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America is in decline.  There are some that still attempt to deny this, but the reason why Donald Trump’s campaign slogan has so strongly resonated with the American people is because deep inside most of us realize that America is not as great as it used to be.  Our economy is a mess, we are 19 trillion dollars in debt, our infrastructure is crumbling, crime is on the rise, moral decay is all around us, other countries don’t respect us as much anymore, and our nation is the most divided that it has been in decades.  Anyone that believes that America is better than it has ever been in 2016 is either completely delusional or simply has not been paying attention.

As I write this article, the prepared text of Trump’s speech has already been released to the press.  So the following remarks may differ slightly from how he actually delivered them, but the differences are not likely to be too great.  At one point during his speech, Trump highlighted the rising crime and violence in our cities, and the numbers that he had to share were more than just a little bit alarming…

Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed by this Administration’s rollback of criminal enforcement. Homicides last year increased by 17% in America’s fifty largest cities. That’s the largest increase in 25 years. In our nation’s capital, killings have risen by 50 percent. They are up nearly 60% in nearby Baltimore.

In the President’s hometown of Chicago, more than 2,000 have been the victims of shootings this year alone. And more than 3,600 have been killed in the Chicago area since he took office.

The number of police officers killed in the line of duty has risen by almost 50% compared to this point last year. Nearly 180,000 illegal immigrants with criminal records, ordered deported from our country, are tonight roaming free to threaten peaceful citizens.

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In 2006, U.S. Senator Barack Obama’s voice thundered across the Senate floor as he boldly declared that “increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren.”  That was one of the truest things that he ever said, but just a couple of years later he won the 2008 election and he turned his back on those principles.  As I write this article, the U.S. national debt is sitting at a grand total of $19,402,361,890,929.46.  But when Barack Obama first entered the White House, our federal government was only 10.6 trillion dollars in debt.  That means that we have added an average of 1.1 trillion dollars a year to the national debt under Obama, and we still have about six more months to go.

Even though Barack Obama is on track to be the first president in all of U.S. history to not have a single year when the U.S. economy grew by 3 percent or better, many have still been mystified by the fact that the economy has been relatively stable in recent years.

But the explanation is rather simple, actually.  Anyone can live like a millionaire if the credit card companies will lend them enough money.  You could even do it yourself.  Just go out and apply for as many credit cards as possible and then spend money like there is no tomorrow.  In no time at all, you will be living the high life.

Of course many of you would immediately object that a day of reckoning would come eventually, and you would be right.  Just like for those that abuse credit cards, a financial day of reckoning is coming for America too.

In the United States today, our standard of living is being massively inflated by taking trillions of dollars of future consumption and moving it into the present.  The politicians love to do this because it makes them look good and they can take credit for an “economic recovery”, but what we are doing to our children and our grandchildren is beyond criminal.

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Back in November 2014, Willem Buiter, who has so far been wrong in his recent gloomier forecasts about the fallout from the Eurozone mess, or his predictions about a global economy, decided to become a commodity expert and announced that “Gold Is A 6,000 Year Old Bubble.” The irony is that while virtually every other asset class in the span of these 6,000 years has risen, risen more, in many cases indeed formed a bubble, burst, fallen, and ultimately turned to dust and forgotten, gold remains and furthermore has seen its value in recent years soar.

What is interesting is that almost two years later, Buiter may have realized just that, and in an interview with the Epoch Times' Valentin Schmid, the Citi strategist admits that he “would hold gold” due to the global tidal wave of negative interest rates:

“I will never argue with a six thousand-year-old bubble. So gold, in times of uncertainty and especially in days of uncertainty laced with negative rates looks pretty good.”

Looks like we have another post-conversion Alan Greenspan on our hands. Here is his full interview, courtesy of the Epoch Times.

Citigroup’s Willem Buiter Says ‘Would Hold Gold’

Famous gold skeptic says gold wins against fiat currencies in negative rate environment

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Opponents of a central bank should take advantage of the post-Brexit vote revival of secessionist sentiments to promote a secession from central banking, or “Fed-exit.” Ending the Federal Reserve's monopoly on money is the key to restoring and maintaining our liberty and prosperity.

By manipulating the money supply to fix interest rates, the Federal Reserve engages in price fixing. After all, interest rates are nothing more than the price of money. Like all prices, they communicate information about economic conditions to market actors. Federal Reserve attempts to override the market rate of interest with a Fed-favored rate distort the price signals sent to businesses, investors, and consumers. The result of this distortion is a Fed-created boom, followed by a Fed-created bust.

The Fed’s action affects the entire economy and impacts the lives of all Americans, as well as of people around the world. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that the attempt to fix interest rates is the most harmful example of price fixing.

Many who normally oppose government intervention in the marketplace claim that central banking could work if only the Fed adhered to a monetary rule. Supporters of a “rules-based” monetary policy claim that a rules-based approach will bring stability and predictability to monetary policy, and thus put the economy on a path to permanent prosperity. But under a rules-based monetary policy, the Federal Reserve retains the power to manipulate interest rates. So under a rules-based approach, investors and entrepreneurs would still receive distorted price signals, which would still result in a boom-bust cycle. No rule can fix the flaws inherent in our system of monetary central planning.

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Just over a month ago, Deutsche Bank's chief economist David Folkerts-Landau, unleashed an epic rant against the ECB, warning of social unrest and another great depression unless the ECB changes its ways. Some thought that DB was genuinely concerned about central planning, and was urging the ECB to stop all intervention altogether, but that naive read was quickly stomped out just one week ago when it emerged that the Deutsche Bank economist was merely acting out of purely selfish reasons when he called for a €150 billion bailout of Europe's banks, with the unspoken demand that Deutsche Bank should be on the very top.

Finally, any doubt was squashed this weekend, when DB's macro strategist Alan Ruskin issued a positively glowing review of Helicopter Money, barely stopping short of demanding it be unleashed immediately. To wit:

Because Helicopter money is less directed at using currency weakness as a core transmission mechanism than QE or particularly negative rates, Helicopter money should be more, rather than less acceptable to an international community worried about currency wars.

What was less emphasized is that unlike NIRP, “helicopter money”, if it works, pushes the long end of the yield curve higher ahead (after all the endgame is soaring, if not hyper, inflation), something the global banking sector cripped by trillions in debt,desperately needs, and thus is precisely what Deutsce Bank needs, whose stock continues to trade just barely off all time lows.

As such, any delusions that DB was raging against failed monetary policy in general can be forgotten. All DB wanted was monetary policy that benefits, drumroll, Deutsche Bank… as the following amusing DB table “ranking” various monetary approaches shows. Needless to say, DB really likes helicopter money.

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