Drowning in Debt Has Deadly Consequences

By Rich Kozlovich

While I've slowed in my efforts to publish I still pay attention to what's going on in the world and have a daily search pattern to find commentaries worth reading.  When you have a large daily search pattern scanning becomes necessary and a skill.   There are friends who still send me stuff, some of it's really good and some of it isn't.  Some of them are written articles and some are videos.   

I prefer written articles versus videos because I can quickly scan in a few seconds to determine if it's worth reading carefully  I don't like videos because I have to watch the whole thing to see if there's anything in it worth my time, and often times.... there isn't... and I wasted a half hour.   However, occasionally one comes along that's profound, provocative and worth everyone's time, and this is one of them.  The True Origin of the French Revolution: What Historians Get Wrong.

The nation is riding a wave of massive debt of 39 trillion dollars with interest payments of a trillion dollars a year..... and yet..... those in leadership positions are failing to address this monster.  And this doesn't count the massive debt the states are piling up.  It's as if they're wearing the same kind of self-serving blinders as did the French leadership that triggered the French Revolution.  And this is a worldwide problem of massive proportions coming to a global debt of 353 trillion dollars, much of it non-payable, and non-collectable.  

This can't go on.

1. America’s Entitlement Illusion 
2. The hidden cost of saving the economy
3. Medicaid’s Ever-Expanding Fiscal Burden
4. Belgium's Car Toll Desperation Move 
5. Guess the U.S. National Debt in 1990.
6. Hey, Republicans, Spending Is Still Out Of Control

Update, 7/17/26:

A 22 Percent Social Security Cut Is Coming. Will the Senate Act? - Many people will dislike reading this, I'm sure, and wonder why we can't just borrow to pay for the benefits. The answer is that between Social Security, Medicare, and interest payments, we're short by $115 trillion over 30 years. The moment Congress commits to that much borrowing, the likelihood of a historic inflation burst increases. Even this painful hike in the price level would not manage to devalue enough debt to save us, since Social Security benefits are indexed to inflation. The obligation would survive; retirees' bond portfolios and other assets would lose value...........

Is There a New Golden Age on the Horizon?

By Rich Kozlovich

There's something I find really interesting.  There are those who are really smart and really successful, many of them economists who also believe we are on the verge of a "Golden Age" if we can crush the deep state and drain the leftist fever swamps.  Crushing the deep state and draining the leftist fever swamps will make a huge difference admittedly, but a “golden age”? I doubt that.

I've always believed in historical cycles, and I've read three books on the subject, and while the writers all have their own terminology and odd ways of creating coherence through connectives, they all come to the same conclusion. We’re in an end cycle, and all end cycles involve massive economic downturns, and violence, and much of the violence and economic folly is the result of embracing multiculturalism and globalism.  

Remember how Henry Kissinger promoted globalism and multiculturalism as the answer to the world's economic and social issues, and Western nations bought into that insanity?  Well, I recently published a Kissinger article, Henry Kissinger: Time is The Great Leveler of Truth, outlining what a disaster Henry Kissinger was for the world.  

Europe made a grave mistake by listening to this nitwit and the man he mentored, Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum, which is in fact pushing on the world a form of viral neo-communism.  At the end of his life he proclaimed it was a grave mistake for Europe to have listened to him.   

As of 2024 the world’s governments were in debt to the tune of almost 310 trillion dollars, and many of these nations are incapable of repaying that debt, and the debt holders are incapable of collecting it, and I include China.

There are six things a nation needs to be self-sufficient. The ability to feed itself, fuel itself, arm itself, defend itself, create its own internal market, and pay off their national debt. There’s only one nation on Earth that can do all six, and that’s the United States. The international debt will destroy the world’s economy, except for America, but make no mistake, there will be economic pain in America also. 

While international trade is an important economic factor, it’s not life saving for the United States but there will be no golden age, just national survival.  While much of the rest of the world breaks up into semi to totally autonomous states, which is Europe’s foundational social paradigm, as well as China’s, and the Middle East and Africa will break up into tribal states, South America will mostly remain as it is because the geography is so difficult, but they will all be broke. 

Can there ever be a new golden age?  Yes, after the new historical cycle begins, but this end cycle has to finish playing out first, and let's not get too excited about this "deal" with Iran.  Deals with the Muslim world become meaningless as soon as things change and they can justify reneging on anything they've agreed to in the past, it's called "taqiyya", a doctrine of deception.  The concept is to deceive adversaries in order to protect themselves, and then later renege on the agreements when it becomes convenient.  The Barbary Pirate Wars with early America is just one example. 

That's history, and that history is incontestable.  

 Here's are some articles you may find interesting, especially number four. 

1. Chilling details of California terror ring’s plot against Freedom 250 — as ‘mastermind’ is unmasked 
2. FBI disrupts alleged explosive-drone plot targeting White House UFC event, officials say
3. Socialist ‘Red Rabbits’ are training for national uprising against cops 
4. The Dawn of the Modern Nationalist Age

National Debt and The Government Shutdown

By Rich Kozlovich

The last couple of weeks the media has been the "secret" supporters of the Democrat's position on the government shutdown in their war to once again attempt to destroy The United States America.   All this spending plays into the strategy by creating an entire society based on government dependence, giving them the power to destroy the Constitution and have leftists take over the government at all levels creating a totalitarian socialist society.  Truth be told, if Kamala Harris had been elected, it might have happened, and it can still happen as we're seeing the invertebrate Republicans beginning to buckle to Democrat demands.  

