Broken Money

The subtitle is Why Our Financial System is Failing Us and How We Can Make it Better, and the author is Lyn Alden (2023).

I feel like I have read books like this one before, which deconstruct the problems with a fiat monetary system and the issues of inflation / rampant money creation.  That said, the author does a nice job of supplementing the traditional view.

-The story over history is that hard money eventually wins out over weaker money.  Until now.  And the reason that fiat currencies won out in the recent era is because telecommunication systems introduced speed as a variable to the competition.  Gold/commodities inherently take longer to transport and authenticate, an inconvenience in the digital age.

-The short-term view that every politician has to take means that the problems of perpetual debt growth can never really be addressed.  It is not a problem that can be attributed to one politician or party.

-The reason that 2008 did not cause inflation was because the bailouts went to the banks and the average person did not have more money.  But the expansion of broad money during the pandemic did end up in the hands of average people, which meant that more money was chasing the same amount of goods and services.

-Bitcoin represents a solution to the speed gap between transactions and settlement.  And it has the added virtue of maintaining characteristics which resemble hard money (decentralized, no one else’s liability, high stock-to-flow ratio).

More

Following the election, I went through a few days of being compulsively attached to social media, like for hours at a time, down insipid rabbit holes, and re-living all my agita several times per day.  And, then, I simply decided, enough.  I deactivated all my social media accounts and felt it was time to move on.

Well, not completely.  I discovered and turned my attention to podcasts, mostly of a right-leaning variety.  In particular, among my favorites, is the Megyn Kelly Show.  She cuts through the bullshit in a manner consistent with my own thinking, and I like it.

I bring this up because today she had Dave Rubin as her guest, another like-minded individual.  And he said something that resonated.  I paraphrase, but the gist was that people on the right think the system is all screwed up and want to be left alone.  Folks on the left think the system is all screwed up, but the solution is let's give it more money, more power, and just get the right people in.

All of it reminded me of a passage from the book The Revolt Against the Masses by Fred Siegel:

"Liberal interests never reexamined their assumptions, even when faced with social and political failure.  They never asked why, despite the vast sums expended, poverty had become worse rather than better.  Instead, they pointed to shards of success and, more significantly, in the hopes of maintaining their grip, redefined the problem.  Great Society social programs originally designed to reduce if not eliminate poverty were now justified in terms of rights, racial justice, or diversity.  And then there was the fallback to the fallback: the insistence on good intentions rather than outcomes...Their claim to moral superiority rested more on self-image than real-world results."

A timeless comment.

Projection

So, as we face the likelihood of a Biden Presidency, the saving grace for me is that the Republicans maintained control of the Senate and picked up seats in the House.  That's good news, because it means on some level, the identity politics and socialist aspirations of the group which has coopted the message of the Democratic party has not gained as much traction as I feared.  There were definitely a lot of people who simply voted to get Trump out, but also recognize the glaring weaknesses of the extreme left agenda.

I bring that up, because too much of what you see in the media represents the worst of what the Democrats have to offer.  It is accusations of racism all around, framing all issues in the context of identity politics, and generally misleading their audience on what matters and why.

Let's take a few examples.

We had the Black Lives Matter movement and the subsequent systemic racism/defund the police outcry.  If you listened to CNN, or read the NYT or Washington Post, you would think that all minorities had subscribed to the views espoused under those banners.  And then the election comes, and Trump does better with minorities than any Republican since 1960.  How to reconcile?

Maybe, just maybe, it turns out that the folks who bear the burden of these trends are the minorities who live in the communities where policing and the presence of law enforcement is most important.  Maybe, just maybe, legal immigrants in Florida and Texas agree that people should enter this country legally.  Maybe, just maybe, demographics is not destiny, and the best ideas still win.  Maybe, just maybe, what Trump was talking about is not just racism, racism, racism.  Maybe, just maybe, the folks who come from socialist countries know just how shitty that reality really is, and the messaging of AOC, Warren and Harris really only appeals to woke white people who have no idea what these "wonderful", egalitarian ideas evolve into.

