Before I continue, it is necessary for all readers to grasp the sums of money we are talking about here. $19 (or 20) trillion dollars is not even understandable expressed on a typed page, not for most people. The magnitude of this kind of number, the money power of it, is simply outside the normal sphere of our experience. Even typed out completely, $19,012,827,698,418.00 dollars is a meaningless string of numbers. The weight of the debt is inestimable, expressed in such a way. But what’s more, the impacts such debt has, how it came about, and where the money went are even greater mysteries. Let me put the number in perspective, before we examine who caused the debt, and what the money was spent for. The American taxpayers and all the children of those taxpayers owe about $58,000 dollars just on the principal of this sum.
Now here is some of the evidence showing who is responsible for this mountain of debt, and what the repercussions will certainly be.
A Sinking America – Holed Below the Water Line
Our leadership has suspended something called the “debt limit”, allowing for virtually unlimited spending. Finger pointing is unnecessary; every leader in Washington is responsible. This is an undeniable fact. The latest disaster propagated by the US legislatures and our president is something called the Bipartisan Budget Act (BBA) of 2015, which allows the US Treasury Department to borrow unlimited funds from the Federal Reserve until 2017. The term “unlimited” and “Federal Reserve” are crucial for understanding, first the scope, and then the reasons for accelerated US debt since the last Bush presidency. Unlimited borrowing power should strike every credit card toting American right between the eyes. Imagining card companies’ interest rates, and the endless string of calls and bills arriving daily, for those swamped by the weight of plastic money, should send shivers down the spine. What happens if this debt is called in? What happens when the bubble bursts?
When things like Social Security deposits, they do not reach recipients, what effects will bankruptcy have? The negative effects on a single household are devastation, for an entire nation, and a world tied to that nation, the effects will be total devastation, a new kind of Dark Ages. But this economic Armageddon is also hard to grasp, especially for people used to “business as usual”, and those checks always in the mail somehow. Gas is still cheap, groceries are still plentiful, and that pay cut was not so bad. Americans still cook out on weekends, and watch the NFL, NBA, or Major League Baseball on cable TV. Life goes on, and only the poor kids go to fight in nameless towns in the deserts over yonder, for now anyway.
There are some who would argue that America can sustain such a staggering debt burden. But those pundits have gradually faded out of the limelight to be replaced by more logical experts. This Forbes report by Mike Patton gives us pristine insight into what has caused America to the edge of an unprecedented potential disaster. Patton pretty much answers the question of “how”, where understanding the history of this crippling debt. Nebulous terms like the “Nixon Shock”, and America going off the gold standard, are put into context. The power of the Federal Reserve Bank, that private entity most Americans think is owned by them, it is central to understanding what a mess we are in. In the article we discover what the end result of all this unsustainable debt is, though few would like to acknowledge it. The middle class in America will disappear, the rich will leave for greener tax pastures, and the poor will be forced to suck the well dry before long. America, as we have known it, will cease to exist. This is already, all but a foregone conclusion, I am sad to say. America right now, is very much like RMS Titanic, which sank after being holed below the waterline as passengers celebrated in her Grand Saloon. Not until the decks are awash, will most Americans realize the ship is doomed.
War, Chaos, and Debt, Debt, Debt
Even despite the fact the Obama administration has amped up spending and debt, media such as CNN Money out and out misleads us as to Obama’s role. Meanwhile, other media like US News & World Report diverts our attention, and puts the blame for America’s unsustainable spending on entitlement programs and welfare. The reality of trillions spent unnecessarily on war cannot be so easily diverted though. Yes, Medicare does account for 4 times as much spending as it did in 1970, but $6 trillion dollars to fight and effectively lose wars in Afghanistan and Iraq has to be accounted for. America still spends in a war on terror that we probably never was intended to win. The Taliban is stronger than ever in Afghanistan, and ISIL has morphed out of the deserts of Northern Iraq and eastern Syria. This says noting of the 400,000 people killed directly by these wars, or the tens of millions now displaced. Even before the more recent Syrian refugee crisis, Europe and other regions were already inundated with migrants fleeing war torn Iraq. This Brown University study, which started back in 2011, tells us how Obama and the previous administration put an immense burden on not only Americans, but on many other nations around the world. Let me remind you, this study and the video below are half a decade old now. The Obama administration has continued with not simply military expenditures, but with spending to prop up American hegemony, NATO, and surrogate nations like Turkey and conflicts from Ukraine to Yemen.
The wars in Afghanistan, and Iraq, the devastation of core constituents of those societies, it has lead to a widening of terrorist activities, not a curtailment. The war the Bush administration started on the lie of weapons of mass destruction has metastasized into a much wider conflict. ISIL and other jihadist groups are direct descendants of a hatred of America and the west spurred by suffering and war on the peoples of these countries. America has led the world into a war that may never end, and our leaders how want to make it even broader by attacking Russia and China. But we have only seen the tip of a huge debt iceberg so far.
Here are some more facts which shed light on insolvency and on current west-east crises as well. When President Ronald Reagan took over from Jimmy Carter, US debt increased almost instantly, by a factor of almost six times the borrowing, from the Federal Reserve. The debt remained fairly constant through Bush Sr. and Bill Clinton, until Bush the junior took office, at which time borrowing increased by a factor of 2.5X. Then Barack Obama took office, and the debt doubled. For comparison, at the height of the Vietnam War, LBJ’s administration maintained a balanced budget and borrowed almost nothing. The gist of all this is, since Reagan the private bankers of the Federal Reserve have made a killing on interest payments on the debt alone. Not many people realize the magnitude of this problem. As for 2008, the total indebtedness of the United States government for things like future Social Security and Medicare payments that the U.S. government is already committed to pay out, exceeded $65 trillion dollars, and the figures are much higher today. Almost half of every dollar spent by our government today is borrowed.