Once again.... definition leads to clarity, and for clarity's sake...... fascism isn't right wing, it's left wing, it's socialism.  Socialism is the mother philosophy of both fascism and communism, two sides of the same coin, and truth be told, totalitarianism if foundational to all the "isms", and has been since the French Revolution. 

• San Diego launches 'friendly' inspection teams to go digging through people's trash cans in search of recycling violations
• The left wants to save democracy by destroying it

I've written a lot on the dangers of our national debt and what do to about it in

$9 trillion: foreign treasury surge!, saying:

 The UK has overtaken China as the second-largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasuries, as total foreign ownership hits an all-time high of $9.05 trillion.

• Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries hit $9.05 trillion in March
  
• The UK surpasses China, now second only to Japan in U.S. debt holdings
  
• China cuts its holdings to $765 billion, continuing a five-month selling streak
  
• Japan remains top holder with $1.13 trillion in Treasuries
  
• Analysts cite trade tensions and diversification as drivers of China’s divestment 

Whether this reshuffle signals a fleeting trend or a structural pivot remains to be seen. But for now, the message is clear: trust in U.S. debt endures, even if China is taking a step back.  

So, that says foreign nations trust American debt?  Really?  What it says to me is these are loser nations who are major owners of America, and America has reached a turning point on debt, and the Big Beautiful Bill added trillions of dollars in national debt, and the media plays along with this outrage.  

For that matter we really need to start asking what is the justification for borrowing 38 trillion dollars to fund every idiotic costly political pandering scheme ever developed, and that includes both parties.  With an interest payment of "$881 billion in 2024 and projected to nearly double to $1.6 trillion by 2034. These rising costs now surpass spending on areas like Medicare and national defense, and are projected to become the second-largest category of federal spending."

 This can't go on.

Senator Everett Dirksen once said 

"A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money", and while it's being said he really didn't say that, he never retracted it in his lifetime either.  The fact is he's been categorized as being fiscally conservative and socially liberal, which is in fact cognitive dissonance, and his voting record shows that, and so too does that kind of cognitive dissonance apply to the Congress and the administration today. 

My grandfather was one of the world's great economists.  He said if you spend more than you make you'll go broke.  He made his living as a coal miner and a farmer, but he wasn't a stupid coal miner/farmer, unlike so many economists I've read over the years.  It's said statistics is an arcane science as you can make statistics say whatever you want them to say, and I think that applies to economics as well.  But in the end, if you spend more than you take in, bankruptcy follows.  It really is that simple.

 Update:   Bad News on the National Debt - It's now $38T, the fastest accumulation of $1T outside of the pandemic. In the midst of a federal government shutdown, the US government's gross national debt surpassed $38 trillion Wednesday, a record number that highlights the accelerating accumulation of debt on America's balance sheet,

Kent Smetters of the University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton Budget Model, who served in President George W. Bush's Treasury Department, told the Associated Press that a growing debt load over time leads ultimately to higher inflation, eroding Americans' purchasing power and making it less possible for future generations to achieve home ownership goals. The Government Accountability Office outlines some of the impacts of rising government debt on Americans—including higher borrowing costs for things like mortgages and cars, lower wages from businesses having less money available to invest, and more expensive goods and services.

The Joint Economic Committee estimates that the total national debt has grown by $69,713.82 per second for the past year. Michael Peterson, chair and CEO of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said in a statement that "reaching $38 trillion in debt during a government shutdown is the latest troubling sign that lawmakers are not meeting their basic fiscal duties." "Along with increasing debt, you get higher interest costs, which are now the fastest growing part of the budget," Peterson added. "We spent $4 trillion on interest over the last decade, but will spend $14 trillion in the next ten years. Interest costs crowd out important public and private investments in our future, harming the economy for every American.".......

The 2025 Version of Which Country Will Be the First Debt Domino?

September 18, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty 

 Back in 2011, I speculated about which nation would be the next debt domino.

 

I even wondered if it might be the United States.

Now I look at the chart I shared and think those were “the good ol’ days.”

Why? Because all of those nations today (other than Ireland) have much higher levels of government debt.

To understand the gravity of the situation, here’s the new version of the chart. But let’s remove Japan and add a few more European nations.

Based on OECD estimates of debt levels, lots of nations now have enormous debt burdens with Greece and Italy being the worst of the worst.

But since Greece is now moving in the right direction, I don’t think it will be the country that triggers a debt crisis.

I’ve long though Italy will be the guilty party, and that remains a safe bet.

Jessica Riedl, a former colleague from my years at the Heritage Foundation, shares a different perspective in a column for the Washington Post.

Here are some excerpts, starting with a grim assessment of the United Kingdom’s shaky finances.

 

Governments across the globe cumulatively spent on average $1.3 trillion annually on debt interest payments in the 2010s. Soaring debt and loan rates have escalated this year’s interest costs to $2.7 trillion. In five years, that number is projected to hit $3.9 trillion. …Let’s begin with Britain’s fiscal mess. …Britain’s Office for Budget Responsibility warns that the current debt — just less than 100 percent of its economy — is on its way to 270 percent within five decades… Yet the nation remains largely in denial. A historic tax increase enacted last year was plowed into government spending rather than closing the fiscal gap and a stubborn refusal to reform spending has brought calls for another tax hike.

I’m not surprised the the big tax hike simply led to more spending. That’s a well-established pattern in fiscal policy.

Next, Jessica looks at France.