After the election, I saw a number of articles in "serious" newspapers that simply doubled down on the racism explanation.  Disregard all of the above and continue to let dumb ideas guide you, because the Republicans are going to get even more seats in 2022,  And, my guess, they will get the White House back in 2024.

What the lunatic left is really doing is projecting their own worst tendencies onto the political opposition.  Guess what, looks like Trump lost, and no one rioted.  We know who the retailers in NY and LA and DC were actually afraid of.  The left accuses people of intolerance because they themselves are intolerant.  I don't pretend to speak for everyone who shares my political views, but I am comfortable in accepting that other views exist.  What we have learned is that the people who don't agree with me don't really have that ability.  They have to explain and rationalize the opposition in the most deviant and evil ways possible.  It failed this time, and it will continue to fail in the future.

Some Thoughts

Biden probably won, but the legal process will have to play itself out.  Nevertheless, some thoughts in the aftermath...

-"STOP THE VOTE!"...if you are not allowing Republican poll watchers in.

-"COUNT THE VOTES!"...before calling Arizona.

-The Pennsylvania Supreme Court did something unconstitutional and the vote in that state is going to be the epicenter of legal battles.  To explain, the Court unilaterally changed the election law, passed by the legislator in that state, such that ballots that arrived after 8pm on Election Day could still be counted.  There are multiple concerns here.  First, all authority to set election rules in that state are vested with the legislature, so a problem with what the court did to change a rule which is unambiguously clear in its intent.  Second, the law which they overturned also stipulated that the provisions were not severable, so if one portion failed, the whole law becomes invalidated.  Needless to say, this will make its way to the US Supreme Court, and I expect them to rule that the ballots received and counted after 8pm on November 3 should not be included, and the state flips back to Trump.  And for those wondering, the Republicans challenged the change before the election, and the USSC simply said that it would not rule on this matter before November 3.

-To say there is election fraud does not mean that Trump will win.  The second condition is that the fraud has to have meaningfully changed the outcome.  We should be allowed to find out whether both conditions have been met.

-Gore in 2000: Hero.  Stacey Abrams in 2018: Hero.  Trump in 2020: Wahhhhhhhhh!

-"They don't hate you because they hate Trump.  They hate Trump because they hate you."

Symmetry

I recall coming to this blog about 4 years ago to express my apprehensions about what was coming next.  At the time, it mostly manifest as concern that Hillary Clinton would become the next President.  And, that, even though I had no intention of voting for Donald Trump.

This time around, the same angst exists about a probable Biden victory, with the key difference being that I voted to re-elect the President.

I live in New York.  It is as blue as blue can get.  And amongst a largely educated set that I can interact with, the best explanation I get for supporting the Biden/Harris ticket is that it is not Trump.  To me, it is a position that is foolish and shows an inability to distinguish what matters from what doesn't.

What matters is policy that helps the economy to grow, particularly as so many remain unemployed.  We should be heralding 33.3% GDP growth in the third quarter (the largest such increase in our nation's history -- and a number that puts to shame any tepid recovery under Obama/Biden during the Great Recession).  But, we do not.  What do we think happens if you introduce higher taxes, greater regulation and put everyone back into lockdown in this environment?

What doesn't matter is Trump's trolling and wannabe stand-up comedian schtick.  I don't think he's racist (at least, no worse than any of his predecessors), and I do think that he has done a lot more in the form of criminal justice reform and empowerment of black communities than any President in recent memory.  Meanwhile, the party which likes to feign tolerance, and espouses that race and gender don't matter, selected a Vice President nominee entirely because of her race and gender (note that she did not hit 1% during the Democratic primaries for a reason, and bowed out before her party even voted in her home state of California -- although she did stick around long enough to call Joe Biden a racist).  It is the same party where its Presidential candidate and celebrity enablers tell black people who they can vote for and still be considered black.  That, by the way, is what racism looks like and is the underlying mentality -- that people of color have no agency and should just listen to us -- which leads to a failed welfare state.

