fiscal graves together.
"Growth," as Bill points out, is our current god. But it is a chimera. Everyone knows that nothing grows forever, yet almost no one can bear to say it out loud. Politicians and economists pretend it isn't a fact. In a consumer-based economy such as ours, economic "growth" depends on people spending all that they have, and then more that they don't have, and then more still. So we wind up here, with not only a consumer-based economy but a debt-based one, as well. Government "money" creation doesn't help, it doubles down on the problem because it too is debt-based. We are sleepwalking into a gigantic trap, where consumers can't afford any more debt and government runs out of Band-Aids. At that point, we either enter a long and relatively slow economic decline, or there is a crash of unprecedented proportions. The consumer/debt-based economy is doomed. Will A.I. save us? Not likely. What will? Only a new and more sustainable economic model that isn't based on growth at all costs. If I knew what that looks like, I'd proclaim it, but I don't. Perhaps Bill, who is smarter than me, has an answer...
The governer of Florida has inadventenly provided us with the solution to our country's fiscal problems. We just pass a constitutional amendment that any politician City, State or Federal that votes against a balanced budget is assigned to Alligator Alcatraz for the rest of his term. This would also apply to all judges that "rule against" any of these balanced budgets. I know, I know, impossible, but can't an old man dream!!!!!!
It’s pretty obvious 4 more years of the Biden “presidency” would have likely destroyed the country, caused more wars to break out, and possibly led to W23.
Why not root for the guys who at least want to better the situation and DUMP on the morons who want murderers to stay, who want government spending to increase, who want our cities to continue to go to Hell? All the bitching and moaning is tiresome.
Everything Trump did in his first term was positive, including the tax cuts. And yet less than 6 months in we have this incessant bitching.
Most of the people have no money. They are scraping by. Maybe they meet the house note, the car note, the insurance payments, and the utilities. Maybe they can pay cash at the grocery store and not charge the food bill. I don't know. One thing I do know: most everyone has no money with which to "do" anything. Is this condition an unfortunate result of going to the paper dollar in 1971 where money is "loaned" into existence as needed? Or was this a cynical scheme whereby the foxes and their cohorts could enslave the country? The net effect is the same. Best always. PM
So spot on. My wife and I are beyond fortunate, but we find ourselves constantly asking, "How does the average guy afford this?" And oftentimes it involves the cost of insurance, utilities, a pound of beef at a grocery store, etc.
Like a drug addict who needs more and more of the junk to get their "fix" the USA won't be able to manufacture growth without either inflation and currency debasement or a massive liquidity reduction along with the collapse of the everything bubble started under Greenspan. When you start to think about choices, just look back at what the worst generation did -the Boomers, the most rapacious, selfish, morally bankrupt group that ever was and still is, and then think about what they will do and you have an idea of the social challenges coming. People can argue that tech innovation and USA federal asset sales will close the gap but not when you see the impossibility of meeting current and future funded and non-funded future liabilities. Maybe if USA taxes like Canada, they might close the gap but not while being world policeman and not without a collapse in growth to the benefit of yet bigger government
Dan- yes, the money supply is up. But the velocity of money is way down. Doesn't the decline in velocity reduce the impact of the growth in money supply?
YES...just look at PPLT up from an open on 6/27/25 @ is $ 121.79 to today's high of
$ 129.64.
WHY? Brecause the price was repressed for 9 years until the Chinese (who don't have alot of options to save their"money") have decided en mass that Platinum is a better buy than Gold and they are buying!
PS: in 2016 PL was $ 600 MORE per troy oz than Gold.
WHY? Because it's a rarer precious metal than gold found mostly in Russia and South Africa where the lack of a stable electrical supply, strikes and very deep mines are playing out!
also Tom issued an alert to buy physical PL in March or April 2025 when the price was $ 940 oz..but it's not too late to get into this ETF.
Andy, you know better. One thing Mr. Bonner is dead-nuts correct about is "inflate or die". Therefore, the FED is always engaged in expansion, irrespective of statements, posturing, "policies", or the featured gimmick of the day, month, or quarter. Best always. PM
P.S. They just recently bought more mortgage-backed securities. Does this sound like tightening? PM
Bill, your problem is that you keep bringing common sense to a world that doesn't want common sense. Please keep doing it..
