ZeroHedge: Lebowitz: The Fed’s Ever-Growing Golden Footprint

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Excerpt:

What is a Dollar?

The value of a dollar is a figment of your imagination. A “greenback” is a worthless piece of paper backed by an intangible promise- the “full faith and credit” of the U.S. government. Its value rests on a necessary belief that one can transact with it today and tomorrow. Therein lies the value of any fiat currency.

Similarly, gold has little tangible value other than what we ascribe to it. Gold is not currently an authorized currency in any developed nation. But, it is held in proportionally small amounts by many governments as an informal reserve. Besides opinions of worth, the difference between the dollar and gold is gold has provided a means of storing wealth and transacting for millennia. Gold is and has always been the antithesis of fiat currency. There are important differences, such as elasticity, storage, and transact-ability that we will not review in this article.

Decades of irresponsible fiscal spending and monetary tomfoolery slowly but surely reduce the dollar’s value. The loss of its value is not perceptible to most as a dollar is still worth a dollar. For those on the lookout, however, the price of gold is sending a strong message.

Trust in the Dollar

The U.S. dollar is the world’s most trusted currency. Even America’s most ardent enemies transact in dollars and hold them as reserves.

For the last 30 years, the U.S. government has run continual deficits requiring ever greater assistance from the Fed to fund it. The Fed works their magic by adjusting the nation’s money supply to manage interest rates and keep interest expenses manageable.

For many years, as shown below, the monetary base was approximately 5% of the nation’s annual economic output. Starting in 2008, however, the Fed took much bolder steps to push interest rates lower. Their actions ensured the government could sustain recurring outsized deficits. Equally important, corporate and private borrowers can service mounting debt levels.

With short-term rates lowered to zero in 2008 and traditional monetary tools not affecting longer-term rates, the Fed introduced QE. QE requires large amounts of Fed purchases of notes and bonds to put downward pressure on the entire yield curve.

Successive rounds of QE occurred well past the end of the financial crisis and are happening again on a grander scale today. The Fed’s goal is to allow the government and other debt holders to fund at low-interest rates. Essentially they need to flood the system with money to make money cheap.

Real Interest Rates

In a free market, the price of a good or service should be commensurate with the supply and demand of the good or service.

When the money supply is manipulated, prices stray from what supply and demand curves say the price should be.

A current example is U.S. Treasury yields or the price of money. Rational lenders/investors should always demand a positive yield accounting for inflation and risk. If not, they lose purchasing power and are better off not lending. Accordingly, the yield on Treasury debt should always equal future inflation expectations plus a risk premium.

The current yield on the 5-year Treasury note is 0.45%. 5-year inflation expectations are currently 2.18%. Even if we assume zero risks, the yield is at least 2.17% below what any rational investor should demand. The -2.17% difference between the nominal rate and inflation rate is called the real rate.

The level of real interest rates is a sturdy gauge of the weight of Federal Reserve policy. If the Fed is treading lightly and not distorting markets, real rates should be positive. The more the Fed manipulates markets from their natural rates, the more negative real rates become.

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The U.S. government and the Federal Reserve have us on a ‘radar-locked’ Dollar erosion glidepath – that will most certainly accelerate over the next 5 years.

America’s debt load, public and private, will continue to mushroom higher, leading to additional borrowing and ‘monetizing’… and U.S. citizens and their families will get financially whip-lashed in the process.

There is one plan with the raw power to solve this financial ‘death trap’ through massive debt elimination, Dollar stability, the restoration of free market dynamics, long-term economic growth, and financial security for American families.

The Leviticus 25 Plan will generate significant budget surpluses over the initial 5 years of activation, and will pay for itself over the next 10-15 years.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3937 downloads)

Dan Thornton, retired V.P. of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, writing in The Wall Street Journal, Jan 26, 2021:

“…the Cares Act did nothing to stimulate economic growth. This isn’t surprising. Economists know that fiscal and monetary policy actions can’t increase an economy’s growth rate.

Economic growth is determined by the growth rates of labor, real capital and productivity. The growth rate of labor is determined by immigration and the labor-force participation rate.