As for COVID, I come from this as someone with two parents who fall within the demographic that is most vulnerable.  There is nothing that I wouldn't do to keep them safe.  But, when the mentality of the Democrats is that we should just listen to Dr. Fauci and that's it, it represents the worst form of single variable analysis you can fathom.  He is an infectious disease expert, but he also focuses on one thing to the exclusion of anything else and is not elected to run he country.  And in a country of 300+ million, you need to recognize the multiple moving parts and not act like everything stops in its tracks with a disease that becomes less and less fatal with every positive case.

But, moving beyond any single issue, my real fear is that the election of the Democrats represents the true empowerment of intolerance.  Whatever aspersions may be cast, it is the party of Biden which cancels those who disagree with them, calls everyone a racist or deplorable, riots in the streets, looks for injustices where they may not exist, and takes every opportunity to politicize.  They literally change the meaning of words.

When Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away, the idea that Trump would nominate a new justice was decried as unconstitutional.  Quite literally, Joe Biden uttered those words.  A representative from his campaign said exactly the same thing while being interviewed on CNN by Jake Tapper.  For the record, it is not.  If there is a vacancy, the President can nominate a replacement.  And, if you have the votes in the Senate (the big difference from when Obama nominated Merrick Garland), you can get that person confirmed and scream from the hilltops that you just did something extremely constitutional.  By contrast, the Democrats deemed it court packing because Trump filled vacancies pursuant to the rules in place.  Come again?  Kamala Harris called it court packing during the VP debate because Donald Trump has not put enough people of color on the bench.  First off, whether true, that's still not court packing.  Second, what she is really doing is race hustling.  Do the Democrats like justices simply because of their race, as if that should be the sole qualification?  Why don't we ask Kamala how she feels about Clarence Thomas?  Meanwhile, it seems entirely likely that a President Biden would look to pack the court by expanding its numbers -- in effect, turning the judiciary, which is only supposed to interpret the laws, into another legislature.  So much for respect of the institutions.

People are prone to hyperbole at times like these, but I don't think my fears are unwarranted.  The Democrats are becoming the party of AOC, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris.  Their ideas run counter to the essence of our country -- we are about equality of opportunity, they are about equality of outcome.  The latter is what failed states throughout history are made of,

So, there you have it.  I guess I don't think it matters whether I like President Trump on a personal level -- in fact, as someone who comes from the real estate world, I used to root against him in that arena.  But, as President, as far as policy, he has largely gotten it right.  And that's why I voted for him.  And that's why I think the very crude logic of Biden supporters is going to lead us down a dark path.

"The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!"

While I don’t watch the news or read the newspaper, I am keenly aware that Putin Derangement Syndrome has gone next level lately, particularly among the Democrats in Washington.  While I believe that an opposition is an important feature of our system, I think the distinction needs to be made between offering an alternative versus simply trying to re-write history and re-litigate the election.  Needless to say, I don’t think the angle currently being pursued is going to dethrone Mr. Trump in 2020.  And, as always, the folks at Geopolitical Futures offer a healthy and reasoned perspective on what the story really is with respect to Russia:

“The media and Trump’s opposition present this openness toward dialogue and Trump’s own personal admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin as evidence of his collusion with Russia.  But the only difference between Trump’s approach to Russia and that of his predecessors has been style, not substance. A year after Russia undermined confidence in U.S. security guarantees in the 2008 Georgian war, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration tried to “reset” Russian relations. It failed miserably. President George W. Bush said in 2001 that he had met Putin, looked him in the eye, gotten “a sense of his soul,” and found him to be straightforward and trustworthy. Bush got it wrong too.

