Why Has There Been A 56% Increase In Suicide Among Young Americans In Just 10 Years?

Why Has There Been A 56% Increase In Suicide Among Young Americans In Just 10 Years?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

It is very hard to face the future when you don’t have any hope.  Today, our society offers more ways to entertain ourselves than ever before, but it offers very little hope.  Most people spend most of their lives wandering from one thing to another looking for meaning and purpose, and of course most of those journeys come up empty.  We may have a much higher standard of living than any other generation in history, but we are also have the highest rates of addiction, depression and suicide.  As a society, we are deeply, deeply unhappy, and this is especially true for our young people. 

In fact, a report that was just released discovered that there was a 56 percent increase in suicide among Americans from age 10 to age 24 in just 10 years

Suicides and homicides are on the rise among children, teens and young adults in America, according to a new report that highlights what experts say is a disturbing trend among the young.

The report, published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that from 2007 to 2017, the rate of Americans ages 10 to 24 who died by suicide rose by 56 percent, from 6.8 deaths per 100,000 persons to 10.6.

Is anyone out there going to argue when I say that it looks like what we are doing for our young people as a society is definitely not working?

We appear to be rapidly running in the wrong direction, and yet our leaders just keep pushing us even further down the same road.

I was particularly horrified to learn that the report had found that the suicide rate for Americans from age 10 to age 14 had “almost tripled” between 2007 and 2017…

When broken down by age groups, the suicide rate for those aged 10 to 14 almost tripled between 2007 and 2017. For teenagers 15 to 19, the rate surged 76 percent in that decade.

For 20- to 24-year-olds, the rate of suicides has been increasing from 2000 to 2017, at a rate of 36 percent.

How can things get that much worse in just 10 years?

Sometimes people criticize me for being “too negative” about our society.  But the truth is that I am often not being negative enough.  Kids are killing themselves at an astounding rate because our society is feeding them an endless series of lies and giving them absolutely no hope for the future.  Our society is deeply, deeply broken, and if we continue going down the same path we are going to continue to get similar results.

According to the report, it has gotten to the point where suicide is now “the second leading cause of death” for Americans from the age of 10 to the age of 24…

Suicide was the second leading cause of death among Americans ages 10 to 24 in 2017, according to the report. And homicide ranked third for those ages 15 to 24 that same year.

We have completely and utterly failed our young people, and it is because we are teaching them the wrong things.

Oh, we love to think that we have everything together, but the truth is that we are a complete mess and we are passing on our flawed views to the next generation with devastating results.

In addition to an unprecedented rise in suicide, rates of depression among our young people are escalating dramatically as well

Since 2014, millennials (or people who turned 23 to 38 in 2019) have seen a 47% increase in major-depression diagnoses. “Deaths of despair,” or dying from suicide, alcohol, and drugs, increased in the millennial population in the last 10 years, and they are more likely to report feeling lonely than other generations.

For Gen Z, the mental illness crisis continues. In 2017, 13% of teens reported having experienced at least one major depressive episode in the past year, Pew Research Center reported. In 2007, when more millennials were teens, that number was just 8%.

It shouldn’t be surprising that this is happening.  We teach our kids that they came from monkeys and that the only thing they have to look forward to at the end is to return to the dust from whence they came.  In between, we offer them all sorts of temporary pleasures that don’t give them any sort of lasting meaning and purpose in order to pacify them and to keep them from asking too many hard questions.  Because if you start asking hard questions, you quickly find out that virtually every major system in our society is broken.  But we urge our young people to work really hard so that someday they can take their places as important cogs in a machine that is rapidly steamrolling toward oblivion.

If you only read that last paragraph, you would probably come to the conclusion that I am a deeply depressed individual.

But that is not true at all, and that is only because I have fundamentally rejected the lies that society tries to feed all of us.  My wife and I are not down, we are not depressed, and we are not on any pills.  Life is meant to be lived with great hope and great purpose, and not too long ago I spent an entire year of my life talking to voters and trying to point this nation in a fundamentally different hope-filled direction.