France’s fiscal chaos has brought the current government’s collapse. …Within the European Union, only Greece and Italy exceed France’s debt, which stands at 116 percent of the gross domestic product and is heading to 130 percent within a decade. Annual interest costs are set to surge by two-thirds over five years and risk becoming the government’s most expensive budget item. Perhaps not surprisingly, Moody’s downgraded the French government’s credit rating last December. …French austerity is becoming economically unavoidable.

Austerity in unavoidable, but French politicians almost surely will impose austerity on taxpayers when they should be cutting back on a bloated public sector.

So expect a bad situation to get even worse.

Last but not least, maybe the next debt domino is the United States.

…neither France nor Britain can match the combination of debt unsustainability and denial in the United States, whose budget deficits are nearly $2 trillion and moving to $4 trillion within a decade. …Social Security and Medicare face a combined annual shortfall of $700 billion this year, rising to $2.2 trillion within a decade and totaling $122 trillion over three decades… France and Britain are at least debating solutions. The U.S. continues to slash taxes, add benefits and ignore unfathomable budget deficits. Yet the laws of math and economics always win eventually, and Americans are dangerously ill-prepared for what is coming.

For what it’s worth, I fully agree that the United States is in deep fiscal trouble.

That being said, I think France and the United Kingdom are more vulnerable to crisis.

I’ll close by re-sharing this visual, which shows investors are losing faith in many governments (as measured – in red – by rising interest rates on 30-year bonds). The U.S. has moved in the wrong direction, but interest rates have climbed even higher in the U.K.

Notice, by the way, that long-run interest rates in Switzerland have actually declined.

They are very low because Switzerland has a comparatively small government and the nation’s spending cap creates long-run stability.

Too bad politicians in Washington (and in Paris, Berlin, and every other national capital) can’t copy the one policy that works.

 

A Debt Crisis for France?

September 2, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve been explaining for years that economists are lousy forecasters.  But we are capable of noticing trends, including trends that will lead of bad outcomes if not reversed.

 

For instance, my recent series on “France and Fiscal Suicide” points out (see Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV) that the country will have some sort of crisis unless there is a serious effort to reduce the burden of government spending.

Heck, I’ve been beating that drum for a long time, and I also made France a case study for my 20th Theorem of Government.

So even though I’m still not willing to make specific predictions, it certainly appears that a fiscal meltdown may be on the horizon.

Here are some excerpts from a Wall Street Journal editorial last week.

…after all these years Paris still can’t get a grip on its budget or the economy. Prime Minister François Bayrou said Monday he’ll call a confidence vote on Sept. 8. He’s likely to lose. …Cue a steep drop in French shares…and surging bond yields. …French unemployment remains persistently high, and the productive parts of the economy are straining under a welfare state that extracted 51.4% of GDP last year in revenue… You’d think an economic and fiscal disaster of this magnitude would produce a burst of creative policy and political thinking. Instead, politicians mostly agree that they’d prefer to raise taxes than cut any spending or reform any entitlements.

That’s not encouraging.

But prepare to be even more pessimistic after perusing passages from Matthew Lynn’s column in the U.K.-based Telegraph.

 

The Government is teetering on the edge of collapse, the budget is out of control, there are emergency tax rises on the way and the rioters are gearing up for protests… With worries about government debt and the affordability of lavish welfare systems rising all the time, France could be about to trigger a full-blown market crash. … 

State spending has hit 58pc of GDP, while the tax burden on workers has hit 47pc, one of the highest levels in the OECD. And yet despite that, the deficit is forecast to hit 5.7pc of GDP this year and will probably punch through 6pc, while its debt-to-GDP ratio is over 113pc… It is hardly surprising that investors are starting to feel nervous about lending the country even more money. Yields have already spiked above Greece and Portugal, two countries at the epicentre of the last eurozone crisis, and that is hardly reassuring, while the finance minister, Eric Lombard, has started warning about an IMF bailout.

Here’s a chart that accompanied the column.

As you can see, one symptom of excessive government spending is that debt is becoming an ever-greater burden.

The author warns that a crisis in France may spread to other nations, which is a very real possibility given their fiscal problems.

…watch out for contagion. …France is the most fiscally irresponsible of all the major developed global economies. …if it crashes, then other countries – most notably the UK – will very quickly get caught up in the storm as well, just as Ireland and Portugal were after Greece crashed. The markets will be looking for the next domino to fall, and it won’t be long before they find it.

I’ll close with two comments.

• First, if France does have a crisis (i.e., a loss of confidence by investors, leading to a sudden spike in yields on government bonds, perhaps accompanied by troubles for the entire financial system), I will have to eat crow because I’ve been speculating for years that Italy will be the first domino to fall.
• Second, Mr. Lynn seems to think it would be good if France still had its own currency so it could just use inflation as a means of partially repudiating its debt. That is wrong. France’s problem is excessive government, not the euro currency. French politicians instead should opt for “internal devaluation,” which is just a wonky way of saying they need small government and free markets.

Because France seems to be a cesspool of statism, I won’t be holding my breath waiting for the right approach.

Though, five years ago, I never would have predicted Argentina’s renaissance, so one should never give up hope.

P.S. I’m going to add one more comment.

• Third, a nation’s debt burden matters, but what also matters is whether policy is moving in the right direction or wrong direction. For instance, the EU chart below shows that Greece has the highest debt burden in the European Union, yet it is now considered to be in decent shape because of short-run spending restraint and long-run pension reform. In other words, it is heading in the right direction and debt is declining. France, by contrast, is vulnerable because politicians are in a never-ending cycle of more taxes, more spending, and more debt.

Here’s the chart showing European debt burdens, courtesy of Eurostat.

