Donald Trump must be a magician. Since he took office on January 20th, he’s made $12 trillion disappear from the stock markets. $12 trillion... For context, only 19 countries in the world have a GDP over $1 trillion, and of those, only 2 have a GDP greater than $11 trillion. It took Trump 4 years to grow US debt by $8 trillion. Apparently, he has learned a thing or two about debt creation since his first term.
He is surrounded by alchemists and court jesters. A little pain and suffering is just what the world economy needs according to his worship. Tornados and generational flooding be damned...Trump is a one-person natural disaster.
Here’s the truth of the matter.
At the end of 2000, the total US debt was just over $5 trillion, and President Clinton handed over a budget surplus. Then disaster struck on September 11th, 2001, and since then everything has gone pretty much downhill.
After the attack in NYC, the US war on terror ramped up. By the end of 2004 and the war in Iraq, debt climbed by 40% to $7.5 trillion. Remember that this was a war based on faulty information about weapons of mass destruction.
In 2008, Obama inherited the fiscal calamity, based on the mortgage crisis, that almost brought down the world’s financial systems. The bailout added $6 trillion to US debt by 2012, a 60% increase. By the time he handed the baton to Trump 45, debt had reached $19.5 trillion.
The Orange Man decided that considering the deteriorating debt status of the US, this would be a good time to start trade conflicts and reduce income taxes for the wealthiest. Combined with the initial impact of Covid, Trump left office with over $8 trillion added to the national debt, now $27.7 trillion.
Under Biden, the response to Covid had the expected impact of adding more debt. He left office with the debt at $35.7 trillion, about half of which is attributable to the pandemic response.
In quick summary, US federal debt has spiraled out of control due to engagement in unnecessary foreign wars, a corrupt financial system for which NO ONE was ever charged for their malfeasance, and tax relief for the wealthiest in the system, one that allows Warren Buffett to pay less as a percentage of income than does his personal assistant.
Not to be outdone, the American consumer has accumulated total personal debt of over $18 trillion. Mortgages make up about 65% of that amount, but credit card debt is over $1.2 trillion. In fact, US consumer debt exceeds the GDP of China, the second largest economy in the world.
So, tell me again how the nations of the world are ripping off the US. It seems to me that the pain is self-inflicted. Mismanagement, greed, gluttony and unequal taxation policies have much more to do with the matter.
Take a longer look in the mirror.
‘...we have found the enemy, and the enemy is us...’
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