If you want to escape the pit of despair that is swallowing countless other Americans, the solution is not hard to find.

We were all created for a purpose, and we were put on this planet for such a time as this.

Unfortunately, the entire behavioral matrix that society has constructed is designed to pull you away from your true purpose.

Our education system, the mainstream media, our entire entertainment industry and most of our national leaders are trying to take you in a direction that only leads to depression, despair and death.

It can be exceedingly difficult to break free from that matrix, but once you do you will discover a level of freedom that you never even dreamed was possible.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 19:05

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Twitter War Breaks Out Between “Russian Asset” Tulsi Gabbard And “Warmongering Queen” Hillary Clinton

Twitter War Breaks Out Between “Russian Asset” Tulsi Gabbard And “Warmongering Queen” Hillary Clinton

Democratic presidential candidate and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard – who like Trump was quickly put in the crosshairs of the military industrial complex, the deep state and the pro-war Atlantic Council for her de-interventionist policy proposals – fired back at Hillary Clinton, accusing her of being behind a “concerted campaign” to destroy her reputation and challenged her to stop hiding and enter the 2020 presidential race.

“Great! Thank you Hillary Clinton,” Gabbard tweeted on Friday afternoon. “You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain.”

“From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know — it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine,” Gabbard added.

During this week’s Democratic debate, Gabbard blasted debate co-sponsors CNN and the New York Times for “smearing” her along similar lines. CNN commentator Bakari Sellers called her a “puppet” for the Russian government and the Times reported on her “frequent” mentions in Russian state news media.

“Don’t cowardly hide behind your proxies. Join the race directly,” Gabbard called out Clinton, who has dropped hints that she might run again in 2020 as a rematch for her 2016 humiliation.

Clinton, who blamed everyone – from the FBI to Russia – except herself for her 2016 loss to Donald Trump, said in a Thursday interview on President Obama aide David Plouffe’s “Campaign HQ” podcast that “Russians” were “grooming” someone in the Democrat primary field to run as a third-party candidate.

“I’m not making any predictions but I think they’ve got their eye on somebody who is currently in the Democratic primary and are grooming her to be the third-party candidate,” Clinton said, in apparent reference to Gabbard, a Hawaii Army National Guard major who served in Iraq. “She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far.”

While not calling out Gabbard by name, her spokesperson later told CNN, “if the nesting doll fits,” leaving no room for doubt.

And just to make sure she finds yet another scapegoat for her loss, Clinton also accused 2016 Green Party nominee, Jill Stein, who ran against her and Donald Trump in 2016, of also being an asset of Russia: “That’s assuming Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset.”

Of all the candidates in the crowded Democrat primary field, Gabbard has been under the heaviest fire from journalists who previously boosted Clinton, accused of being an “Assad apologist” over a fact-finding trip she took to Syria years ago.

During the 2016 campaign, Gabbard resigned as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee after endorsing Bernie Sanders for the party’s presidential nomination. Clinton beat Sanders out for the nomination largely due to support from the unaccountable “superdelegates,” and thanks to Wikileaks, it later emerged that her campaign had taken over the DNC entirely, a discovery that led to the resignation of then-DNC head Debbie Wasserman Schultz,  which might help explain Gabbard’s line about “the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long.”

Shortly after Gabbard’s tweets, the Clinton campaign promptly responded, in what now appears will be a lengthy war of words between the two women as Hillary prepares to unveil her final presidential campaign. As CNN reported Dan Merica notes, Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill has responded to Gabbard’s response, saying:  “Divisive language filled with vitriol and conspiracy theories? Can’t imagine a better proof point than this.”

Shortly thereafter, Democratic candidate Cory Booker, whose odds of winning the nomination, decided to join in the catfight, reacting to Gabbard with a GIF:


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 18:58

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Economists: Greta Thunberg’s Ideal World Would Result In A “Human Tragedy Of Disastrous Proportions”

Economists: Greta Thunberg’s Ideal World Would Result In A “Human Tragedy Of Disastrous Proportions”

Whether you were inspired by Greta Thunberg’s tearful UN speech…

…. or merely thought it was the year’s greatest meme, in which an indoctrinated, emotionally frail child is being preyed upon by adults with a far bigger and more lucrative agenda, you probably do not realize how much your everyday life could change if the world were to follow the advice of climate activists to attain Thunberg’s ecological utopia.