P.P.S. The chart also shows that it is possible to be a high-tax welfare state with reasonable debt levels, though it is worth noting that nations such as Sweden, Denmark, and Luxembourg are very pro-market in areas other than fiscal policy. And Denmark and Sweden have been moving in the right direction on fiscal policy.

Say, Whatever Happened To All Those Devastating Spending Cuts We Were Warned About?

“U.S. deficit grows to $291 billion in July despite tariff revenue surge.” – CNBC

  

I & I Editorial Board August 20, 2025 1 comment @ Insight and Issues

  

Editor's Note:  I've not asked for nor have I received permission to post this is full, but this needs to be said a lot more than we're hearing and seeing.  If the I & I Editorial board objects I will break it down to a link.  There's all these articles about how great the BBB was, and there was a lot of good things in it, but the big thing I kept coming back to was it not only didn't reduce the national debt, it increased it.   What we need is clarity, and this artilce absolutely needs as broad a distribution as possible.  RK  

 

That and other headlines greeted the release of the latest monthly Treasury Department report last week, which showed that the July deficit was $47 billion higher than the year before – even though revenues came in $8 billion higher.

Turns out that, despite all the protests, the screaming, and purple-hair-pulling and nose-ring-wiping about President Donald Trump’s “devastating cuts,” spending in July was $55.5 billion higher than it was a year ago.   

What’s more, there were jumps for outlays for agencies such as Veterans Affairs (up $3 billion year-over-year), Medicaid (up $15 billion), the EPA (up $195 million), the National Science Foundation (up $14 million) – all of which were supposedly being slashed and burned.

In fact, just five of the 15 Cabinet-level agencies spent less this July than they did last year.

As we’ve pointed out many, many times in this space, when it comes to spending cuts, both sides exaggerate what’s going on. Democrats do so because they want never-ending spending increases, and Republicans do so because they want to look like fiscal hawks.

The truth is that spending keeps growing, and growing, and growing. That is nowhere more true than when it comes to Medicaid, which as we exposed here (see “One Chart To Kill The Medicaid Lies For Good”), continues to climb at an unsustainable pace under the One Big Beautiful Bill.

But, don’t despair, because things are getting better under Trump.

First, cumulative deficits in the six months since Trump took office – that is, from February through July – are $196 billion lower than they were compared with the same months last year, when President Joe Biden’s autopen was still in charge.

Revenues are up $250.7 billion.

And, while spending is up, the total year-over-year increase in spending over those six months is relatively small – $54.5 billion.

Compare that to the last six months of Biden’s term.

From August 2024 through January 2025, cumulative deficits were $542 billion higher than the previous year, thanks to a $636 billion increase in spending and just $94 billion in revenue growth.

Trump and the Republican Congress have a lot more work to do before they can claim to have gotten the country’s fiscal house in order. But at least they’ve changed course a bit.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board

A Small But Important Victory for Taxpayers

August 2, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Regular readers know I’m not a Trumpie. Some of his policies are terrible (protectionism), while others are irresponsible (punting on entitlements) or misguided (new tax loopholes).

But I have to give credit where credit is due.

Unlike every other Republican president over the past six decades – including the great Ronald Reagan – Donald Trump successfully eliminated subsidies for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

This is the feel-good story of 2025.

Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post report by Scott Nover.

 

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said it will close following Congress’s decision to strip its current funding and foreclose on future appropriations. CPB…is a nonprofit set up to dole out congressionally appropriated funds to NPR, PBS, and public radio and TV stations around the United States. President Donald Trump launched a successful campaign to claw back the $1.1 billion allocated for the organization for the next two years, a measure he signed into law last month. …The closure was announced one day after the Senate Appropriations Committee released a bill that would zero out funding for CPB.

The “claw back” mentioned above refers to the rescission bill, which was another victory for taxpayers.

And Republicans (for once) were smart. Instead of simply making cuts that easily could be reversed in the future, they actually got rid of the entire bureaucracy.

The Post then quotes officials from NPR and PBS, who are predictably disappointed they can no longer be moochers.

Katherine Maher, CEO of NPR, wrote in a statement. “We will continue to respond to this crisis by stepping up to support locally owned, nonprofit public radio stations and local journalism across the country…” PBS also suggested it would step up to fill the void. “As this remarkable institution winds down, PBS is committed to building on CPB’s legacy and maintaining our service to the American people for years to come,” a spokesperson said.

For what it’s worth, NPR and PBS will continue for the simple reason that they never needed handouts to begin with. Those radio and TV stations can (indeed, they already do) raise money privately.

That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I’m sure politicians in some blue states will pillage their taxpayers to compensate for the loss of federal funds.

But at least the problem is then localized rather than national.

I’ll close with the observation that this victory is heartwarming, but also largely irrelevant. America is sleep-walking toward a fiscal crisis because of entitlement programs that are multi-trillion dollar burdens on the U.S. economy. Donald Trump has cured a hangnail, but he’s ignoring the cancer that will kill the patient.

World’s Most Biased Headline or World’s Most Misleading Headline?

July 16, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Even though it did not do much to slow the growth of federal spending in fiscal year 2026 and beyond, I was glad to see Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill get enacted.

If nothing else, it saved the country from a big, automatic tax increase next year.

Now there’s another fiscal fight in Washington. Lawmakers are squabbling over whether to approve Trump’s plan to rescind about $9 billion of spending for the current 2025 fiscal year.

To some extent, the rescission package is too small to care about. The burden of federal spending this year is about $7 trillion, so getting rid of $9 billion is way less than one percent of the budget. Heck, it’s not even 2/10ths of one percent of total federal spending.

