[ExI] Federal Fiscal Shortfall Nears $1 Million Per Household

[Jason Resch]

On Tue, May 10, 2022, 10:23 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of
> BillK via extropy-chat
> Subject: [ExI] Federal Fiscal Shortfall Nears $1 Million Per Household
>
> The U.S. Treasury has published a major report revealing that the federal
> government has amassed $124.1 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded
> obligations.
> By James D. Agresti      May 5, 2022
>
>
> https://www.justfactsdaily.com/federal-fiscal-shortfall-nears-1-million-per-household
> ...
> Quotes:
> Although the report discloses information of crucial import to the
> citizens of the United States, Google News indicates that no major media
> outlet has informed anyone about it since it was released on February 17,
> 2022.
> ...
> -----------------
>
> >...Don't worry!   Limits don't exist for us!   Yee-Ha!
>
> BillK
>
> _______________________________________________
>
>
>
> BillK have been told the US Government cannot go bankrupt.  Reasoning: it
> never has in the past.
>

It's defaulted at least 4 times:

In 1790, it defaulted on its war debts, deferring interest payments for 10
years in the Funding Act of 1790.

In 1861, it created green backs (legal tender), but the next year refused
on demand convertibility to gold.

Liberty bonds issued in 1918 were to be repaid in gold, but when the gold
reserves ran dry in 1933, the government stopped repaying them in gold. It
also led the government to confiscate gold from the the population, then
afterwards, revalue the dollar from $20/oz of gold to $35/oz.

Related to debts of the Vietnam war, the 1971 termination of the dollar
gold convertibility can be seen as a default for the foreign reserves other
nations held in dollars.

In 1979, the treasury failed to send out debt payments for treasury bonds
on time, and further refused to pay interest for being late.

So depending on how you count them, that's 4-5 times in the 250 year
history of the U.S., and 3 in the last century. Almost all the defaults
were related to war debts and gold convertibility.

Now that the dollar is entirely untethered to gold, it remains to be seen
whether default or money printing it's the preferred way out.

In 1979, after leaving the gold standard, it chose default, and not to
compensate bond holders.

Money printing can also be viewed as a kind of default, but one where the
loss is not born entirely by the creditors, but is instead distributed
among all holders of dollars and dollar denominated debts.

Jason



> Somehow, I fail to find that reassuring.  At least since the mid 90s, it
> has been very clear to me the fed has been running up debts it can only
> deal with through massive inflation.  That might explain the popularity of
> BitCoin.
>






>
>
>
>
> spike
>
>
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