U.S. presidents always try to improve the relationship with Russia, and they always fail. In this sense, Trump is typical. Part of the reason successive U.S. presidents keep making this mistake is that presidents, like the electorate, tend to personalize everything. Trump wants to get along with Russia; Obama wanted a fresh start; Bush felt he knew Putin’s soul. They view Russia as something that can be handled by sheer force of personality. But the individuals and their personal preferences don’t matter, which is something Russia understands better than the United States does. Relationships between countries aren’t like relationships between people. Countries can’t be trusted to act any way except in their own self-interest.

U.S. presidents have been unable to improve U.S.-Russia relations because the two countries have opposing interests… [Russia] is a highly vulnerable country. To protect its core – around Moscow – from potential enemies, it must expand outward into Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe to develop buffer zones. (The U.S. is fortunate to have the Atlantic and Pacific oceans protecting it.) Russia will always push to have control over these areas, no matter who is serving as its president. If a liberal democratic revolution were to usher an opposition figure like Alexei Navalny into power tomorrow, or if Trump were impeached next week, the U.S. and Russia would still be at odds in the exact same parts of the world…

Despite the allegations of collusion against members of the Trump administration, the U.S. has not softened its policy toward Russia in Eastern Europe. Much has been made of Trump’s tough line on NATO, but the U.S. continues to solidify bilateral relations with countries like Poland, Romania and the Baltic states, all of which are crucial to establishing reliable defenses against potential Russian aggression. A U.S. armored brigade deployed to Poland as scheduled right before Trump’s inauguration and has not been withdrawn. Trump met with Romania’s president on June 9, and he plans to visit Poland in early July. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was in Lithuania last month. And Ukrainian media have reported that President Petro Poroshenko will visit Washington on June 19-20. Contrary to the media narrative, Russia’s position in Eastern Europe is weakening.”

Paris Agreement

Far be it for me to act like any kind of expert on climate change, but I do get amusement out of the outrage at Trump’s “incomprehensible” decision to withdraw from the Paris Agreement – mostly because the accords themselves were largely symbolic and without any real teeth to enforce the proposed mandates.

The United States is already a country that has reduced its carbon footprint because it stands at the forefront of technological innovation – the problem really lies with China and India, countries that are looking to emulate the United States but with far larger populations, and who will no doubt allow their economic imperatives to trump any stipulations that the Paris Agreement may announce.  To that line of reason, I think Stratfor summed it up well: “Geopolitical forces, rather than international deals, have shaped the United States’ incorporation of cutting-edge technologies since long before Trump was elected, and they will continue to do so long after his tenure ends.”  Thus, I don’t think there is real risk to the United States’ withdrawal, and it does not mean that the conversation about climate change and how to address it will end.  Nevertheless, I don’t think the current environment is conducive to that kind of nuance and reason, so instead we will just get vitriol and hot air about what to make of the situation.

The Dollar

Another great interview on Real Vision with Luke Gromen.  He covered a lot, but I thought his summary below of Bretton Woods and how other countries are turning their backs on it, and the implications, is very useful.  Not for nothing, but part of the reason to prefer a Trump over Clinton was because of the belief that Clinton was prone to follow path one:

“…look, the deal was-- to be flip, the deal was, you take our jobs. You take our factories. You take our dollars. And then you lend us back the dollars, and we'll buy the stuff from you. And in third quarter '14, with the rollover in FX reserves, the world's saying, we're not taking the dollars anymore. And so I think what's ultimately happening is there's two paths for the US to go with that. Path one is, we'll invade your country and make you take the dollars. And path two is, fine. Deal's off. We'll bring the factories back. We'll bring the jobs back. If you don't want the dollars, you don't get to keep the factories. It's your choice.”

Immigration

I don’t think that the immigration ban is about racism at its core. And, to that end, as usual, George Friedman offers up useful insights:

“The issue is not whether Trump and his followers are generally anti-immigrant. The question is why they are so hostile toward Muslims, who roughly total the same number as the Chinese and Indians, and to Mexicans, who vastly outnumber these groups. I wish the explanation were more complex, but it is actually quite simple in both cases.