Indeed, it’s almost impossible to see the impact of the rescission in this chart I created using CBO data.

Here are some excerpts from a report in the Washington Post, which was authored by Theodoric Meyer. As you can see, what he wrote was straightforward and balanced.

But notice the absurd headline!

 

The Senate voted Tuesday to advance President Donald Trump’s request to claw back $9 billion… The vote was 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking a tie… The rescissions bill is a top priority for the Trump Administration… Tuesday’s vote was a first step toward passing the bill. …Congress must send the bill to Trump’s desk by Friday or the administration will be forced to release the funds. …If the bill passes, it would be the first rescissions package that Congress has passed at a president’s request in decades.

Knowing a bit about journalism, it is very unlikely that Meyer concocted that headline. Presumably, it was an editor.

But whoever decided to use “slash” must not be very good at math.

Even if we compare the rescission to the narrow slice of the budget known as “domestic discretionary” rather than overall spending, there is no “slash.”

There’s not even a cut.

To be fair, the headline could have been accurate if it specified that the rescission package would “slash” foreign aid and government-run media (NPR and CPB).

Those are the only two spending categories (out of hundreds and hundreds) that actually take a hit.

And that type of journalistic honesty would correctly put the focus on whether foreign aid plays a useful role (it doesn’t) and whether government-run media is a wise way to spending money (it isn’t).

P.S. Reagan pushed through a far bigger rescission package in 1981, further solidifying his record of easily being the most fiscally prudent president since the end of World War II.

Debt Lessons from Greece

July 10, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

For many years (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019), Greece has been one of my go-to examples for bad government policy.

 

But that’s changed this decade. I wrote earlier this year about how Greece reduced the burden of government spending over the past five years.

Yes, the public sector is still far too big, but all it took was some modest spending restraint to shrink government from nearly 60 percent of GDP to slightly under 50 percent of GDP.

I want to expand on that analysis by now sharing a chart showing what has happened to government debt.

As you can see, the IMF has calculated that gross debt as a share of GDP has plunged from more than 200 percent of economic output to less than 150 percent of GDP.

By the way, debt is projected to drop to 125 percent of GDP if Greece stays on its present path of spending restraint.

All things considered, a very strong example of both my Golden Rule and the 20th Theorem of Government.

It’s also validation of what I wrote in 2015 about Greece’s debt being sustainable. Simply stated, any nation can dig itself out of a fiscal hole with spending restraint.

Heck, these lessons go back to the 1800s.

So how did Greece reverse its decline? As the Wall Street Journal opined back in 2020, voters elected a sensible government that shifted policy in the right direction.

 

The eurozone’s perennial laggard suddenly finds itself six months into a remarkable economic turnaround. …Credit Kyriakos Mitsotakis, …whom fed-up voters elected prime minister in July after a decade of failed experiments with centrist technocracy and radical leftism. …Mr. Mitsotakis has cut the top tax rate on corporate profits to 24% from 28%, and some individuals have seen their tax rate fall to 9% from 22% and their property taxes cut. 

He aims to introduce a flat tax of €100,000 for wealthy foreigners who move to Greece to invest. He’s also dusting off privatization plans… Athens has already proven the Keynesian doubters wrong. Bailout after bailout after dreary bailout failed because EU leaders took slow growth for granted and focused instead on tax increases to salvage the fisc.

Three years later, the U.K.-based Economist lauded Greece’s improved policy environment.

 

Ten years ago it was crippled by a debt crisis and ridiculed on Wall Street. Incomes had plunged, the social contract was fraying and extremist parties of the left and right were rampant. …Today Greece is far from perfect. …But after years of painful restructuring, Greece topped our annual ranking of rich-world economies in 2023. Its centre-right government was re-elected in June. …Greece shows that from the verge of collapse it is possible to enact tough, sensible economic reforms, rebuild the social contract, exhibit restrained patriotism—and still win elections.

Now, Bloomberg has added an endorsement.

Here are some excerpts from a story last week by Viktoria Dendrinou, Sotiris Nikas, and Paul Tugwell.

 

For many Greeks — pensioners, unemployed youth, small business owners — the scars persist in a country that was on its knees. But for the believers, the transformation of an economic outcast into a poster child for financial prudence is yielding rewards… Today, Greece is outperforming its euro zone peers on several fronts. It’s growing faster than the European average and is one of only a handful of EU nations achieving budget surpluses. … 

Greece has consistently outperformed its fiscal targets at a time when many European nations face worsening public finances. …Greece’s 10-year bonds now yield around 3.30%, while the premium over equivalent German debt narrowed to its tightest level since 2008. In early 2012, the yield was 44.2%. …At 7.9%, Greece’s unemployment rate is at a 17-year-low… In 2023, the latest data available, more people moved to Greece than those departing for the first time in 14 years.

The article notes that there are still plenty of reasons to worry.

But there’s no doubt that Greece has moved in the right direction. Financial markets seem to agree, based on this chart from the Bloomberg story.

I’ll conclude with two lessons.

• First, Greece shows that an economy can be rescued by adopting better policy. What Greece is doing isn’t as impressive as what’s happening in Argentina. But Argentina started in far worse shape on the “socialism slide.”
• Second, Greece shows that it should be very simple for the United States to arrest its fiscal decline. All that’s required is modest spending restraint, which has happened at times in recent American history.

But notice I wrote “should be.” I’m not very optimistic that there are any Republicans or Democrats in today’s Washington that are willing to enact the policies (spending cap, entitlement reform, etc) that would save America.

