LT w/ Dr. Elliott: Wages decline National Debt up Credit cards up Wages decline. Pray!
LT w/ Dr. Elliott: Wages decline National Debt up Credit cards up Wages decline. Pray!
Summary
➡ The text predicts a poor holiday season for retail sales, indicating a possible recession and more inflation in 2024. Economic signs include decreasing cardboard box sales, potential lay-offs in January, draining of people’s emergency funds, and an expected rise in oil prices due to potential global conflict. Furthermore, high personal debt levels, predominantly from credit cards, is viewed as troublesome sign for future spending. The author criticizes contemporary government economic policies, stating they are inconsistent with the country’s founding principles grounded in tangible wealth. The text ends with a comment on the influx of people investing their cash in precious metals and increasing reliance on financial advice providers.
➡ Several U.S. states are pushing for state-run central banks backed by gold, advocating for more privacy and less government control in banking affairs. Policymakers are divided on financial conservatism, with some favoring unrestricted money-printing over incentivizing work. Despite negative sentiments, there are still leaders who advocate fiscal conservatism and individual freedoms in alignment with the Founding Fathers’ principles. The recent election of Speaker Johnson, a social, fiscal, and religious conservative, is perceived as a divine miracle and an embodiment of these principles.
Transcript
Folks. It’s great to have Dr. Kirk Elliott back with us again. Always great updates for us. Every single week, there’s changing tides. It’s unbelievable. You can reach out to them anytime by going in the description box below. And we know gold. You can simply click on that link and you will have someone helping you out with the future. Your IRAs and more precious silver and precious gold. We love all of the work that they’re doing to support everyone.
And just great to have you back again and get another update. Well, it’s so good to be back with you. I mean, sadly, lt, we’re living in a time where there’s never a dull moment for financial news. I mean, there’s just not. And it’s like people when I used to teach economics in college, I would have everywhere from the intro class as freshmen to the upper level classes as seniors.
And a lot of times I was a guest lecturer. There was one semester when I actually did teach a whole semester because the ecom prof was on maternity leave. And she said, hey, Kirk, I know you’re busy, but could you come in and teach this class? It’s like, Do I have to have office hours? It’s like, I really have full time. I do what I do, right? But I did it.
And you know what? Economics is normally so boring and just awful, but you can make it fun and you can make it apply to life. And I got these kids just to lit up, right? They got it. They got it. And I was so excited. And so try to do that every single week, trying to distill this hard information into something that makes sense. Right. The biggest thing that I see right now is people might be shocked.
It’s not the Israel Hamas conflict. Now, that is big, right? It’s going to cause oil to go through the roof. People are going to die. This local war is going to turn into a regional war, and then something greater. That’s truly what I believe is going to happen over there, which is going to have this ripple effect through the economy globally. Right? I think this is actually a big deal, but what’s a bigger deal than that is our debt.
So when you put it into perspective, Lt, it’s kind of crazy. So look at this chart. You go throughout time, and the debt would grow a little bit, but it was almost like, flatlined. It was just barely growing. And then you go to, like 2000 is when it really started to kick into high gear. Well, actually, when you look at the early 70s, like 1971, right? Nixon took us off the gold standard forever.
He closed that gold window so not even nations could trade back and forth with gold. Well, in 1971 on that, that’s where you see the exponential growth starting to happen, right. Because at that point, you could just print money by fiat. You could just print it by decree and it started to turn into monopoly money. Well, then you saw in 2000, after 911, they had to try to stimulate the economy again.
And so then you see another kind of big upswing and then you see 2009. That was the big one. That was when policymakers throughout the world started to basically adhere to a zero interest rate policy program. Zerp is what it’s called. So zerp meant cheap money, lower the cost of borrowing, print a ton of money and get it out there and so people could keep the economy afloat.
Right? It’s like just almost like build it and they will come, sort of a thing. But you look at what’s happened since COVID in 20, it’s like, oh my word. Yet another almost straight up parabolic move because then now it’s out of control. So guy named Stanley Druckenmiller, he’s a billionaire hedge fund manager. He was interviewed earlier in the week. I think it was on Wednesday. I think it was on Wednesday.
Tuesday or Wednesday. And what did he say? He said the federal government’s spending like drunken sailors and we need to cut entitlements if the country is going to survive. Why did he say cutting entitlements? Right? It’s like normally liberals don’t like to cut entitlements, right? But why would he say that? So I’ll tell you why. When you look at what we bring in as a nation, it’s about $3.
8 trillion a year in federal tax revenue. So all of your income taxes going in, that’s how the federal government makes money, about 3. 8 trillion. How much is of that 3. 8 trillion is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, women and children programs, food stamps, all those entitlements and mandatory payments. So that would be roughly 80% of that. Literally 80% of everything we bring in as a nation is now going out towards entitlements or mandatory payments.