To provide some perspective on that question, several economists spoke to RT to share their thoughts out how the proposed changes could affect the global economy and the daily lives of people around the world.

Fossil fuels

The first thing that comes to mind to stop reported global warming is to impose a carbon tax and divest from the fossil fuel industry, as this sector is one of the major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. However, “a carbon tax and/or forced divestiture from fossil fuels would ultimately make the kind of cheap, varied and efficient transportation that people around the world are accustomed to extremely expensive and more limited,” warns Peter C. Earle, an economist at the American Institute for Economic Research.

Apart from public transport, cars could also become less accessible to most individuals. So if you drive to work without a second thought, the carbon tax could suddenly double or triple the cost of your daily trip, leaving tens of millions of people cut off from their livelihoods, according to the analyst.

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions can have much more serious economic implications, Dr Pierre Noël, Senior Fellow in Economic and Energy Security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), told RT.

“It supposes to reorient consumption and investment choices away from what people and businesses would spontaneously do,” he said. While switching to renewable energy could be seen as a welcome change, the ultimate reduction of emissions can take years and would lead to major economic challenges.

“Reducing emissions to zero will require a near-complete overhaul of capital stock across the economy,” Noël wrote. “‘Listening to the science’, as Miss Thunberg advises, would mean doing it quickly, in a few decades at most. It will be very costly.”

Agriculture

The energy sector is an obvious target for ecologists, but another critical sector is not usually mentioned. Agriculture is considered another major polluter, responsible for around 15 percent of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.

Apart from carbon dioxide (CO2), which is what comes to mind when people talk about greenhouse gases, livestock produce methane (CH4), which is even worse for the ozone layer, and nitrous oxide (N2O). According to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the comparative impact of CH4 is more than 25 times greater than CO2 over a 100-year period, while 1 pound of N2O on warming the atmosphere is almost 300 times that of 1 pound of carbon dioxide.

However, the global population is increasing rapidly and there is a need to increase agricultural output to feed everyone. This makes cutting emissions caused by farming all the more difficult.

Developing nations

Most of the talk about divestment is coming from and focused upon the developed world, but developing countries would be the first to feel the impact of the ecological protectionism, Earle noted.

“In many once poverty-stricken regions, industrial activities with large carbon footprints are what account for major improvements in standards of living, longevity, reductions in infant mortality, better health care, literacy and increased consumer choice over the last few decades,” he wrote. “Take those away, and there would be a human tragedy of disastrous proportions.”

Developed countries may also not be eager to impose any measures to tackle climate change, Noël points out.

“Recently, in France, the most violent mass protests in fifty years were triggered by an increase in a carbon tax, eventually reversed. A few years ago, also in France, a road-charging scheme for lorries had to be cancelled just before it went live as small businesses revolted.”

So while a significant number of rich countries are legislating the complete elimination of their emissions by 2050, it does not mean that there will be no political implications for their choices, Noël believes. Governments will have to adjust the tax system “to alleviate the distributive implications and avoid a disproportionate impact on lower-income families,” and also prevent “what is left of their industry” from moving offshore.

“All of this will be difficult, messy, imperfect and will involve nasty confrontations between and within countries,” Noël said. “These confrontations might end up in a level of emissions reduction less than what was originally envisaged.”

Developed countries may also not be eager to impose any measures to tackle climate change, Noël points out.

“Recently, in France, the most violent mass protests in fifty years were triggered by an increase in a carbon tax, eventually reversed. A few years ago, also in France, a road-charging scheme for lorries had to be cancelled just before it went live as small businesses revolted.”

So while a significant number of rich countries are legislating the complete elimination of their emissions by 2050, it does not mean that there will be no political implications for their choices, Noël believes. Governments will have to adjust the tax system “to alleviate the distributive implications and avoid a disproportionate impact on lower-income families,” and also prevent “what is left of their industry” from moving offshore.