P.S. Shifting back to Greece, here are two amusing videos (here and here) from 2012 about the Greek economic/fiscal crisis.

P.P.S. Sadly (but predictably), the OECD continues to give Greece bad advice.

P&D and The Week That Was

 Truth is the Sublime Convergence of History and Reality

---

De Omnibus Dubitandum, (Everything is to be questioned!)

---

This Link will take you to My Commentaries.

 

By Rich Kozlovich 

Well, the Big Beautiful Bill passed, and I've expressed my concerns and what I think the budget should be all about.  I didn't go far enough.  There's a lot of clabber from both sides, and believe it or not, both sides have valid arguments, both sides are lying, but the Democrats are so over the top with their usual emotional pontifications they win the Horsepucky of the Year Award, hands down.  

On Friday I posted this piece, Budgets, the National Debt, and We're Running Out of Time, and since I knew there was going to be a lot of commentaries about this budget I decided to add links to that article I deemed worth your time, from both sides.   But one regarding Medicare was particularly profound in my view because it highlights three important issues this bill on how to fix Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid before they collapse.  

It seems clear if Social Security isn't privatized it will take a huge tax increase to save it, Medicare will no longer be mostly free.  It also seems to me Medicare recipients who paid into the system, will soon have to start paying monthly premiums.  As for Medicaid, that's an anchor that's going to drag the nation down with politicians on both sides of the aisle virtue signally with self-righteous hand wringing and chest pounding.   At one point the Republican controlled Senate, with a 56/44 vote, actually refused to kick illegal aliens off Medicaid.  Three Republicans crossed over.  Are you shocked to know Susan Collins was one of them. 

• BELLY-UP—Medicare and Social Security Going Broke Ahead of Schedule - Final Word: Blind pundits only see rising taxes or cutting.  It’s not ‘time travel’; the clock is just running faster, but the frightening news is, America is fighting against the clock and losing. The long-feared insolvency of Medicare and Social Security just got a little closer....
• The 'Go-Broke Date' for Social Security Is Moved Up - Social Security and Medicare are heading toward financial trouble sooner than expected, according to new federal projections. The Treasury Department's latest reports show that Social Security's combined trust funds are now forecast to not contain enough money to pay full benefits in 2034—one year earlier than last year's estimate, Politico reports. Medicare's hospital insurance fund is set to be depleted in 2033, moving up its funding cliff by three years........

As more and more classified information is being found by Trump appointees, and it's shocking how much these agencies hid, and are still trying to hide.  People like "former FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, and DNI James Clapper worked together to purposely corrupt the Trump-Russia investigation in 2016 before Trump entered office."

• Report: Obama Was In On It – His Fingerprints are ALL OVER John Brennan’s post 2016 Election Intel Community Assessment on Bogus Trump-Russia Framing Scandal

The FBI  blocked an investigation into the 2020 "Chinese mail-in voting scam to protect Chris Wray who likely lied to Congress".  The DOJ is pursuing that and before all of this is over, and if there's any justice in the world, Wray, Comey, Brennan, and Clapper should all be heading to prison. After all, "no one is above the law."    (More here) But it gets better.  Those who corruptly went after Donald Trump filing false criminal charges against him are going to be exposed, as Senator Grassley is promising to name names.   

The Trump administration is purging the EPA which is long....long... overdue,  a full scale audit "of the SBA 8(a) program found over $550 million in contracts were linked to bribery and fraud schemes." 

Let me tell you about Wilson Tindi, DEI and due process.  Tindi is an illegal alien from Kenya.  A convicted felon, and registered sex offender who the state of Minnesota knowingly hired as an auditor rising to the "highest rank available in the state career civil service".  

Did you ever wonder why the left is so hot due process for illegals?  Because it's forever.  This article outlines how this has been going on with this guy since 2005, his criminal activity and the "due process" procedures, all of which he lost, and he's still here.  That's what the left's due process is all about, straining the system to make in impossible to deport illegal aliens.  If a man with his criminal record can't be deported, it's impossible to deport anyone easily.  I might also add so much of this would be impossible if not for the corrupt federal judges who are part of this story.  

University of Pennsylvania has been forced to apologize for robbing female athletes of winning titles promoting and allowing a man who calls himself Lia Thomas to compete against women, and have now stripped Thomas of his improperly earned titles.  In my opinion, this may have also deprived these women of financial opportunities, so not only the university, but university officials and Thomas need to be sued personally.  

Let's talk about Russia for a minute. Here's a map of Ukraine that Russia has now conquered, after over three and a half years, .... that's it, and Putin tells Trump Russia will never stop trying to conquer Ukraine.  

  

His economy is crashing, their agricultural harvests are shrinking, and due to sanctions only 16 nations are buying Russian grain.  Since the price of oil is dropping, and for reasons I don't understand the value of the ruble is strong, so Russia's gas revenues fell dramatically.  Russia's small business community is facing declines in sales, with the expected loss of revenue making it difficult to get loans, resulting in cuts to expansion and hiring.  The decline in small businesses is a bigger part of the story than is appreciated.

You can tell when a tree is starting to die because it no longer produces leaves on the upper branches, and each year the number of bare branches increases. It feels like the leaves have fallen off the upper branches of the country. Unknown

Putin's lost hundreds of thousands of young Russian men and is incapable of fielding his army without tens of thousands of North Korean "volunteers". He can't manufacture the military hardware he needs, and now Iran may not be able to supply him the drones he's been using.  Another high ranking officer has been killed, and I have to say I've never read where so many high ranking officers have been killed in a war as this one.