So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out it’s like, well, how does the country actually survive on the 20% that’s left over? I mean, if that’s just you still have infrastructure and defense and education and running the country and OOH, what about the interest on our national debt, which is now a trillion dollars because the debt is going through the roof. It’s like, of course they’re never going to balance the budget, ever.
I don’t care what politician comes in and says, we’re going to force balancing the budget when I become a legislator. It’s like, no you’re not. Because if you did, you would have to cut spending. And what spending do you cut? Well, 80% of your spending goes towards entitlements. And politicians right now kind of view people as votes and not really as people, right? So they’re never going to do that.
They don’t want to cut off the hand that feeds them, so to speak, right? So here’s where we are. This is an era which to me is very reminiscent of readings that I’ve done studying how civilizations fall of the Roman Republic, right? The Roman Republic didn’t die because of invading Marauders, invading their borders. They crumbled from within. Complete moral decay, loss of character. Their economy was crippled because one third of the population of Rome was getting public assistance at the time.
One third. It’s like, man, we’re at 80%. We’re way worse. Right? So you look at what’s happening now. We go back in time to the beginning of our nation, okay? 1776, our debt was zero. What then go all the way to 1980, 1980, when Reagan became president. What was our national debt back then? It was a little less than a trillion. So it was like call it $980,000,000,000.
Okay, so that’s 204 years, 1776 to 1980, to actually accumulate $980,000,000,000 worth of debt. This is important because I want to put that into perspective. Last month, in 30 days, 30 days, we added $600 billion to our national debt. So what took 204 years to accumulate 950,000,000,000? We just added 600 billion in 30 days. It’s like, no wonder drucken. Miller says we’re spending like drunken sailors. And we’ve got to cut this spending because the aftermath of that is an ugly decline, right? Because we simply can’t afford it.
It’s $600 billion in 30 days. That puts us on pace for $7. 2 trillion of debt accumulation for the year. Right? Only word 7. 2 trillion in one year. It took us 204 years to get not even a trillion. Right? I mean, this is really out of control. Lt. Now, what makes this worse, which is you and I have talked about this probably on and off over the last month, which is the BRICS nations taking away the petrodollar status.
There’s no built in demand for our currency anymore. So now when we print, there is really going to be ramifications. Big ramifications. So what happened on Wednesday of this last week? Well, the Fed met, and Jerome Powell paused interest rates. He paused know, there was an expectation that they were going to maybe raise a quarter and then pause. We paused them right now. And why? So the narrative is we’re doing a really good job, and we’re winning this war against inflation.
We’re winning it, right? So therefore, we don’t have to keep raising rates. Also on Wednesday, I saw this. I was flipping through the stations at the office right, as I was working, and here’s Biden shows up on TV, speaking in Northfield Minnesota, and he’s bragging about the economy and how they’re going to have all this infrastructure development in rural America. And he said, Because of Bidenomics, we’ve won the war on inflation.
Because of Bidenomics, we’ve got wages going up. Because of Bidenomics, we’ve got more jobs being created than jobs lost. It’s like, dude, that guy’s living in La la Land, right? It’s like none of that’s true. I mean, literally everything that he said was not true. It’s like, wow. And there’s people cheering and clapping. It’s like, yeah, go, Mr. President. That’s awesome. You’re amazing. It’s like, dude, the only thing he’s amazing at was lying because it wasn’t true.
Because of Bidenomics, we’ve got now wages that are in decline. We’ve got capitalization pressures at banks, they don’t have money. And we’re entering into what I think is going to be a very ugly year economically in 2024, because I think it’s going to be a really bad holiday season for retail sales. And if that holiday season is bad, which they’re predicting, it’s going to be ugly. Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, the people who buy cardboard boxes, cardboard box sales are down 80%.
80. They’re not expecting to ship anything over the holiday season. If they don’t ship anything, it’s because there’s no sales. When there’s no sales, what happens January? Well, they’re going to lay people off. So moving into 2024, we’ve got, I think, a big recession, more inflation coming. Don’t believe the rhetoric that they’ve won the battle. If they would have won the battle on inflation, lt, what would they have done? They would have lowered interest rates, not kept them the same.
That means they won the battle of inflation. But what they’ve done over the last eleven months rate hike. Rate hike, rate. I mean, just constantly. There’s only been two months when they didn’t raise rates. And now they’re pausing it at high levels. They’re not pausing it at low levels. They’re pausing it at high levels, which means anybody who carries any debt is going to feel the pinch in a really bad way.
Like a really bad way. So this is where we are moving forward. And I think a recent study that I read earlier in the week, it might have been on Monday, 32% of Americans have extinguished their emergency fund, and they have less money in the bank than they had at the beginning of the year. 32%. So one out of every three people. Now, if we really are going into a bad holiday season and job layoffs, come January, people are going to need excess capital in the bank.