“All of this will be difficult, messy, imperfect and will involve nasty confrontations between and within countries,” Noël said. “These confrontations might end up in a level of emissions reduction less than what was originally envisaged.”


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 18:45

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Pat Buchanan Asks “Is Putin The New King Of The Middle East?”

Pat Buchanan Asks “Is Putin The New King Of The Middle East?”

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

“Russia Assumes Mantle of Supreme Power Broker in the Middle East,” proclaimed Britain’s Telegraph. The article began:

“Russia’s status as the undisputed power-broker in the Middle East was cemented as Vladimir Putin continued a triumphant tour of capitals traditionally allied to the US.”

“Donald Trump Has Handed Putin the Middle East on a Plate” was the title of a Telegraph column. “Putin Seizes on Trump’s Syria Retreat to Cement Middle East Role,” said the Financial Times.

The U.S. press parroted the British: Putin is now the new master of the Mideast. And woe is us.

Before concluding that Trump’s pullout of the last 1,000 U.S. troops in Syria is America’s Dunkirk, some reflection is needed.

Yes, Putin has played his hand skillfully. Diplomatically, as the Brits say, the Russian president is “punching above his weight.”

He gets on with everyone. He is welcomed in Iran by the Ayatollah, meets regularly with Bibi Netanyahu, is a cherished ally of Syria’s Bashar Assad, and this week was being hosted by the King of Saudi Arabia and the royal rulers of the UAE. October 2019 has been a triumphal month.

Yet, consider what Putin has inherited and what his capabilities are for playing power broker of the Middle East.

He has a single naval base on the Med, Tartus, in Syria, which dates to the 1970s, and a new air base, Khmeimim, also in Syria.

The U.S. has seven NATO allies on the Med — Spain, France, Italy, Croatia, Albania, Greece and Turkey, and two on the Black Sea, Romania and Bulgaria. We have U.S. forces and bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman and Djibouti. Russia has no such panoply of bases in the Middle East or Persian Gulf.

We have the world’s largest economy. Russia’s economy is smaller than Italy’s, and not a tenth the size of ours.

And now that we are out of Syria’s civil war and the Kurds have cut their deal with Damascus, consider what we have just dumped into Vladimir Putin’s lap. He is now the man in the middle between Turkey and Syria.

He must bring together dictators who detest each other. There is first President Erdogan, who is demanding a 20-mile deep strip of Syrian borderland to keep the Syrian Kurds from uniting with the Turkish Kurds of the PKK. Erdogan wants the corridor to extend 280 miles, from Manbij, east of the Euphrates, all across Syria, to Iraq.

Then there is Bashar Assad, victorious in his horrific eight-year civil war, who is unlikely to cede 5,000 square miles of Syrian territory to a permanent occupation by Turkish troops.

Reconciling these seemingly irreconcilable Syrian and Turkish demands is now Putin’s problem. If he can work this out, he ought to get the Nobel Prize.

“Putin is the New King of Syria,” ran the op-ed headline in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal.

The Syria of which Putin is now supposedly king contains Hezbollah, al-Qaida, ISIS, Iranians, Kurds, Turks on its northern border and Israelis on its Golan Heights. Five hundred thousand Syrians are dead from the civil war. Half the pre-war population has been uprooted, and millions are in exile in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Europe.

If Putin wants to be king of this, and it is OK with Assad, how does that imperil the United States of America, 6,000 miles away?

Wednesday, two-thirds of the House Republicans joined Nancy Pelosi’s Democrats to denounce Trump’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria and dissolve our alliance with the Kurds. And Republican rage over the sudden abandonment of the Kurds is understandable.

But how long does the GOP believe we should keep troops in Syria and control the northeastern quadrant of that country? If the Syrian army sought to push us out, under what authority would we wage war against a Syrian army inside Syria?

