TRAVELING THE WORLD, WRITING WHAT THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.
TRAVELING THE WORLD, WRITING WHAT THE PEOPLE NEED TO KNOW.
Humanity appears to default to magical thinking when faced with untenable situations that demand systemic change. How would extraterrestrial anthropologists characterize Earth’s dominant socio-economic system? It’s not difficult to imagine their dismaying report: “Earth’s economy glorifies waste. Its economists rejoice when a product is disposed as waste and replaced with a new product. This waste is Read More…
Illinois, Maine, Connecticut: the end of the old fiscal year and the failure of numerous states to enter the new one with a budget, means that some of America’s most populous states have seen their local governments grind to a halt overnight until some spending agreement is reached. Now we can also add New Jersey to this Read More…
For the first time in US history a handful of US states are teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Illinois is about to be downgraded to junk bond status, which will turn its financial problems catastrophic overnight. Illinois cannot possibly pay its accumulated debt, its unpaid Medicaid expenses and its future retirement obligations, so bankruptcy Read More…
Last week we reported that as Illinois, a state which now faces over $15 billion in backlogged bills, struggles over the next two weeks to somehow come up with its first budget in three years ahead of a June 30 fiscal year end, and faces an imminent ratings downgrade to junk – the first ever Read More…
Several U.S. states and the federal government are hopelessly insolvent. It’s something many bullion investors have known for years. The real question is when this reality will pierce the mainstream illusion that deficits, and the crushing pile of debt which accompany them, don’t matter. That moment drew closer last week when ratings agencies downgraded Illinois Read More…
…And Now For The Bad News In the late 1760s and early 1770s, the government of France was in a deep panic. They had recently suffered a disastrous and costly defeat in the Seven Years War, and the national budget was a complete mess. France had spent most of the previous century as the world’s Read More…