That’s the rainy day fund. Right? But one third of America no longer has a rainy day fund. I mean, this is painting out, shaping up to be a really ugly, ugly economic cycle that we’re headed into. And what makes matters worse is the war in Israel with Hamas is going to expand and it’s going to multiply into a regional and then probably a global conflict. This is going to cause oil prices to go through the roof.
Already, when Americans are tapped out financially, it’s like, well, now oil prices are going to go up more than 50% is the expectation, which means gas at the pump is going to go up more than 50%. Because what’s gas at the pump, it’s refined oil. And if oil goes up 50%, so will gas prices. Right? I’m painting a different picture than what biden painted about biden economics at Northfield, Minnesota on Wednesday.
Completely different picture. But the difference is the numbers that I’m telling you are the real numbers. The ones that he’s telling you are completely fabricated. It’s just not real. Now, the only thing that we could actually say is real is that people have spent quite a bit of money over the last 60 days. So when he says that, he’s actually kind of right. People have spent a lot of money over the last 60 days.
And Janet Yellen even said, I’m very proud of Americans for keeping the economy afloat and being resilient with their spending. It’s like, okay, this is not something to cheer about. When people are spending money that they don’t have, that’s not something I would ever encourage. Right. But they have to have something good to say. Right. So when you look at the real metrics behind what she said, what are people spending? Credit card lines of credit.
Right. They’re spending money on their credit card. So now the dynamics are getting so bizarrely off kilter because credit card debt is the highest it’s ever been. A trillion dollars worth of credit card debt in America. What about the available credit lines? There’s not much left. They’re tapped out. They’ve reached their credit line. So moving into 2024, the spending that they were bragging about in Bidenomics, it’s not going to be there because there is no more credit available.
People have already spent it. And to me, I would say that’s not a healthy spending. Healthy spending is when you work hard, you pay your bills, you have money left at the end of the month, and you’re paying cash for something that would be okay. What’s happening here is wages are coming down. People are tapped out. They’re living on their credit card because they don’t have money in their checking account.
And now their debt just keeps exploding. And now they’ve reached their limit. Spending is going to have to come down. This might be why Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, the ecommerce companies of the world, have got their box sales, cardboard box sales down 80% because they know that everyone’s tapped out and they’re not going to spend very much money this holiday season. Right. I mean, you can connect dots and I can connect dots, and those are the dots I’m connecting.
Lt yeah. Now, when something that I showed earlier was this Usdetclock. org, they had another I mean, they’re constantly updating this with these different we call them memes, I guess. But when you’re looking at this chart, what does it tell you with the stolen wealth, 1948 to 1971? 91%. And then productivity, 245%. But compensations plus 115%, what does that show you to the public when folks see these things? Well, that shows the discrepancy between real productivity and real spending versus stimulus money.
Right. So you’ve got a massive decline in actual real so what do I mean by that? So they stopped measuring MZM. MZM is the money supply that’s used for foreign aid for all the stimulus money. They stopped measuring that because they don’t want anybody to know how much money they’re printing because that’s really the true inflation. Right? M two money supply is checking account, savings accounts, and money markets.
It’s liquid money that people have in the banks. So when you have that compensation line that’s low, the red line and the green line is high, what does that mean? Means that people don’t have enough money to live on. There are going to be a net withdrawal of funds out of bank accounts, right. Just to survive. Not as much money going in, more money coming out. This is how banks fail.
But that’s what that’s telling me. When compensation is so much lower than productivity, it’s like, okay, people can’t afford to live. They’re being squeezed out and they’re using up their rainy day funds. We’ve never had this little of savings in America. And this, quite honestly, is not something that any politician should be bragging about. Right. It’s simply seem to somebody seems to be trying to wake up the masses using this debt clock because it’s making its waves around social media and more.
And it’s just very interesting to me when I watch it all play out and with everything that you’ve been talking about, it seems like a lot of folks, too, when you say they’re not spending money, just maybe they’re investing their cash in changing it to precious metals. Are you seeing that trend continue with you guys? And are you still working hard to support people? How are things going there with your company? Man, I don’t even know how to say how busy we are because we’re really busy.
We keep hiring more people. But this is kind of the Catch 22 in my mind, right. So I love it that we’re helping people. I absolutely do. Which is why we keep shouting this message from the rooftops week after week after week on so many different distribution channels, because people need help. People are scared. They’re afraid that their money is going to run out. And this is not a good thing.
So this is the Catch 22 to me. Number one is I’m very glad that we have a message of hope and there’s solution and things that we can do. People just need to act. Right. The sad part, the flip side of that coin to me is this is America. We shouldn’t be living in fear of our finances. We shouldn’t be living in fear of our politicians. We shouldn’t be living in fear that the country is going to be worse for our kids and grandkids than it was for us.