And if the Turks are determined to secure their border, should we wage war on that NATO ally to stop them? Would U.S. planes fly out of Turkey’s Incirlik air base to attack Turkish soldiers fighting in Syria?

If Congress believes we have interests in Syria so vital we should be willing to go to war for them — against Syria, Turkey, Russia or Iran — why does Congress not declare those interests and authorize war to secure them?

Our foreign policy elites have used Trump’s decision to bash him and parade their Churchillian credentials. But those same elites appear to lack the confidence to rally the nation to vote for a war to defend what they contend are vital American interests and defining American values.

If Putin is king of Syria, it is because he was willing to pay the price in blood and treasure to keep his Russia’s toehold on the Med and save his ally Bashar Assad, who would have gone under without him.

Who dares wins. Now let’s see how Putin likes his prize.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 18:25

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The Chaos Of Baltimore Explained, How The Descent Into Hell Continues

The Chaos Of Baltimore Explained, How The Descent Into Hell Continues

By now, you should already know that Baltimore City is imploding on itself. The housing market has stalled, millennials are trapped in overpriced rowhomes, and widespread violent crime has taken over the region.

The deteriorating situation in Baltimore is nothing new. It started in the late 1950s when deindustrialization began, and white flight of the 1960s/70s/80s sent hundreds of thousands of Baltimoreans packing their bags for the suburbs. From the late 1950s to let’s say today, the city’s population has collapsed from 960,000 to around 600,000.

The city is a hollow out shell of something that was great, and also is an accurate depiction of our country at the moment.

Violent crime in the city spiked during the 1980s and surged even more during the crack epidemic of the 1990s. But a revival was in the making by the mid-2000s (violent crime dipped and a housing boom began), it was the millennials, who picked up the broken baton and wanted to revive Baltimore.

Then the 2008 financial crisis hit, almost forced the city into bankruptcy, but overall, violent crime stayed somewhat low.

Then the explosion of legal opioids flooded the streets after 2009, giving anyone and everyone with back pain a script for oxycontin. Since the residents were mostly low-income, many couldn’t afford another script once their pills ran out, so they turned to the corner, and that is when the opioid crisis flourished.

From 2012 through 2019, gang wars, turf wars, and anything else you can imagine unfolded onto the streets. Homicides started to soaring from 2012 to 2014.

Then 2015 came in with a literal bang, riots exploded across the city after a young black male was found dead in the back of a police van, allegedly suffered neck injuries during transport. For several weeks, the National Guard was called in to stabilize the city. Local, state, and federal officials don’t want to admit it, but Baltimore experienced martial law in those dark days.

Since 2015, murders have been over 300 per year and could be on track for record levels by year-end.

Homicides this year alone are up 12% to 272, compared with the same period last year.

Nonfatal shootings have soared 22% over the period to 634, according to Baltimore City Police figures.

On a per-capita basis per 100,000, Baltimore City has the highest murder rate in the entire country. Mix that in with an opioid crisis, and you can see the dangerous cocktail that is sending Baltimore to its knees, begging for mercy as it implodes on itself.

You know it’s funny how President Trump touts the black community for tremendous economic progress over the last several years. But, we’re here to say it’s easy for the government’s statisticians to make up numbers. The homicides and out of control crime in Baltimore, an overwhelmingly black city, should be an accurate bellwether for the black community in the US — and so far, the news coming out of Baltimore shows disaster.

Even with the national murder rate falling for the second straight annual year in 2018 — Baltimore’s homicide crisis still managed to accelerate.
This year will likely be the fourth year of homicides in the city over the 300 mark, and if violent crime continues, record homicides could be seen by year-end.

Baltimore City is several decades from a meaningful change that could revive its community from near-death. But there’s no clear guidance on direction; after all, there are no policies in place that outline a roadmap for recovery.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 18:05

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Is the CFPB Unconstitutional? We’ll Soon Find Out.

Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in four cases. One of the four, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau asks the Court to consider whether the CFPB is unconstitutionally constituted. Specifically, the Court will consider whether it is unconstitutional for Congress to limit the President’s ability to remove the head of a single-headed agency, such as the CFPB. In this Seila Law presents a similar question to Collins v. Mnuchin, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that a similarly structured agency was unconstitutional.