The latter trended up until about 2000 when it began trending down. Investing in plant and equipment happens because investors expect very high rates of return. They won’t invest less because the borrowing rate is 8% rather than 5%, nor will they invest more if the borrowing rate drops from 5% to 2%.

Productivity is driven by technology, which is why there was a decade-long increase in productivity growth that began in the mid-1990s.

The Cares Act wasn’t entirely humanitarian aid and didn’t stimulate growth. Increasing the amount to $2,000 won’t make a difference.”

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The Leviticus 25 Plan, on the other hand, will stimulate long-term, sustainable economic growth.

It is far and away superior to CARES Act-type stimulus programs, in that it will significantly scale back the rewards of non-work, and will thereby increase the labor force participation rate. Through the elimination of massive amounts of debt, it will increase real capital, and it will increase productivity through the restoration of free market dynamics within our economic system.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3934 downloads)

Central Banks and governments have engaged in quiet collaboration to ‘take care of citizens’ and ‘solve’ economic dilemmas as they come up through their uniquer capacity to ‘print money’ and turn a blind eye to the eventual currency-debauching consequences.

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Klaus Schwab’s “Magic Money Tree” Prediction Is Coming True

ZeroHedge, Jan 25, 2021 – Excerpts:

In his book titled, COVID-19: The Great Reset (Published July 2020), World Economic Forum globalist Klaus Schwab predicted that the effects of the initial stimulus efforts by governments to keep both individuals and business afloat in the aftermath of the unprecedented lockdowns would create a scenario where the public would keep elected officials under “fierce and relentless” pressure to continue the schemes of helicopter money well into the future.

For those unfamiliar with Schwab, he is the founder of the World Economic Forum that is at the forefront of pushing the idea of a “great reset” in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Schwab is now best known by the common folk as the guy who said the world will “never” go back to normal because of Covid and as the creep who envisions a technocracy under which people are subjected to sci-fi level police state surveillance.

“The idea is appealing and realizable, but it contains an issue of social expectations and political control,” Schwab says in his book about printing money and giving it to the public.

“Once citizens realize that money can be found on a “magic money tree,” elected politicians will be under fierce and relentless public pressure to create more and more, which is when the issue of inflation kicks in.”

It is now conceivable that, in the future, government will try to wield its influence over central banks to finance major public projects, such as an infrastructure or green investment fund. Similarly, the precept that government can intervene to preserve workers’ jobs or incomes and protect companies from bankruptcy may endure after these policies come to an end. It is likely that public and political pressure to maintain such schemes will persist, even when the situation improves.

With anger, discontent, and the need for more being the visible result – at least in the United States – of politicians failing to feed the public money from the “magic money tree,” Schwab’s thoughts are coming to life.

It certainly wasn’t the hardest thing to predict, that people would have an ‘aha’ moment after getting a taste of the money printer’s money. It was a line that was crossed, and a political decision that will likely be incredibly hard to reverse course on.

As we have written about before, the introduction of stimulus payments since March 2020 has looked a lot like a Universal Basic Income scheme. And with an economic situation so bad due to lockdowns, it is likely to continue well into the future to keep the public content with the status quo.

There is also absolutely no reason to believe that the federal government will stop going into debt and having that debt monetized by the Federal Reserve anytime soon. Just take it from Biden’s likely Treasury Secretary and former central banker, Janet Yellen, who said at her confirmation hearing that congress should “act big” on relief spending and worry about debt LATER.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has also stated that the Fed would continue to buy $120 billion in bonds each month until the economy made “substantial further progress” toward the Fed’s goals of maximum employment.

If you’ve been keeping up with the official unemployment numbers, you understand Powell means that the Fed’s economic interventions aren’t going to end for some time.

And as Schwab further notes in his book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, with interest rates at near zero, the Federal Reserve is likely to take on monetizing government debt rather than the classical move of bringing interest rates lower or negative as a means of “stimulating” the economy.

Ben Franklin had a quote that everyone should keep in the back of their head …

“When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

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There is another way.

Instead of ‘dribbling’ small, measures amounts of ‘free money’ out to the citizenry, which keeps them ever-dependent upon government and forever ‘controlled’ by government, and never actually serving to strengthen America’s prospects for long-term growth and prosperity, eliminating massive amounts of debt (public and private), and setting the U. S. Dollar on track for long-term strength and stability, America needs…..