There is No Utopian Babylon
Then there is the question of, “Who benefits most from a spiraling American debt?” Well, fist and foremost, the banks that own stock in the Federal Reserve win the most. Most people around the world think the “FED” is owned by the US Federal Government, but in reality it is owned shareholders, the commercial banks. So when Barack Obama approves a budget that requires borrowing, dividends end up being paid to the shareholders of commercial banks from the interest derived on the debt. This is one reason the banking interests were bailed out after the 2008 meltdown. Not only were the bankers bailed out, but many actually made money off the bailout money interest from loans by the FED, used for bailing them out. This Counterpunch article pretty much sorts out these mysterious activities. But the answers we seek as to who really gains from American debt are a bit tougher to glean. This chart published back in 1976 offers some clues as to the people behind the economic chaos we see today. The familiar Rothschild banking family, the Rockefellers, and some other stand to gain any time debt is created. By selling Treasury Bonds and other instruments, the Fed collects interest for private bank shareholders, and pays off all operating expenses. The interest is guaranteed at 6%, a rate that currently exceeds that of almost any European bank win on large investments. The simply math here is something over $1.14 trillion dollars a year goes to shareholders in the member banks feeding the Fed in interest alone. So at least 6-10% of US taxpayer debt went to financing debt, and to the bankers who put Obama in office in the first place. Now let’s move on to how this debt lined/will line more banker pockets.
The Obama/Clinton/Brzezinski/Rockefeller connections brought into this focus warn us of even greater abuses of power and monetary systems. The highly controversial Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being pushed by Obama and Germany’s Angela Merkel, it’s got the earmarks of David Rockefeller´s, and Zbigniew Brzezinski´s Trilateral Commission written all over it. We’ve no space to outline these key player’s roles, I’ll have to assume you knows, just who is America’s biggest financier of the new way of finance. Between the Rothschild’s in England, and the Rockefellers in the US, not much happens in the world they do not gain from. And the TTIP disaster they want to institute will essentially legalize global taxation and the final seizure of wealth from citizens, by the elites. Looking at the entirety of the Barack Obama administration, it is actually quite easy to see what his real job was in the first place. Barack Obama succeeded in:
- Pushing the debt envelop to its furthest possible limits, starting with the Wall Street bailout
- Maintaining the perpetual “War on Terror” by spreading Arab Spring, while professing a winding down of Afghanistan
- Obama’s real influence on NSA spying and what has become a police state, was part of an overall plan to destabilize the US – thereby ushering in a new financial order of things
- The president led in the whole LGBT mad march to special interest prominence, thereby further empowering ultra liberals who support a socialist state
- Obamacare is breaking the system, while at the same time doing the bidding of the Rockefellers and other elites via a reallocation of revenue the Affordable Care Act permits
- Obama backed regime change in Ukraine, which analysts like Brzezinski knew would draw Russia in, one way or another
- Last but not least, if TTIP passes George Soros’ lifelong dream of one currency, and one government will be that much closer to fruition
Many independent journalists fighting to find the truth in today’s “sellout” news economy argue all these points. The reason we see no letup in the anti-Russia rhetoric, or in the neocon fanaticisms over made up crisis, is because the elites know the people are almost out of the equation. You can talk to 100 people, and 99 will know things are messed up. None will be able to define how we can fix matters though. In November, the American people get to choose in between two elites, in order to moderate the failures of the elites in serving the people of the world. All these decisions forged into law by the Washington leadership, end up destroying small businesses, and feeding the big ones. There are no exceptions. Looking at the Affordable Care Act, which expands coverage to an estimated 32 million uninsured Americans, it makes coverage mandatory, which in turn feeds the healthcare industry conglomerates like pharmaceutical companies. What you are witnessing is a modern day version of the Chicago “rackets” from back in Capone’s day. Ironically, the Chicago mafia helped put Obama in office, in the first place!
Whether or not you believe in the New World Order (NOW) or not is irrelevant. The fact is, the NWO is really the OWO (Old World Order) expanding operations to eke out some more growth. The 2008 financial crisis is a perfect proof of what I am suggesting. Faced with no room for expanding profits beyond “astronomical” speculation, the hedge fund and huge conglomerate banking institutions saw only one remaining set of opportunities. First, a cataclysm must be instituted so that assets could be reshuffled in favor of the elites. We need only the fact that more billionaires have been created SINCE Wall Street melted down, than there ever were before. The middle class lost trillions without even understanding it, the elites then set out for phase two, global chaos and domination. This is when we saw the Sochi Olympics craziness, while at the same time US Senators were practicing a coup in Ukraine. Soros, the Rothschilds, and the rest had been in cahoots ever since the before the Berlin Wall fell, creating the atmosphere for takeover. Russia, the remaining BIG CHIP in the game of domination stood in the way. The American Way, on the operating table and choking out her last breaths, was sold as “liquid freedom” and 100 military operations named from Hollywood movie scripts, along with the chant, democracy, democracy, democracy on the lips of misguided revolutionaries. Lastly, the whole mess is rolled into a big ball the normal people can cast aside as “conspiracy theory”, which frees the conspirators to achieve more of their goals, and faster. It’s game time, all or nothing, the great opportunity at hand to transform our world – but into what? $100 trillion-trillion have been spent keeping the rulers of our world in caviar, fast cars, and beautiful creatures for their photo ops. The elites need more still, and we all get a tiny bit less, less, less until there is nothing left. I just hope America wakes up, before the grocery store shelves go empty. An Apocolypse like Babylon from the Bible was not my dream for my country.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