As for the blatantly stupid argument about Putin attacked Ukraine because he was afraid of NATO, and not blatant aggression, then perhaps they can explain to me why "Russia continues to illegally occupy about 20% of Georgian territory?"

In Tony Judt's book Post war, a History of Europe since 1945, Part Two, Chapter IX he goes into great detail about the Hungarian revolution and Czech resistance and the Soviet use of force to make sure they all stayed under Soviet control.  Nothing's changed except the names.  It's not about depth of defense, it's about conquest and power, it really is that simple, it's always been that simple, and it will always be that simple when dealing with Russia.  And everyone needs to get that.

Trump needs to understand even his negotiating skills, which are impressive, aren't going to make a difference.  We're already seeing his remarkable negotiations between Congo and Rwanda starting to come apart with disputes over interpretation, economics, and the continued violence by "proxy" groups.  I'm not expecting to see this agreement to hold.  For the sake of all these people who've suffered mighty for 30 years, I hope I'm wrong.  

Europe is a mess, and I've a lot of stored articles dealing with that, so more will be coming soon.  My conclusion is, and has been for a long time, Europe as we know is is doomed.  They did it to themselves, and it's going to get a lot worse.

And finally, Elon Musk is still at it, looking for attention.  First of all, the only third party to be successful in America is the Republican party, and an attempt to be a Ross Perot spoiler for political clout by backstabbing former allies isn't going to play well.  Nothing is in his favor.  His character, his actions, or his goals.  While Ross Perot could be criticized, his goals were deemed honorable.  Not so with Musk.   This "new party" is going nowhere, and any clout he will have will be in his ability to contribute heavily to politicians of his choice, and that may even end up to be a nothing burger. 

I've been busy this week with 12 commentaries of my own and 19 by others, and the six permanent links.  Have a great weekend, and best wishes to all those of honest heart and good will. 

Let's start out with this Quote of the Day.

My Commentaries

1. Budgets, the National Debt, and We're Running Out of Time
2. The Left is Bereft of Heft
3. The XYZ Factors of Organizations
4. Now, Back to the House
5. Who Raises A Banner That Says: I Stand For Consensus!
6. Is Aphorism Another Name For Humor and Snarkiness?
7. Elon is Just Being Elon. So, Who Cares?
8. Trump, the Federal Judiciary, and The Government of the United States
9. Slinging Sammy Baugh
10. International Asteroid Day
11. Is Zohran Mamdani Really the Anointed One? Part II
12. Let Me Get This Straight

Commentaries

1. The EPA Grows A Pair And Takes A Stand On Glyphosate By Josh Bloom
2. When Did Michelle Obama Turn into a Harridan? By Susan Daniels
3. Treasury Must Protect American Companies By Paul Driessen
4. Burning trash for energy, people and planet  By Paul Driessen
5. Boston Muslim Illegal Alien Councilwoman Replaces July 4th Before Going to Prison By Daniel Greenfield
6. A Radical Company is Paying Supreme Court Justices Millions  By Daniel Greenfield
7. Who Really Bombed a Damascus Church? By Daniel Greenfield
8. Democrats Gone Wild By Robin Itzler
9. Tomb of the Unknown Soldier Guards By Robin Itzler
10. Made in America: But check the label  By Robin Itzler
11. The 2030 Census and Making America Great Again By Robin Itzler
12. Revolutionary War Secrets And July 4th Trivia By Robin Itzler
13. Settler-Colonialist Zohran Mamdani Calls For "Seizing The Means Of Production" By Francis Menton
14. Since Upper-Income Taxpayers Finance the American Welfare State, Leftists Should Be Nice to Rich People, Part II By Dan Mitchell
15. Is the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” Worth Supporting? By Dan Mitchell
16. Ohio Joins the Flat Tax Club By Dan Mitchell
17. What’s the Most Important Election of 2025?
18. Another Contestant for Politician of the Year By Dan Mitchell
19. Feds Fail to Offset Wind Turbine Eagle Kill By Craig Rucker

Permanent Links

1. 45 Communist Goals to Destroy America as Listed in the 1963 Congressional Record
2. My Seven Rules of Geopolitics
3. The John Boyd Legion of Honor
5. Former White House Advisor: “Trump to Release $150 Trillion Endowment”

 No matter what anyone says, you can’t marginalize the truth!  You can suppress it, you can ignore it, you can avoid it, you can attempt to undermine it, you can attempt to subvert it, you can attempt to organize against it, you can even laugh at it, but if we have the courage and the fortitude to stand and confront the lies, irrespective of the personal costs, the truth will stand the test of time, because truth and time are on the same side.

Constant as the North Star

 

Budgets, the National Debt, and We're Running Out of Time

By Rich Kozlovich

Well, the Big Beautiful Bill passed, and it did happen before the 4th of July as the President wanted.   Remarkable.  I expected a lot more hoohah from the Democrats than Hakim Jeffries Magic Minute speech that lasted for eight hours and 44 minutes saying nothing, even his party members were falling asleep.  

But for many reasons I think this bill stinks, but to put a bit of perfume on this manure pile I have to view this as a step by step transformational journey to bring in much needed changes, positive changes, and there were a lot of them, including codifying a great many things Trump brought into being via Executive Orders.  Now those EO's can no longer be challenged by the radical judges of the federal judiciary, at least not legitimately.  The next budget bill needs to attack spending massively. Time is running out, so I hope that’s the intent.   

What would I want in a budget, actually in every budget?