The Leviticus 25 Plan, will grant U.S. citizens the same access to direct liquidity extensions that the Fed provided to the major banks/insurers during the great financial crisis (2007-2010): Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, State Street, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, AIG, Barclays, BNP, UBS, Deutsche Bank, RBS, and numerous others…

The Leviticus 25 Plan will offers sufficient liquidity transfers to make a major debt-elimination and financial security benefit to all participating U.S. citizens, while also substantially reducing / eliminating annual budget deficits.

The Leviticus 25 Plan also pays for itself entirely over a period of 10-15 years.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3933 downloads)

America needs less Fed control and less big government control over the daily affairs of our citizens and our financial markets. America needs a citizen-directed economy and a citizen-centered health care system: The Leviticus 25 Plan.

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Peter Schiff: The Bond Market Is Rigged!

ZeroHedge, Jan 12, 2021 – Excerpts:

The Fed is trying to affect policy. It’s trying to influence the economy, stimulate the economy, prop up the stock market. That is the purpose of the Fed buying Treasury bonds. So, the Fed is not looking at Treasury bonds yielding under 1% and thinking, ‘Wow, this is a lousy buy. Why do I want to buy these bonds at less than 1% and hold them for 10 years? We’re going to take a big loss.’ The Fed doesn’t care about losses. The Fed doesn’t have to work for its money. It creates it out of thin air. What do the guys at the Fed give a damn how much they lose by buying these low-yielding bonds? And so when you have the Fed in the market, the whole thing is distorted.”

And the Fed has become a major player in the bond market. As we reported recently, the Fed now owns a record 16.5% of US debt. In just one year, the Fed doubled its holdings of Treasuries, adding a staggering $2.4 trillion in US government bonds to its balance sheet – most of that since March. The Fed’s total share of US debt has spiked from 9.3% in Q1 to 16.5%.

It isn’t just the Fed itself that distorts the bond market. The central bank’s presence creates an environment ripe for speculators who are just in it for the short-run.

Whenever there is a sell-off in the bond market and you see a backup in interest rates, what happens? Speculators who can borrow money real cheap, also thanks to the Fed, come into the market and buy the dip. Why do they do that? Because they know they can sell to the Fed. They can flip the bonds back to the Fed because the Federal Reserve is trying to keep a lid on long-term interest rates because the economy is so loaded up with debt – and again thanks to the Fed. The Fed has to keep interest rates at rock bottom so people can afford to pay. Also, the Fed is trying to maintain these excess stock market valuations. And the key to the overvalued stock market is the overvalued bond market because we keep comparing stocks to bonds, and so to make that comparison favorable, the Fed has to keep the bond market propped up and keep interest rates down.”

Speculators don’t buy bonds because they think they’re a great long-term investment. They have no intention of holding them until maturity. They’re buying to flip to the Fed.

On the other side of the equation, the Fed has to keep bond prices high (and therefore yields low) in order to create enough demand on the open market for the US Treasury to sell enough bonds to finance the massive budget deficits. With the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the White House, it seems likely the borrowing and spending will increase in the coming months – certainly not slow down.

So that’s what’s going on in the bond market. You have speculators who are front-running the Fed. They have no intention of holding the bonds to maturity. And then you have the Fed that will hold to maturity and isn’t concerned about how much money it loses to inflation.

In a nutshell, the bond market is completely rigged.

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Note again: “… the borrowing and spending will increase in the coming months – certainly not slow down.”

We are well on our way to a full-scale debauching of our currency.

“Lenin was certainly right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency. The process engages all the hidden forces of economic law on the side of destruction, and does it in a manner which not one man in a million is able to diagnose.” ― John Maynard Keynes, The Economic Consequences of the Peace

All is not lost, however. The most powerful economic acceleration in the world is all loaded up and ready to go – to slam the door on America’s massive debt overhang, and the need to keep rolling over, and adding to, our national and state-level debt loads.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3918 downloads)

The CDC ordered a temporarily halt to residential evictions on Sep 4, 2019, effective through Dec 31, 2019: “Under this Order, a landlord, owner of a residential property, or other person ^[3] with a legal right to pursue eviction or possessory action, shall not evict any covered person from any residential property in any jurisdiction to which this Order applies during the effective period of the Order.”

