Stockman’s Corner

At the turn of the century, even a cursory look at the demographic curves told you that the next two decades should have been an era of deferred gratification, heightened savings, preemptive investment and prudent preparation for the Twenty Twenties and beyond. Quite simply the giant Baby Boom generation was inexorably heading for the retirement ranks and the American Welfare […]

Capitalist prosperity and constitutional governance are under dire existential threat in America, and the three main causes are the Fed, the Fed and the Fed. And to the Fed’s maleficent monetary malfeasance we can add the abject abandonment by the modern Republican Party of its duty to do battle for the cause of sound money and fiscal rectitude. Yet

AFTER THE BERLIN WALL FELL IN NOVEMBER 1989 AND THE DEATH OF the Soviet Union was confirmed two years later when Boris Yeltsin courageously stood down the Red Army tanks in front of Moscow’s White House, a dark era in human history came to an end.

Ironically, Donald Trump’s harsh, unhinged and unrelenting attacks on the Fed are about as good a warning sign of the impending Turbulent Twenties as any.

The Turbulent Twenties and the coming baleful trends outlined in Part 1 have been gestating for decades in the chart below. Their driver and most visible manifestation is the nation’s crushing public and private debt levels, which now total $74 trillion, and the implied national leverage ratio, which has now nearly tripled since the halcyon days of the mid-1950s.

The Turbulent Twenties begin 13 days from now. It will be the decade when the chickens come home to roost and a time when they cans of denial and delay can no longer be kicked down the road to tomorrow.

On December 16 the gross Federal debt breached a new level to $23.1 trillion, while the net debt after $401 billion of cash weighed in at $22.71 trillion. The latter monstrous figure is notable because on June 30, 2019 it stood at $21.76 trillion.

As we said in Part 1, the Donald’s Trade War is the anti-MAGA. The latter can only happen when free markets are unleashed and the obstacles to prosperity posed by the state’s bad money and regulatory and tax barriers are minimized.

Call this the era of Fake Everything and be done with it.

With each passing day the casino becomes an ever greater menace because it embodies an ultra-fragile Super-Bubble which is at the mercy of the out-and-out lunatics who dominate all levers of power in the Imperial City. That is, the deranged House Dem Caucus, the money-printing fools in the Eccles Building and the Orange Swan himself. As to