Earl, the problem with common sense is - it isn't common. So, their best guess today is this BBB might increase U.S. debt by $26T in a decade. And, there is something like $28T in treasuries coming due through 2028 needing to be refinanced. Pondering this I am having a tough time grasping what a measly $1T looks like. Then consider what if the numbers are understated. Our government wouldn't intentional lie to us - would they? Maybe I am ol' and slow but something smells...............
… and doesn’t even want to think about.
Dan - how do we know that chart showing M2 is accurate? Aren't we relying on the same people who fudge every single government statistic now. There is no oversight of the Fed and by law they can hold private meetings where no recordings, minutes or records are kept. They know the only thing keeping the house of cards up is more and more liquidity - the markets certainly show every sign of being continually inflated by a never ending supply of money. What if M2 is actually far greater than shown and the Fed has been secretly injecting far more liquidity than admitted to...
Way back in 1978, when the term was GNP(Gross National Product) instead of GDP, my economics professor wrote on his blackboard ‘GNP = Gross National Phantasy’. He explained to his students that it is simply a measure of the production of money in an economy, nothing more. He also explained why money should never be conflated with goods and services, reason number one being inflation. He was an honest economist, a rare breed even ~ half a century ago.
Gather around, ye trembling mortals, for the God-Emperor Trump, the walking, talking burning bush himself has spoken: growth is salvation, debt is freedom, and you best bow before his radiance or he’ll deport you straight back through your bloodline like a cosmic vacuum cleaner. Don’t you fret about them “all-time highs” and market rallies riding shotgun with B-2 bombers, the almighty Donald J. Trump, in his infinite, divinely bestowed omnipotence, hath declared growth holier than Moses’ burning bush!
President Trump don’t need your piddly fundamentals or silly ol’ revenue streams, he’ll smite overhead resistance with a single tweet and part the Red Sea of market volatility faster than a Wall Street intern can snort his annual bonus. You dare question him? He’ll fudgecake deport you straight to the biblical sandbox where even Adam and Eve didn’t have 401(k)s, and don’t think that four generations of apple pie heritage will save you, President Trump’s gonna rewind your lineage like a VHS tape ‘til you’re dust blowin’ across the Garden of Eden. You think your grandpappy’s grandpappy got you citizenship? Tough biscuits, cupcake! The Chosen One will trace your DNA back to Eve’s rib and exile you to a pile of cursed sand where your stock options are worth less than a wooden nickel in a wildfire. And don’t think Bill Clinton’s saxophone or Sleepy Joe’s teleprompter will save ‘em either, they’ll both be on a one-way hayride to County Ireland or wherever their forefathers got too frisky with a sheep.
So rejoice, oh ye faithful! The Senate’s Big, Beautiful Budget Abomination promises to multiply our debts like Jesus with loaves and fishes, only the bread’s made of derivatives and the fishes are hollowed-out mortgage-backed securities. Growth is our Jehovah, our Yahweh, our Alpha and Omega; the parties clasp hands in unholy matrimony, worshipping the GDP as if it’s the Ark of the Covenant itself. And if that growth don’t fill your gut with prosperity, don’t you worry, Uncle Sam’s got a shiny shovel with your name on it so you can dig canals for full employment Soviet-style, proving once and for all that the American Dream ain’t dead, it’s just been repackaged into a trillion-dollar Ponzi scheme with bipartisan support!
The BBBA will pass in the early hours by our Holy House tomorrow and Lord Trump will sign it before the 7/4 deadline. It won’t tiptoe America into fiscal darkness, it will pole vault it face-first into the abyss, racking up debts bigger than Goliath’s hemorrhoids while both parties squeal like pigs at the trough of growth-worship. Why solve real problems when you can inflate everything like a Macy’s balloon and call it “abundance?” They’ll spend a million bucks per cardboard shack in California and praise it as economic genius while they drag this country’s rotting carcass around like a weekend-at-Bernie’s sideshow. So let’s Keep cheering that fake GDP, because when the smoke clears and the canal between Mexico and Kansas is done, will have a shovel in one hand, a pink slip in the other, and the sweet serenade of the Holy Garden Snake hissing “Growth…Growth…GROWTH!” in our ears as we dig our own fiscal grave.
🤩🔱🐦⬛🔔🐦⬛🔱🤩
Why don't you for once please drop the cute schtick and write something that passes for exposition? I'd like to understand what you think you're saying. Best always.