Landlords were thereby ordered to bear the brunt of this ‘unconstitutional order,’ and suffer the consequences. And many of them will likely lose their properties, and U.S taxpayers will foot the bill on the unpaid mortgage balances.

As Ronald Reagan so famously remarked in his 1981 inaugural address, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”

Government is indeed the problem. We need now more than ever, a comprehensive economic plan that returns America to a ‘citizen-centered’ nation.

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Taxpayers On The Hook For Nearly Half Of Apartment Building Mortgages

ZeroHedge, Dec 23, 2020 – Excerpts:

Via SchiffGold.com,

This is not the ideal time to own an apartment building. Millions are struggling to pay rent and despite the extension of the federal eviction moratorium through Jan. 31 in the latest stimulus bill, a lot of people will likely face eviction in the coming months. According to data released in November, 17 million households are behind on rent or mortgage payments.

Of course, this has a trickle-down effect. If renters can’t pay their rent, that makes it difficult for apartment building owners to keep up with their mortgage payments. If they default, who’s on the hook?

Increasingly, the US taxpayer.

Total outstanding mortgages on multifamily housing property stood at $1.65 trillion in Q3. That was up by about $31 billion from Q2, according to data compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Of that amount, the federal government backs $798 billion. That’s 48.4% of all mortgages on multifamily properties.

Uncle Sam backs these loans through Government Sponsored Enterprises (GSEs), such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, along with government agencies such as Ginnie Mae. GSEs often securitize these loans into commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) that are sold to investors. This practice with single-family home mortgages led to the housing crisis in 2008.

In simple terms, government-backed means that the US taxpayer is ultimately on the hook for any losses.

The US government got into multifamily real estate debt during the 2008 financial crisis. According to WolfStreet, up to that point, government-backed multifamily debt was about on par with the holdings of banks and thrifts. Since then, the government’s share (blue line in the chart below) has shot up to nearly 50%.

At this point, apartment building owners are holding on by the skin of their teeth, hoping the pandemic relents and the economy improves. If not, we could see a lot of mortgage defaults on the horizon. The situation is particularly dire in big cities where there is an exodus of people and plunging rents. As WolfStreet put it, “Landlords anywhere afflicted by renters not making rent payments, protected by eviction bans, are still trying to make mortgage payments on their rental properties, hoping that the surge in vacancies and non-payment of rents are short-term phenomena and that people will come back and fill those apartments and that tenants will catch up with the rent.”

If not, taxpayers will once again be left holding the bag.

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There is one plan in America with the raw power to resolve this economic catastrophe and set our nation back on track for for long-term health and prosperity.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3906 downloads)

The U.S. Congress band-aid approach to our train-wreck Covid economy has done nothing to provide any meaningful ‘financial security’ benefits for American families.

The latest stimulus bill extends the moratorium on evictions from rental evictions with a ‘trickle’ of back-rent payments to severely distressed landlords and multi-family apartment owners.

The U.S. Congress’ approach to this whole thing is a farcical mess…

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CNBC: National eviction ban will be extended through January in stimulus deal

Published Mon, Dec 21 20201:42 PM EST / Annie Nova@AnnieReporter

Excerpts:

A bipartisan coronavirus aid deal that lawmakers struck on Sunday will extend the national eviction moratorium through January and establish a rental assistance fund of $25 billion.

The relief comes as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium was set to expire at the end of the month. More than 14 million Americans — or 1 in 5 adult renters — said recently that they’re not caught up with their rent, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

“This aid is badly needed,” said Douglas Rice, a senior policy analyst at The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The CDC order prevented a wave of evictions this fall, and the extension will avert a large wave in January.”

The $25 billion in rental assistance is expected to be disbursed by state and local governments and be able to be used by renters for arrears as well as rent and utilities. To qualify, renters will likely need to be low-income.

That aid could keep between 2 million and 8 million families in their homes over the next few months, Rice said. “This is a big step in the right direction, yet it’s likely not enough,” he added.