Right. But this is where we are. See, everything that our founding fathers warned us against is happening. When you get a federal government that’s out of control, when you don’t have discretion in your spending, when you actually don’t have tangible backing to a currency. I mean, back when the Founding Fathers were around, they had gold and silver as currency. Right. And now it’s completely fiat. Everything that they warned about for our Democratic republic is actually being violated.
So if you were to ask John Adams, you know, George Washington, whatever, it’s like, what do you think? Why is America where it’s at? They would say, well, because they violated every biblical principle of success that we laid out when we founded this. I mean, that’s what they would say. And it’s like, this is not a shock to us that this is happening. But you and I talked about this last week, I think, or maybe the week before, how that federal overreach is starting to turn people in the right direction.
And important people like legislators in states are now screaming for states rights in the banking world. They want state run central banks backed by gold in Texas and Alaska and other states are viewing gold as legal tender. See, they’re pulling out of this massive overreach. Big Brother ability to cut you off from buying or selling, no privacy. That’s where the globalists want us. That’s where the Uniparty wants us.
Right. Which would be any GOP member that’s not fiscally conservative is basically the same as the World Economic Forum people, the globalists, the Democrats are all the same. Just go. Just print money if you need it rather than encourage people to work. Right. So the Founding Fathers would be, I want to say, rolling over in their grave. It’s like now they wouldn’t actually be surprised where we are because they warned us about this a couple of hundred years ago.
Yeah, you bring up something interesting because I wanted to just probably share this one as we come to a close. They had up the other day, and you were talking about Founding Fathers right on time. When I had this up about Abraham Lincoln, 1864. The government should create, issue and circulate all the currency and credits needed to satisfy the spending power of the government and the buying power of consumers.
By the adoption of these principles, the taxpayers will be saved immense sums of interest. Money will cease to be master and become the servant of humanity. The money power preys upon the nations in times of peace and conspires against it in times of adversity. It is more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than autocracy excuse me more selfish than that. I wish we had politicians that thought like that today.
We do. I really think we do. I mean, here’s where boy, when you look at Mike Johnson, new speaker of the I. A I’m shocked that he is actually speaker of the House. I truly am. Because he’s a Bible believing, God fearing social conservative that’s pro family and get out of a debt kind of a right. Why did they vote him of? They didn’t want Scalise because he was a hardline, fiscal conservative.
They didn’t want Jim Jordan because of the same. And and this guy’s probably worse, right? I mean, worse in a good way. I’m saying he’s probably even more so than they were, but yet unanimous vote from the House. And I was reading an article about him over the weekend, last weekend, they said he has no enemies, right? And so I’m thinking to myself, okay, every believer has enemies, so to speak, because when you’re speaking the truth, you are going know, make people who don’t believe in truth upset, right? Even Jesus had enemies, right? But as I think about this, it’s like, well, this isn’t just simply an answer to prayer and divine miracle, right? And I think it’s showing the world.
It’s like, God still got this. He still got this. He’s not surprised. Watch what he starts doing in the hearts and minds of people and bringing people back to him, expanding the kingdom, reclaiming what the enemy has stolen over the years, and regaining that religious freedom, our personal freedoms, our political freedoms, our economic freedoms. And to me, Speaker Johnson, it’s like that’s an answer to prayer. And I don’t get it.
I truly don’t get it. How he got voted in. I’m not complaining, I’ll take it, but I don’t get it. Which just tells me when something looks and feels and smells so miraculous, you can see the fingerprint of God all over it. Yeah. One of the things that I pointed out in my video that I posted on Wednesday was the fact that Steve Scalise, I don’t know if you caught this, but he stated that Mike Johnson is the 45th speaker of the House.
And when he did that, everybody looked and reacted with smiles, as if he snuck that one in there because he’s supposed to be the 56th speaker of the House. But if you go back in time, it’s the 1876 when we had the 44th speaker. It’s almost like we’re going back to the way that our Republic was supposed to be set up and not when they stole it and made everything where we were actually in debt and we were basically slaves to the system.
It just was like just a little squeeze in there where a lot of folks caught it. And we’re like, what is going on there? Why would they sneak that one in? And it wasn’t by mistake. I know it. And I shared a lot of reasons why, but no need to get into it here. But very interesting. Good to look into. Yeah, for sure. I appreciate you guys. And again, folks, you can go to Annwino.
com Gold, reach out to them, and just look into how you can have your fiat money brought into precious metals and just really just a great investment for your future, especially during times like it’s very, very important. And we just want to thank you, Dr. Kirk Elliott, for all that you continue to do. For us. Well, thank you. It’s my pleasure. Every single week. It’s my pleasure. All right.
God bless. .
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