The United States has been at war with Muslim groups since Sept. 11, 2001. When the U.S. has gone to war with foreign powers, there has been a surge of hostility toward immigrants from that foreign power’s country. During World War I, German immigrants in the United States who still spoke German came under suspicion and were pressured to adopt English. During World War II, Germans who had maintained close and cordial ties to Germany prior to the war were harassed, and in some cases, arrested under suspicion of espionage and subversion. Japanese citizens of the United States were arrested and sent to detention camps out of fear that they might be conducting espionage or sabotage for the Japanese. During the Cold War, post-war émigrés from Soviet satellite nations were distrusted by the FBI, which feared they were sent by the Soviets as spies and saboteurs.

When there is war, there is suspicion of the enemy. When there is suspicion of the enemy, there is fear that émigrés might be in the United States on false pretenses. Historically, émigrés have been caught in the middle to some extent because their loyalty is questioned. In war, there is rage as the casualties mount, particularly if sabotage and terrorism are carried out in the homeland. This is hardly new or difficult to understand. If those of us old enough to recall the terror after 9/11 will do so, we can remember the fear and uncertainty not only about what comes next, but also whether the next terror team already was present in the United States. After 15 years of war and many Americans dead, this has congealed into a framework of distrust that may well go beyond the rational. The detention of the entire Japanese community was not rational. Nor was it something that cannot be understood. It is hard to calibrate what you ought to be afraid of in war, but you know that something dreadful might happen. Are all Muslims warriors against the United States? No. Do you know who is or isn’t? Also no. Wars, therefore, create fears. There is nothing new in the American fear of Muslims in the context of war.

The Mexican situation is different. There was a war, but it was long ago, and fear of war is not the driving issue. Rather, the driving issue is illegal Mexican immigration. There is a great deal of homage paid to the rule of law. Congress passed a law specifying the mechanics of legal migration. Some 5 million Mexicans broke the law. Whether this has harmed the U.S. economy or not, the indifference to enforcing the law by people who are normally most insistent on the rule of law has created a sense of hypocrisy. At the same time that the middle and lower-middle classes feel as though their interests are being ignored, the presentation of illegal aliens as “undocumented immigrants” reveals a linguistic maneuver. The “illegals” are transformed into the merely “undocumented,” implying a minor bureaucratic foul-up.

The anger is not only directed at the Mexicans. It is part of the rage against those living in the bubble, who present themselves as humanitarians, but who will encounter the illegal aliens, if at all, as their servants. And rightly or wrongly, some suspect that open support for breaking the law is designed to bring cheap labor to support the lifestyles of the wealthy at the expense of the declining middle class. The fact that the well-to-do tend to be defenders of illegal aliens while also demanding the rule of law increases suspicions.

There is a somewhat deeper layer. As long as illegal immigration is permitted, the foundations of American culture are at risk. It is not simply immigration, but the illegality that is frightening, because it not only can’t be controlled, but also the law is under attack by those who claim to uphold it. The fear that a person’s livelihood is being undermined and his cultural foundation is being overwhelmed creates deep fear of the intentions of the more powerful. The issue appears to have little to do with NAFTA and other economic concerns. The U.S. and China have equally intense economic issues, but there is minimal tension over Chinese immigration. The economic and immigration issues seem only tenuously connected.

It is rare that an issue of such emotional impact as Muslims during a war with Muslims, or immigration in violation of the law, would not cause tension. As we saw with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Japanese, things that are obvious to those living decades later are not obvious at the time. Indeed, it is a failure of imagination to be unable to empathize with the fear felt after Pearl Harbor. In our time, the failure to empathize comes from those who feel immune to illegal immigration or the 15-year war. It is part of the growing fragmentation of American society that different classes and regions should experience these things so differently, and that each side has so little understanding of the other.”