Emily Benfer, an eviction expert and visiting professor of law at Wake Forest University, said $100 billion is necessary to cover the back rent owed.

“Make no mistake, the relief bill is a stopgap measure,” Benfer said. “Without additional supports, the eviction crisis will lead to catastrophe and jeopardize the health and safety of millions of adults and children.”

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Note: Congress’ current ‘Stimulus’ plan, which none of them have had the time to read, because it is nearly 5,600 pages long, will sink America deeper and deeper into debt, with no ‘road map’ back up to fiscal sanity.

The Leviticus 25 Plan, which is easily readable at 26 pages long, will provide inestimable financial security benefits for all American families, for small business and main street America, protect the U.S. Dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and put America back on track for long-term financial health and viability as a nation.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3904 downloads)

“In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem, government IS the problem. It isn’t so much that liberals are ignorant, it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.” – Ronald Reagan

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Federal Taxes Are Sending An S.O.S Signal

ZeroHedge, Dec 15, 2020 – Excerpts:

Submitted by Joseph Carson, former chief economist at Alliance Bernstein

Data on federal tax receipts paints a grim picture of the state of the US economy. Weak tax receipts are sending a signal of economic distress. Congress needs to act with urgency and pass federal support legislation to help broad parts of the economy.

Federal withheld income tax receipts represent hard contemporaneous data. Tax receipts are current and complete, unlike other economic data series such as household and payroll employment, which are based on a sampling of a small percentage of the working population and businesses.

The pandemic hit the economy in March, triggering widespread job loss and partial and full closing of many small businesses. In November, 9 months into the pandemic, federal gross withheld income tax receipts were off 13% from a year ago. That is roughly in line with the average decline of 15% recorded over the 9-month span, March through November.

Checking the tax data records from the US Treasury the decline in tax receipts over the last 9 months is the largest on record. The only comparable period is the 14% drop in 2009 during the Great Financial Recession.

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Congress has been negotiating for several months a second federal stimulus package. But political fighting over the scale and who gets support and who doesn’t has so far stymied a bi-partisan deal. I don’t support big government, but the federal government is supposed to step up during a crisis.

Taxes are sending an S.O.S signal, saying that significant parts of the economy are experiencing severe distress. Anyone in Congress that is on the fence over whether a second stimulus bill is necessary needs to look no further than the tax data.

Investors have been patient, banking on Congress to build a bridge of fiscal support until medical science develops a vaccine. Medical science has done its job, but Congress has not. If Congress doesn’t act soon the speculative gains in the equity markets could quickly reverse in scale.

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Congress “stepping up” with big-government stimulus programs has done nothing to solve any of America’s underlying problems, namely massive debts, ever-growing dependence on government, stifling bureaucratic business environment, and eroding economic liberty.

It is time for a powerful new comprehensive/decentralizing plan to get America back on track. It is time to abandon the big-government model and return to a citizen-centered, citizen-driven economy.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3896 downloads)

Massive mismanagement by government – and nobody in Washington has a plan to fix it. Add in about $350 billion in interest charges to ‘carry’ that debt over the course of those 16 years, and you end up with a tidy sum of $2.6 trillion.

There is a way out of this mess….

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Feds Admit $2.3 Trillion In Improper Payments

ZeroHedge, Dec 5, 2020 / Submitted by Adam Andrzejewski,

Excerpt:

Since 2004, twenty large federal agencies have admitted to disbursing an astonishing $2.25 trillion in improper payments. Last year, these improper payments totaled $175 billion – that’s about $15 billion per month, $500 million per day, and $1 million a minute.

But what exactly is an improper payment?

Federal law defines the term as “payments made by the government to the wrong person, in the wrong amount, or for the wrong reason.”

When people or companies receive incorrect payments, it erodes trust and hinders the government’s ability to finance everything from defense to health care.

Recently, auditors at OpenTheBooks.com published a 24-page oversight report analyzing why, how, and where federal agencies wasted our tax dollars last year.

Here are the top 10 takeaways regarding improper and mistaken payments by the 20 largest federal agencies in 2019:

1. Total Mistakes: $175 billion in estimated improper payments reported by the 20 largest federal agencies, averaging $14.6 billion per month – Total (FY2004-FY2019): $2.25 trillion.

