♬Where has all the money gone, long time passing...♬

"Where does that leave us? Biden wants to go after the wealthy to pay more taxes. Who are the wealthy these days? Look in the mirror boy, as the song goes from the rock opera Tommy. To save the nation, we will all have to pay more. And for what? More IRS agents? For Green Energy which is not yet ready for prime time?" 

Might as well start out Monday morning being a Debby Downer. Money. Why does it matter? According to the "debt limit negotiations", money matters little in our ever growing national debt. And why does the debt limit matter? According to the Joe Biden of old, it does not matter. Today however, not raising our debt limit will be worse than being nuked by Putin. But what is the hold up? Clawing back a whole bunch of Covid dollars which were never spent? Or putting a dent tin the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act (like - getting rid of the funding for thousands of more IRS agents). Why does all this matter? Maybe we should ask the non-partisan CBO.

Here is the sequence of events. Juice up government spending, where we have too much money chasing too few goods. Have the Fed come in with the fire house to put out the inflation fire by raising interest rates. With the rates higher, it cost more to service our ever growing national debt. And all of a sudden, the CBO has sounded the alarm. The cost to service our debt has gone from a nuisance to a huge element in our budget. 

In 2022, interest on our debt had grown 35% over the previous year. The new amount to service our debt was $475B. In 2023, it is projected to grown by an additional 35%, for another record. Should this runaway inflation continue, by 2030, interest on our debt will be 3.3% of our GDP. In ten years, interest to service our debt will surpass what we are paying for Medicaid and defense. Let that one sink in for a minute.

But wait - hold on! When this Inflation Reduction Act was signed into law, we were promised that it would reduce our debt by over $300B over the next ten (10) years. What the heck happened? Smoke and mirrors is what happened. The misnamed Inflation Reduction Act was in reality a thinly disguised program for the New Green Deal. Lots and lots of spending. Very little (if any) saving. How did that sit with Joe Manchin, who was cowed into voting for this mess? He is madder than a wet hen.

Where does that leave us? Biden wants to go after the wealthy to pay more taxes. Who are the wealthy these days? Look in the mirror boy, as the song goes from the rock opera Tommy. To save the nation, we will all have to pay more. And for what? More IRS agents? For Green Energy which is not yet ready for prime time? No, we are in deep, deep trouble folks. We have let the kids have the credit card, and they have run up a huge debt. More debt that we have money to pay off. And so it goes.

You wonder why more and more countries are losing faith in our dollar. We are losing faith in our dollar. It is just a piece of paper right now, backed by nothing except sophism. So the question begs to be asked - ♬Where has all the money gone, long time passing? The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind♬. What is it then, which is blowing in the wind? Fiscal sanity. Plain and simple.