Could be so massively bankrupt, says Bill Bonner.
"We have a mountain of debt... nearly $100 trillion of it... every penny of which is counted as an “asset” on the creditors’ balance sheets. Probably only about half of it is ‘money good.’ The rest may go ‘poof’ in the credit cycle’s downturn.
The safest part of this pile is US Treasury bonds. And yet, in gold terms, we’ve seen that they lost 30% of their value in the last four years... and 75% since 1999.
And we have a GDP that is largely fraudulent... with as much as half of it directed, controlled or be-muddled by government, rendering it unfit...
It’s not just Treasury bonds that pretend to have value they don’t actually have. All across the fixed-return world, there are unrecognized losses and make-believe wealth.
Here’s the FDIC warning:
'Unrealized losses on available-for-sale and held-to-maturity securities increased by $39 billion to $517 billion in the first quarter. Higher unrealized losses on residential mortgage-backed securities, resulting from higher mortgage rates in the first quarter, drove the overall increase. This is the ninth straight quarter of unusually high unrealized losses since the Federal Reserve began to raise interest rates in first quarter 2022. '
Banks were required to hold US Treasury bonds as ‘reserves.’ That, they were told, would make them more antifragile. But it did just the opposite. Treasury bonds proved to be a terrible form of ‘reserve.’ They went down, in nominal terms, by about 20% since 2020. In gold terms, they lost half again as much.
The banks also had plenty of private debt that went bad. They lent heavily to real estate developers and speculators, for example. But now, commercial real estate is not worth what it was a few years ago.
In addition to the loan losses, there are the losses on the collateral itself. Green Street reports that the ‘all-property commercial index’ is down more than 20% since 2021."
Will the next one be the last?
If Europe again ignores the clear, public, published warnings given by Russia, and again attacks, with that be the end? Will the lights go out in Europe? Imagine:
September 2026: With Russian warnings ignored, and Europe attacks into the Russian heartland increasing with E3 increased weapons deliveries, Russia acts. Conventional ballistic missile and hypersonic strikes destroy key E3 drone and missile production facilities in the Britain’s Midlands, the Ruhr, and outside Bordeaux. NATO Article 5 is invoked. But Article 5 does not require military action - it requires each member to take ‘such action as it deems necessary’. The shallowness of the guarantee upon which E3 leaders assumed they could rely is now exposed. But a few countries attack, by air.
In response to air strikes, Russia takes the gloves off, determined once and for all to remove the threat from Europe to its people and homeland. Russia strikes airfields, training bases, dockyards, ...
The radical Albanese regime in Australia solicited a 60 page report on "Islamophobia" from its ‘Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia’ which conveniently never actually defined Islamophobia, but did call for “removing religion” as a motive in terrorist attack because that would discriminate against Muslims…
…and is now set to spend tens of millions on fighting this ‘Islamophobia’.
This comes not long after the Bondi Beach Muslim massacre of Jews at a Chanukah Party that was the single worst Muslim terrorist attack in Australian history.
The Australian government is now attacking critics of illegal Islamic invasion, falsely claiming that they are damaging ‘social cohesion’. No word about whether hospitals having to hide the Bondi Beach terror attack victims from Muslim nurses ‘damages social cohesion’.
A Muslim minister in the Albanese regime falsely claimed that “Islamophobia is dangerously close to being normalized”. No, but the denial of Islamic terrorism...
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
-President Dwight Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961