2. Worst Programs – $121 billion (approximately 69 percent) in improper payments occurred within three program areas – Medicaid, Medicare, and Earned Income Tax Credit.

3. Claw Back – only $21.1 billion of the $175 billion improper payments during 2019 was recaptured — that’s only 14 cents on every dollar misspent. Five-year total: $103.6 billion recaptured/ $747.7 billion improperly spent

4. Biggest Offenders:

5. Dead people: $871.9 million in mistaken payments were made to dead people. Medicaid, social security payments, federal retirement annuity payouts (pensions), and even farm subsidies were sent to dead recipients. Root cause: failure to verify death. Four-year total: $2.8 billion

6. Ancient Americans: Six million Social Security numbers are active for people aged 112+; however, only 40 people in the world are known to be older than 112 years of age.

7. Worst Upward Trend: Medicaid and Medicare improper payments soared from $64 billion (2012) to $88.6 billion (2017), and, in 2019, to $103.6 billion. Five-year total: $456 billion

8. Best Turnaround: In 2018, the Education Department overpaid $6 billion to college students receiving PELL grants and student loans. In 2019, improper payments were reduced to $1.1 billion – an 85-percent reduction.

9. Improper Income Redistribution: $17.4 billion in improper payments by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) within the Earned Income Tax Credit program. 25-percent of all payments were improper. Five-year total: $84.35 billion

10. Purchasing Power: What can $175 billion buy? Last year, the federal government wasted the equivalent of a full year of all federal salaries, perks, and pension benefits for every employee of the federal executive agencies. A stunning example of institutionalized incompetence.

Justifications for their improper payments vary by agency.

For example, Veterans Affairs (VA) says they are working on the problem and, yet, have a long way to go:

“During FY19 testing for improper payments, VA found that many root causes of improper payments still have not been remediated. While the VA is actively working corrective actions to remediate these complex problems, VA completes its statically valid testing for Improper Payments Elimination & Recovery Act) one year in arrears…”

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) flat out admits that their improper payments ($17.4 billion FY2019) will continue:

“… the IRS does not have the resources to audit every return claiming return tax credits… Without legislative change to greatly improve effective tools to administer these credits, the improper payment rate will not drastically change.”

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Government programs, of all types, are riddled with fraud. They are all open invitations for graft, and mismanagement, and outright political payoff schemes.

And they are driving us deeper and deeper into the national debt hole. The U.S. Dollar will eventually be hit with a gut-wrenching depreciation phase – which will, in all likelihood, lead into a Central Bank Digital Currency global monetary system. And that will be an outright disaster to the cause of freedom and liberty, and self-determination for all citizens.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a powerful counter-force against these pressures.

It will reduce dependence on government programs and eliminate massive amounts of government spending. It will generate enormous tax revenue gains for state, local, and federal government agencies – and set America back on track for annual budget surpluses.

Te time is now – to activate the most powerful economic acceleration plan in the world.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3890 downloads)

America does not need, and should not seek after, a grand new socialist plan for ‘wealth redistribution. What America needs is to grant U.S. citizens the same direct access to liquidity flows that have been so generously provided to major banks and other ‘connected’ large corporations…

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The Daily Shot, Nov 30, 2020: Many Americans are about to lose their emergency unemployment benefits, widening the “K-shaped” recovery gap.

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ZeroHedge, Nov 30, 2020: American billionaires haven’t been just immune to the pandemic, they have been thriving in it, drastically increasing their collective wealth. An analysis by Chuck Collins at the Institute for Policy Studies found that American billionaires have been their wealth grow by $1 trillion since March of this year – more than 34 percent. That was not the case during the 2008 financial crisis when it took Forbes’ 400 richest people three years to recoup their losses from the Great Recession. Collins’ findings highlight a wealth gain by a mere 650 individuals that, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, seems obscene at a time when nearly 7 million Americans are at risk of eviction when moratoriums expire at the end of the year.

Note – The billionaires listed above, and many, many others in the ultra-wealth class have benefited from massive amounts of direct government subsidies, outright bailouts, and various forms of specially tailored tax breaks.