In addition the constitutional separation of powers question, the Court has also asked the parties to brief the question of remedy. Specifically, the Court wants to know the extent to which the provision limiting removal of the head of the CFPB is severable from the rest of the law or, in the alternative, whether concluding that the CFPB is impermissibly constituted requires invalidating other aspects of the CFPB, if not the CFPB altogether.  The addition of this question was likely prompted, at least in part, by the Collins v. Mnuchin petition for certiorari, which sought the Court’s attention to the remedial issue.

It is also worth noting that the Court has appointed Alan Morrison to argue in defense of the CFPB’s constitutionality as an amicus curiae. This is necessary because the CFPB and the Department of Justice agree with the petitioners that the CFPB’s current structure is unconstitutional.

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America’s Road Map To $40 Trillion National Debt By 2028

America’s Road Map To $40 Trillion National Debt By 2028

Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

Watch out!  At this very moment, professional economists of all stripes are making plans on your behalf.  They’re dreaming and scheming new and innovative ways to spend your money long before you’ve earned it.

While you’re busy at the gristmill, grinding away for clients and customers, claims are being laid upon your life.  Your future earnings are being directed to boondoggles galore.  Yet these claims are in addition to everything Washington’s already signed you up for.

At last count of the U.S. National Debt, every American citizen’s on the hook for nearly $70,000.  Add U.S. Unfunded Liabilities – which includes Social Security, Medicare Parts A, B, and D, federal debt held by the public, plus federal employee and veteran benefits – and each citizen owes almost $383,000.  And this sum’s going to double in the years ahead faster than you can say lickety-split.

These professional economists, enamored by the genius of their graphs, see tomorrow’s recessions and know just how to prevent them.  Their master plan for reversing a recession before it strikes amounts to pre-emptive stimulus.  What’s more, in concert with Washington’s professional politicians, they’re laboring day and night to roll out their bold plans before it’s too late.

  • Fiscal space [don’t know how much there is, but there’s clearly more]. 

  • Magic money [a bunch of light bulbs that went off in a bunch of politicians’ heads]. 

  • Unmet social needs [opportunities to spend]. 

  • A generous spending package [$1.7 trillion]. 

  • An excuse for fiscal action [fighting climate change]. 

  • Automatic programs [sending checks to households as soon as a recession starts].

As you can see, the pros are on it…

‘Don’t Fret About Debt’

These – and many other – pre-emptive stimulus plans were outlined in a recent Reuters article.  The article, if you happened to miss it, was titled: In planning for next U.S. recession, economists say, don’t fret about debt.

What to make of it?

Here at the Economic Prism we relish bumper sticker wisdom like we relish political campaign slogans.  A colorful mix of mindless absurdity appears when something’s distilled down to several words or less.  Plus, when the expression rhymes…it’s just the cat’s meow.

Without question, ‘don’t fret about debt’ is a fine – and poetic – example of everything that’s wrong with everything.  As far as we can tell, no one has fretted about the debt for at least a generation or two.  In fact, the 21st century has been one big fat debt binge.

The reality is the growth of federal debt has been out of control for decades.  The solution that’s always repeated for reeling this back is that, somehow, the economy will grow its way out of it.  This has yet to transpire despite a variety of policies over the years that have generally involved borrowing money from the future and spending it today.

The simple fact is you can’t grow your way out of debt when the debt’s increasing faster than gross domestic product (GDP).  For example, in 2000 the federal debt was about $5.6 trillion and real U.S. GDP was about $12.5 trillion.  Today the federal debt is over $22.8 trillion and real U.S. GDP is about $19.02 trillion.

In just 19 years the federal debt has increased by over 307 percent while real U.S. GDP has increased just 52 percent.  This, by all practical means, is the opposite of an economy that’s growing its way out of debt.  Moreover, these diverging trajectories are the opposite of what happens when people fret about debt.