Oh, you wanna drop the “cute schtick” and hear it raw? Buckle up Sheepie, ‘cause here’s the expositional napalm you been begging for.
Both these greasy, two-faced parties are deep-throating the Holy GDP like it’s the last cannoli on Earth, ballooning debt so fast it’s making bookies jealous. The Orange Don’s out here tweeting like a caffeinated banshee, parting the markets like Moses on crank, and selling the rubes the fantasy that we can buy eternal prosperity on Uncle Sam’s busted credit card.
Meanwhile, Wall Street’s snorting the Fed’s free money like it’s pure Bolivian, and Main Street’s getting mugged in broad daylight by senators who’d whack their own grandmothers for a PAC check. The Senate’s Big Beautiful Budget Abomination is a radioactive turd wrapped in a stars-and-stripes bow, detonating America’s finances with more drama than a Thanksgiving at Carmela’s. The only growth we’ll see is the black hole where our economy used to be, and when the house of cards comes crashing down, we’ll be standing there with a shovel and pink slip, digging our own graves while they laugh all the way to the Cayman Islands.
OK, I'll play: Can you be specific about exactly how the "BBBA" as you call it is going to "detonate America's finances"? Most of the tax cuts are already in place and if the new ones do what tax cuts usually do the revenue to the Treasury is going to increase (at least that's what has happened every time tax cuts have been implemented).
There is too much spending for sure, but there's another round of rescission to go. How does this tank the country in the short run if what Biden did (which was far more egregious) didn't? I'm serious, educate me.
Well bless your sweet summer optimism, glad you’re ready to play.
The BBBA isn’t just a random spending spree, it’s a steroid shot to the debt that’s already ballooned past 34 trillion bucks, and this time it’s turbocharging interest payments to a level where the Treasury’s annual debt service will soon eclipse defense spending. That means Uncle Sam will soon be borrowing to pay interest on what he already borrowed, turning America into a cosmic hamster wheel of compounding doom.
You’re right, tax cuts can boost revenue if they spur productive investment, like the Kennedy or Reagan cuts that coincided with rising labor force participation and productivity. But guess what’s missing now? We’re neck-deep in demographic decline, productivity growth is flatter than roadkill on Route 66, and corporate buybacks are soaking up cheap debt instead of building new factories. Meanwhile, the BBBA’s cuts favor short-term sugar highs for Wall Street rather than long-term wage growth or capital expansion.
As for rescissions? Congress hasn’t stuck to a serious one since dial-up internet was a thing, every rescission is a Public Relations stunt that gets quietly neutered faster than a stray tomcat at a PETA convention. And if you’re hanging your Stetson on Biden’s overspending as the bar for acceptable fiscal insanity, you’re missing the cosmic joke. Biden’s blowout just warmed the seat for this bipartisan debt orgy, and each party now tries to outspend the other to prove their growth-worship bona fides while Social Security and Medicare liabilities loom like a black hole ready to swallow it all.
So how does it tank us? By locking us into a doom loop of structural deficits bigger than Goliath’s hemorrhoids, with rising interest payments that crowd out everything else, paving the road to the day global investors finally get the yips about U.S. Treasuries, spike our borrowing costs, and send the dollar’s reserve status into hospice. That’s when the fireworks start, the BBBA turns America’s finances into a crater, and the only thing left will be your shovel, a pink slip, and the Holy Garden Snake whispering ‘growth…growth…GROWTH’ as we dig our fiscal graves together.
Bummer. I think I prefer the "cute schtick". 😉😉
Thanks. Best alwasys. PM
"Growth," as Bill points out, is our current god. But it is a chimera. Everyone knows that nothing grows forever, yet almost no one can bear to say it out loud. Politicians and economists pretend it isn't a fact. In a consumer-based economy such as ours, economic "growth" depends on people spending all that they have, and then more that they don't have, and then more still. So we wind up here, with not only a consumer-based economy but a debt-based one, as well. Government "money" creation doesn't help, it doubles down on the problem because it too is debt-based. We are sleepwalking into a gigantic trap, where consumers can't afford any more debt and government runs out of Band-Aids. At that point, we either enter a long and relatively slow economic decline, or there is a crash of unprecedented proportions. The consumer/debt-based economy is doomed. Will A.I. save us? Not likely. What will? Only a new and more sustainable economic model that isn't based on growth at all costs. If I knew what that looks like, I'd proclaim it, but I don't. Perhaps Bill, who is smarter than me, has an answer...