Warren Buffett, for example, has owned (or currently owns) significant stakes in Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, BNY Mellon, and U.S. Bancorp. The Federal Reserve (through special lending facilities and discount window lending) and the U.S. Treasury (through TARP and targeted stimulous programs) have transfused these large banking interests with hundreds of billions of dollars.

Elon Musk’s Tesla, has receive subsidies of approximately $2.44 billion via 109 ‘awards’ involving “82 federal grants and tax credits as well as 27 state and local awards.”

According to subsidy-tracking by Propublica, “JPMorgan Chase was among the eight large U.S. banks to receive the Treasury Department’s initial round of capital investments — money described by Treasury officials not as a bailout, but rather as funds to help bolster “healthy” banks in tough times.”

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It is now time to “help bolster” ‘healthy American families going through their own ‘tough times.’

U.S. citizens deserve nothing less than to be granted the same opportunity for direct liquidity extensions that were provided, in massive amounts, to Wall Street’s financial sector, on an ongoing basis over the past 12 years.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3884 downloads)

Corporate Finance Institute: The 2008 Financial Crisis

Before the financial crisis of 2008, there was more money invested in credit default swaps than in other pools. The value of credit default swaps stood at $45 trillion compared to $22 trillion invested in the stock market, $7.1 trillion in mortgages and $4.4 trillion in U.S. Treasuries. In mid-2010, the value of outstanding CDS was $26.3 trillion.

Many investment banks were involved, but the biggest casualty was Lehman Brothers investment bank, which owed $600 billion in debt, out of which $400 billion was covered by CDS. The bank’s insurer, American Insurance Group, lacked sufficient funds to clear the debt, and the Federal Reserve of the United States needed to intervene to bail it out.

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The “Many investment banks” noted above received hundreds of billions of dollars through the Fed’s ‘Secret Security Lifelines,’ to include: Morgan Stanley, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, HSBC, Société Générale, RBS, Barclays, BNP Paribas, UBS, and many others.

An important review…

As the banking crisis intensified in the Fall of 2008, with major banking institutions assuming, or on the verge of assuming, the classical ‘snorkel’ position (‘underwater’ status), the Federal Reserve ran quickly to the rescue with ‘secret liquidity lifelines” (Bloomberg Uncovers the Fed’s Secret Liquidity Lifelines … 8-22-11).

The Fed substantially eased some important collateral rules for banks, “meaning that banks that could once borrow only against sound collateral, like Treasury bills or AAA-rated corporate bonds, could now borrow against pretty much anything – including some of the mortgage-backed sewage that got us into this mess in the first place….  ‘All of a sudden, banks were allowed to post absolute [expletive deleted] to the Fed’s balance sheet,’ [according to] the manager of the prominent hedge fund.” (Source: Bailout Hustle, Matt Taibbi).

The Federal Reserve invented the following credit “facilities” to fire-hose liquidity out to major banks and brokerage firms:

Primary Dealer’s Credit Facility

Term Securities Lending Facility

Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program

Commercial Paper Funding Facility  

Term Auction Facility    

Public/Private Investment Program 

And, here we go – from the top: Bloomberg – November 2011

Top recipient – Morgan Stanley 

“Morgan Stanley, facing a crisis of confidence after the fall of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., got a $9 billion injection from Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and agreed to take a $10 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury to shore up capital. As hedge-fund customers pulled funds out of the New York-based firm, it plugged the hole with $107.3 billion of secret loans from the Federal Reserve’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility and Term Securities Lending Facility, set up earlier in the year to supply brokerage firms with emergency financing.”

Peak amount of Debt on 9/29/2008: $107B

And now ‘Round 2’, another CDS default bonanza, is looking increasingly likely…

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The Daily Shot, October 27, 2020 – Credit: CDS auction recoveries (defaulted debt) have been extremely low this year, dominated by leveraged retailers with broken business models. Cov-lite debt structures exacerbated the losses.

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America needs a plan that re-targets Fed liquidity infusions to flow directly to U.S. citizens.

NOT the global banking confederation and Wall Street’s Financial Sector.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$90,000 per U.S. citizen – Leviticus 25 Plan 2021 (3858 downloads)