America’s Road Map to $40 Trillion National Debt by 2028

When people fret about debt, they tighten their belts, spend less than they make, and pay down what they owe.  Instead, public and private debt has rapidly outpaced economic growth.  And now, with professional economists and professional politicians tripping over themselves to borrow money and spend it, things are about to really get ugly.

The professional economists that were quoted in the article, the ones that say ‘don’t fret about debt,’ include: Karen Dynan (former Fed and Treasury official now at the Peterson Institute for International Economics), Julia Coronado (former Fed staffer and founder of Macropolicy Perspectives Consultants), Catherine Mann (global chief economist at Citi), and Laurence Meyer (former Fed governor).

Certainly, these – and many other professional economists – are the same pickle heads that got us into this mess to begin with.  A twisted place where pre-emptive stimulus is the standard operating procedure (SOP) for scientific management of the economy.  No doubt, the professional politicians love it.  Pre-emptive stimulus and other popular delusions, like MMT, give them carte blanche power to rack up debt on an enormous scale.

Alas, with the pros in charge, America’s en route to $40 trillion national debt by 2028.  The road map to get there from here has little to no resistance…

The federal budget deficit for fiscal year 2019 was nearly a trillion dollars.  Project that out over eight years and the national debt has jumped to $30 trillion.  But, remember, the economy was growing in 2019.

At some point over the next eight years, the economy will fall backwards.  The deficit will quickly jump to $2 trillion.  Then the professionals will spring to action…

They’ll push through a $1.7 trillion spending package – on top of a $2 trillion deficit.  They’ll take the fight to the scourge of climate change.  They’ll send out automatic checks.  They’ll redistribute wealth.  They’ll fabricate nonsense jobs for everyone.  They’ll take a massive whack at abolishing poverty.  They’ll marshal all forces and laser focus them on the task of delivering the new earth.

By 2028 – or earlier – America will have a $40 trillion national with little of value to show for it.  Consumer prices will be sky-high.  The citizenry will be forever upside down.  And the schemers in Washington will hatch even greater plans to save us from the mess of their making.

This, of course, assumes catastrophe doesn’t strike first.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 17:45

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Is the CFPB Unconstitutional? We’ll Soon Find Out.

Today, the Supreme Court granted certiorari in four cases. One of the four, Seila Law LLC v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau asks the Court to consider whether the CFPB is unconstitutionally constituted. Specifically, the Court will consider whether it is unconstitutional for Congress to limit the President’s ability to remove the head of a single-headed agency, such as the CFPB. In this Seila Law presents a similar question to Collins v. Mnuchin, in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit concluded that a similarly structured agency was unconstitutional.

In addition the constitutional separation of powers question, the Court has also asked the parties to brief the question of remedy. Specifically, the Court wants to know the extent to which the provision limiting removal of the head of the CFPB is severable from the rest of the law or, in the alternative, whether concluding that the CFPB is impermissibly constituted requires invalidating other aspects of the CFPB, if not the CFPB altogether.  The addition of this question was likely prompted, at least in part, by the Collins v. Mnuchin petition for certiorari, which sought the Court’s attention to the remedial issue.

It is also worth noting that the Court has appointed Alan Morrison to argue in defense of the CFPB’s constitutionality as an amicus curiae. This is necessary because the CFPB and the Department of Justice agree with the petitioners that the CFPB’s current structure is unconstitutional.

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Military Police Deployed As 500,000 Catalan Independence Protesters Shut Down Barcelona

Military Police Deployed As 500,000 Catalan Independence Protesters Shut Down Barcelona

Central Barcelona has reportedly been paralyzed as mass protests which international reports estimate to number over a half-million people are driven by outrage at harsh prison sentences for pro-independence leaders handed down by the top Spanish court. 

Protest leaders are vowing “the streets will be ours” as they push for Catalan independence, and as riot police have begun clashing with stone-throwing activists, who are also in some places of the city setting makeshift roadblocks ablaze. 

Pro-Catalan independence protesters near the police headquarters in Barcelona on Friday, via the AFP.