Doubling Down

In what has been termed a “tumultuous” opening to his Presidency by the media, I thought I could offer some of my own thoughts on the era of Trump so far. He came to Washington as an outsider who planned to set fire to the place. And in making an aggressive inauguration address, and the other opening acts of defiance, he has stuck to that promise. What I find particularly interesting is that the “opposition” seemingly has learned nothing from its defeat in November. To quote someone I know, they are doubling down on a bad strategy – whereas economic populism is what got Trump to power, the folks who could be the resistance are instead focused on identity politics. And, really, they should know better already.

During the campaign, where Trump went wholeheartedly after white working class voters by focusing on their economic pain, the Clinton side decided that the right response was to label Trump as a racist and misogynist, and better yet to categorize his supporters as deplorables. He still won. In the aftermath, between attempts at trying to overturn and invalidate his win, the strategy still seems to be a focus on some unsubstantiated claims about Russia hacking the election (again, a carryover) and continuing to dwell on identity politics (witness this past weekend’s march). None of that will change the score in terms of who supports him and who doesn’t.

The basic point is that it didn’t work during the election and it won’t work now. Unless the resistance can speak to the specific issues that helped Trump to win, they will make no progress over the next four years in arguing the case to vote him out.

Look, we can all agree that he is a jerk. But he is a smart jerk who understands what the pressure points are for a large swath of voters. Sadly, the folks who marched over the weekend are missing exactly that.

NATO

Courtesy of Geopolitical Futures:

"Nations have the right and obligation to carry out their foreign and military policies as they wish. But an alliance constrains nations to behave in a certain way given certain events. An alliance is a pooling of sovereignty. It is absolutely true that NATO wasn’t conceived to fight wars outside of Europe. Nor was it conceived as an organization where the primary military burden falls on the Europeans. But Europeans must face two facts. First, this is 2017, and the wars that matter to the U.S. are being fought in the Islamic world. Second, this is not 1955, and Europe is not struggling to recover from World War II. It is a wealthy region, and its military capabilities should be equal to those of the U.S...

Trump’s approach to NATO has been forced on the U.S. by the Europeans and would be on the table with a different president. NATO doesn’t function as an alliance. It is a group of sovereign nations that will respond to American requests as they see fit. The U.S. understands this, and inevitably, the veil of good manners was going to be torn away. Someone was going to point out that NATO is obsolete. Trump happened to enjoy saying it.

But whether it is a tragedy or comedy, the matter can be summed up the following way. The Europeans are wondering if the U.S. will leave NATO. The U.S. is wondering if the Europeans will join NATO. Forgetting NATO, the question is this. What is the commitment of European countries to the United States, and what is the American commitment to Europe? It is not clear that there is a geopolitical basis for this commitment any longer. Interests have diverged, NATO is not suited to the realities of today, and the U.S.’ relations with European states differ from nation to nation, as do European nations’ relations to the United States."

Swing States

I look at this map from 2015, detailing economic confidence by state, and I think to myself...did Hillary ever have a shot at winning?

More Reaction

Starting with the markets. After Trump won (which wasn’t supposed to happen), the stock market made an impressive move higher (which also wasn’t supposed to happen). The interesting cross-current, though, was how much interest rates moved up as well (in another clear example of how the Fed is not bigger than the market). Part of the “explanation” is that Trump’s anti-regulation, lower tax policy stance, within the backdrop of a Republican-controlled congress, should be good for growth. But, to my thinking, stocks were already very over-valued, and the debt problem did not suddenly go away. If these immediate reactions remain the trend, and don’t reverse, higher rates will have an impact at some point. That I believe.