Mr. Bonner, you’re on a roll! More impartial economic analysis and commentary.
Welcome back.
Slug , this is stupid, he never was gone.
Well, if he wasn't gone, he was sure as heckfire distracted with moralizing and found out he liked it. Best always. PM
The governer of Florida has inadventenly provided us with the solution to our country's fiscal problems. We just pass a constitutional amendment that any politician City, State or Federal that votes against a balanced budget is assigned to Alligator Alcatraz for the rest of his term. This would also apply to all judges that "rule against" any of these balanced budgets. I know, I know, impossible, but can't an old man dream!!!!!!
It’s pretty obvious 4 more years of the Biden “presidency” would have likely destroyed the country, caused more wars to break out, and possibly led to W23.
Why not root for the guys who at least want to better the situation and DUMP on the morons who want murderers to stay, who want government spending to increase, who want our cities to continue to go to Hell? All the bitching and moaning is tiresome.
Everything Trump did in his first term was positive, including the tax cuts. And yet less than 6 months in we have this incessant bitching.
The LEFT lies about EVERYTHING.
I give up. Have a lousy miserable day.
"Unless people do it with their own money."
Most of the people have no money. They are scraping by. Maybe they meet the house note, the car note, the insurance payments, and the utilities. Maybe they can pay cash at the grocery store and not charge the food bill. I don't know. One thing I do know: most everyone has no money with which to "do" anything. Is this condition an unfortunate result of going to the paper dollar in 1971 where money is "loaned" into existence as needed? Or was this a cynical scheme whereby the foxes and their cohorts could enslave the country? The net effect is the same. Best always. PM
So spot on. My wife and I are beyond fortunate, but we find ourselves constantly asking, "How does the average guy afford this?" And oftentimes it involves the cost of insurance, utilities, a pound of beef at a grocery store, etc.
Like a drug addict who needs more and more of the junk to get their "fix" the USA won't be able to manufacture growth without either inflation and currency debasement or a massive liquidity reduction along with the collapse of the everything bubble started under Greenspan. When you start to think about choices, just look back at what the worst generation did -the Boomers, the most rapacious, selfish, morally bankrupt group that ever was and still is, and then think about what they will do and you have an idea of the social challenges coming. People can argue that tech innovation and USA federal asset sales will close the gap but not when you see the impossibility of meeting current and future funded and non-funded future liabilities. Maybe if USA taxes like Canada, they might close the gap but not while being world policeman and not without a collapse in growth to the benefit of yet bigger government
Dan- yes, the money supply is up. But the velocity of money is way down. Doesn't the decline in velocity reduce the impact of the growth in money supply?
Thanks,
Jeff
My taxes going down, prices going down and SAVING A TON!
Plus my precious metals are WAY UP!
Thanks, Bill Bonner and THANKS to Trump!
YES...just look at PPLT up from an open on 6/27/25 @ is $ 121.79 to today's high of
$ 129.64.
WHY? Brecause the price was repressed for 9 years until the Chinese (who don't have alot of options to save their"money") have decided en mass that Platinum is a better buy than Gold and they are buying!
PS: in 2016 PL was $ 600 MORE per troy oz than Gold.
WHY? Because it's a rarer precious metal than gold found mostly in Russia and South Africa where the lack of a stable electrical supply, strikes and very deep mines are playing out!
also Tom issued an alert to buy physical PL in March or April 2025 when the price was $ 940 oz..but it's not too late to get into this ETF.
Imagine an investment advisor lamenting growth...
-
I understand Mr. Bonner is really warning of more gov't "investment".
However; real growth can overcome most any economic problem.
We have been subjected to months of doom and gloom, yet to be realized.
Everything can't be failing.... pull on a thread to find it's attached to the rest of the universe.
WHY is M2 growing? The Fed is supposedly tight and still (slowly) running off its balance sheet.
Andy, you know better. One thing Mr. Bonner is dead-nuts correct about is "inflate or die". Therefore, the FED is always engaged in expansion, irrespective of statements, posturing, "policies", or the featured gimmick of the day, month, or quarter. Best always. PM
P.S. They just recently bought more mortgage-backed securities. Does this sound like tightening? PM