1. First, I want the budget balanced.
2. A massive reduction in the size of government by defunding and thus eliminating entire agencies, and departments.   Does anyone truly believe the nation needs 457 different agencies?  
3. End income tax.
4. Reform Social Security leading to a privatized system, which is clearly necessary as the federal government's management of Social Secutiry has been flagrantly incompetent.  
5. Massive spending cuts across the board.
6. An 80% or more reduction in foreign aid.  As Senator John Kennedy of LA. once said: “I don't know why we have to give money to countries that hate us. They should be able to hate us for free.”
7. The federal government unconstitutionally owns about 25% of the land mass of the United States.  Sell it.  
8. End all grant money to academia, including student loans, which has only increased the cost of higher education while reducing the quality of education. 
9. Absolutely eliminate any kind funding for illegal aliens, other than the cost of deporting them. 

The national debt is hovering around $37 trillion dollars, that's five trillion more than in 2023.  The Congressional Budget Office projects the national debt to soar to be between over $50 and $52 trillion by 2034, but since the CBO is so bad at these predictions, and if things remain the same, one has to conclude, it'll be worse, and I think much worse. But that doesn't include all the obligations of the federal government, such as government retirement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, all which may be in the 50 trillion dollar range.    

There are those who claim the real number for the nation's debt load, including borrowed money and government obligations, is in the 120 trillion dollar range!  Is that true?  I have no idea, and truthfully, the numbers are so massive, I don't think anyone knows for sure.  Even the Pentagon unendingly fails their audits having no idea where billions of dollars have gone over the years.  And they're not unique in that respect. 

There are agencies that have spent billions and no one tracked those expenditures, worse yet, no one knew there wasn't a tracking system in place.   At least until DOGE went in and audited agencies with AI programs and discovered that's what was happening, which was shocking.  The entire leadership of each of those agencies should have been fired. 

Are the banks sound and safe?  It turns out the FDIC had a shortfall of $70 billion dollars in 2023.  Now...that's a lot of short fall.  Banks are paying a fee to the FDIC which is supposed to be self funding, how did that happen?  No one seems to know.  I've written a lot about the national debt and the looming danger it represents, here are my National Debt Commentaries, and My Fixing Government Commentaries

In February of 2023 I wrote:

 ".......at least 90 times in the 20th century and 74 times from March 1962 to May 2011, including 18 times under Ronald Reagan, eight times under Bill Clinton, seven times under George W. Bush, and five times under Barack Obama. In practice, the debt ceiling has never been reduced, even though the public debt itself may have reduced."

 

Joe Biden raised it once.  Trump raised it three times in his first term and now he's done it again, and during his first term even wanted to eliminate it entirely.  I find that troubling.   I find it shocking so little attention is being paid to the national debt.  I find it mind boggling the vast majority of those in power don't seem to be concerned the interest on the national debt is expected to amount to $952 billion dollars,  the second highest expense of the federal government, and now will be over a trillion dollars a year.   Do we really believe the nation can sustain itself with a national debt of over $50 trillion dollars, and I would assume the interest on that would end up pushing between $1.5 and $2 trillion dollars a year.  

 

That's not sustainable, and we're running out of time.  

 

Here's more, and I will be updating this over the next couple of days, and trust me, there's as much propaganda as there is fact in the articles appearing:

• Congress Surrenders to Trump - Trump, as did Augustus and other epochal leaders before him, is cobbling together a principate, retaining the outward constitutional forms, but consolidating power into a single individual..........
• The BBBA’s hidden tax hike on America’s farmers - The devil is in the details, and lawmakers must work to snip this one out of Trump’s funding bill........
• BBB passes in House: Illegals to pay for their own phony asylum filings - Illegals will think twice about clogging the courts with junk claims......... 
• Golden Age Secured: House Passes BBB - President Donald Trump’s big, beautiful bill is en route to the White House, the culmination of months of work by the President and his team and the realization of scores of campaign promises......
•  The Autopen Speaks: Biden Comes Out of Retirement to Bash Trump’s BBB -Former President Joe Biden made a rare reentry into the spotlight Thursday to attack President Donald Trump’s landmark legislative victory, posting on X just hours after the “One Big Beautiful Bill” cleared the House................    
• Rep. Andy Ogles: Trump Deserves Third Term, Place on Mt. Rushmore After BBB Success -   Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) is celebrating the passage of the “big, beautiful bill,” asserting that President Donald Trump not only deserves a spot on Mount Rushmore but consideration for a third term as well.........
• Dem Freakout: ‘We’re Going to See People Die’ - Thursday on CNN’s “The Arena,” Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) claimed President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill will cause people to die............( My Take - These are the same people who supported the ban on DDT which has been responsible for the unnecessary deaths of over 100 million people and adverse affects on hundreds of million more from malaria and other mosquito borne diseases. RK) 
• Let seniors keep their HSAs — before it’s too late -  Today, the Big, Beautiful Bill will become law once President Donald J. Trump puts ink to paper at a big, beautiful signing ceremony in Iowa.  Despite opposition from every Democrat in Congress, the House and Senate enacted critical measures to benefit millions of blue-collar workers and their families.  It’s another promise from the campaign trail that has become a reality............ Medicare’s insolvency is not some far-off problem. It’s right around the corner. Congress can fix this if only the will exists. ........Medicare is already on the brink of a financial crisis.  The Medicare Trustees’ latest report warns that the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund — which pays for Medicare hospital stays — could be depleted in as little as three to five years.  After that, Medicare would only be able to cover about 90% of hospital insurance claims, leaving seniors vulnerable to cuts or higher costs..........