As for the whining post-election, I chalk it up to my favorite internet meme: “When everybody gets a trophy, nobody knows how to lose.” To be clear (for the millionth time), I am not a fan of Trump, and as much as I do not like Hillary, I still couldn’t hold my nose and vote for the guy. But, any notion that the popular vote is more indicative or important than the Electoral College outcome is just ridiculous. Everybody knew the rules going in. As a result, the candidates campaigned so as to win the Electoral College, not the popular vote. Moreover, I am not even sure that the popular vote outcome is truly informative anyway. Sure, at a minimum, it tells us that the country is highly divided, but we also know that the existence of the electoral college structure in the first place means that plenty of people think that their vote holds very little value (I live in New York City and there was no difference in the election results whether I voted Clinton, Trump or not at all). Just consider that only 53% of eligible voters participated – the non-voters actually won the election by that metric. Therefore, it’s hard to argue that the popular vote tells us anything of import. But, everybody likes to have something to complain about. And in the land of safe spaces, winning the popular vote is something to hang on to.

The Day After

Let’s start with the obvious. I took the recent polls at face value and believed that Hillary Clinton would win. As much as I understood the parallels to Brexit, and did not just dismiss out-of-hand that the media was in collusion with the Clintons, I fell for the hype. But, I was wrong. At least I can say that I am not shocked by the result, since I was not the typical consumer who merely scopes the headlines, but does not then read the actual article. So, this outcome was realistic to anyone who understood that you vote your pain. And for many Americans, that meant bucking a system that had left them behind, earning barely enough to subsist. You didn’t have to be a racist or sexist or moron to vote for Trump. The common denominator was frustration and despair.

With that said, despite the histrionics of the election season, I don’t think that Trump will launch a nuclear bomb just because someone says something unflattering. I also don’t think that he is really the man of the people who tapped into the zeitgeist of Midwest blue collar voters in order to win. But he does have a chance to surprise us. I’m hoping that he does.

Tick Tock...

I sounded "sad" in yesterday's post, but really I am pretty sanguine about the election.  Change is going to come even if the status quo candidate wins today -- and it's going to happen because we can't escape the debt problem in this country.  So, to explore the issue a bit, I put together a table of annual U.S. fiscal deficits and the cumulative changes in total outstanding public federal debt since 1960.  I think it brings home the point.  Enjoy.

Year	Deficit	Public Debt Fed
1960	4.8	290.5
1961	10.5	292.7
1962	7.2	302.9
1963	4.8	310.3
1964	5.9	316.1
1965	1.4	322.3
1966	3.7	328.5
1967	8.6	340.5
1968	25.2	368.7
1969	(3.2)	365.8
1970	2.8	380.9
1971	23.0	408.2	Bye-bye gold standard…notice anything about deficits afterwards?
1972	23.4	435.9
1973	14.9	466.3
1974	6.1	483.9
1975	53.2	541.9
1976	73.7	629.0
1977	53.7	706.4
1978	59.2	776.6
1979	40.7	829.5
1980	73.8	909.0
1981	79.0	994.8
1982	128.0	1,137.3
1983	207.8	1,371.7
1984	185.4	1,564.6
1985	212.3	1,817.4
1986	221.2	2,120.5
1987	149.7	2,346.0
1988	155.2	2,601.1
1989	152.6	2,867.8
1990	221.0	3,206.3
1991	269.2	3,598.2
1992	290.3	4,001.8
1993	255.1	4,351.0
1994	203.2	4,643.3
1995	164.0	4,920.6
1996	107.4	5,181.5
1997	21.9	5,369.2
1998	(69.3)	5,478.2	Clinton "Surpluses", but federal debt grows $400Bn…hmmm
1999	(125.6)	5,605.5
2000	(236.2)	5,628.7
2001	(128.2)	5,769.9
2002	157.8	6,198.4
2003	377.6	6,760.0
2004	412.7	7,354.7
2005	318.4	7,905.3
2006	248.2	8,451.4
2007	160.7	8,950.8
2008	458.6	9,986.1
2009	1,412.7	11,875.9
2010	1,294.4	13,528.8
2011	1,299.6	14,764.2
2012	1,087.0	16,050.9
2013	679.6	16,719.4
2014	484.6	17,794.5
2015	438.4	18,120.1	Federal Debt grows $1.4Tn…hmmm
2016	587.4	19,537.4