With night fall, reporters on the ground are describing what’s beginning to resemble a war zone, with increasing violence against police, as also both far-left and far-right agitators are said to be infiltrating the crowd and engaged in increasing violence and vandalism. 

The turmoil began Monday after Spain’s Supreme Court handed out extreme prison sentences to nine politicians who spearheaded the referendum on Catalonia’s independence in 2017.

Protesters blocked at least 20 major roadways Friday, via Sky News.

They were given a whopping 13 years behind bars for what amounts to pro-independence activism, but which Madrid sees as an “illegal” secession attempt which undermined the state. 

Though protests started out relatively minor by some student groups, a mass body of people began marching from various parts of Catalonia earlier in the week, and then began inundating Barcelona starting at about noon on Friday, resulting in absolute gridlock.

In total about five separate marches converged at once on the city, also amid a general strike in solidarity with the jailed activists. 

Acting Spanish Prime Minster Pedro Sanchez warned those inciting riots and violence would face the swift justice of security forces: “There is no space for impunity in relation to the serious acts of violence we have witnessed over recent days in different cities in Catalonia,” he said.

Indeed it appears the state’s response is set to escalate, give at the end of the week of unrest Spain’s civil guard is to be deployed in Barcelona, Madrid authorities have announced. The civil guard is essentially a militarized police force which has authority to deploy across the whole country. 

Protesters clashed with riot police in central Barcelona, via Sky News.

Meanwhile, demonstrators were said to have blocked at least 20 major roads in and around Barcelona, also causing a much anticipated soccer match between Spanish rivals Barcelona and Real Madrid to be postponed. 

Throughout Friday about 100 people were reported injured as the protests spread throughout the northeast region, a number expected to grow. 

Map via BBC

Home to about 7.5 million people, the wealthy and linguistically distinct Catalonia region has its own parliament and flag; however, Catalan nationalists have long complained Madrid over-taxes the region for the sake of Spain’s poorer regions and cities. 


Tyler Durden

Fri, 10/18/2019 – 17:25

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2qrwoT9 Tyler Durden

Georgia Intends to Execute This Man, Whether or Not He Pulled the Trigger

The State of Georgia plans to execute Ray Jefferson Cromartie, 52, at the end of the month. DNA evidence might prove that another man pulled the trigger, but the authorities have refused to do the tests to find out.

That’s because Cromartie participated in the robbery that led to a man’s death, making him a party to the crime. Under State Code 16-2-20, Georgia still considers him responsible for the murder, even if he didn’t actually fire the shot.

Cromartie was convicted of the 1994 death of store clerk Richard Slysz in Thomasville. Cromartie and another man, Corey Clark, encountered Slysz when they robbed a Junior Food Store. During the robbery, Slysz was shot twice in the head, once under his right eye and once in his left temple. After Slysz was shot, Cromartie and Clark attempted to rob the cash register. When they couldn’t access the money, they stole beer.

Clark testified for the state, saying that Cromartie fired the fatal shots that evening. Cromartie maintains that he was not the shooter.

Cromartie was also convicted of shooting a store clerk a few days prior. The attorney general’s office wrote in a statement that the security camera’s video was “too indistinct to conclusively identify Cromartie” but “captured a man fitting Cromartie’s general description.”

Cromartie’s lawyers have asked for the evidence in both cases to be DNA tested. But last month Superior Court Judge Frank Horkan, who sentenced Cromartie to death in 1997, denied their motion for DNA tests and a new trial. Horkan argued that the “proposed DNA results would not create a reasonable probability of an acquittal or of different verdict(s) in light of evidence in the case.”

Horkan also declared that Cromartie had plenty of time during his years on death row to request the tests, accusing him of waiting “until all other avenues were closed.”

Shawn Nolan, Cromartie’s lawyer, still wants the tests. “Forensic DNA testing is essential to the pursuit of the truth and justice and to prevent the potential execution of an innocent man,” he told the Times-Enterprise. “The state has the evidence in its possession; all we need to do is test it. We will appeal to other decision-makers to continue to seek DNA testing in order to get these vital questions answered before it’s too late.”

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