Excellent as always Straight. My biggest concern is that the Fed will raise rates too quickly in order to crash the stock market on purpose. IMO Trumps foes are willing to destroy the country in order to destroy him. Dangerous games being played these days.

So, according to you, Trump is already wrapped around in a web of empire so strong that he is doomed. As would be every president of the conservative persuasion. Are we then on the fall side of the rise and fall of the U.S.A.? Is there no hope for passing on a free society of any kind? Can we somehow hypnotize 7 billion humans into becoming more than human? Damn, I'm glad I'm old. Bob, (May I call you Bob?) you have depressed me greatly. I'm going to have the BW take me out to a sumptuous dinner and a mindless movie and forget I ever read your post.

Hopefully Trump is not our Marcus Aurelius, the stoic Roman Emperor who tried to reverse the declining tides of the empire. With Aurelius's death, the empire fell back into the inevitable slide to destruction.

Unless the President can instill sufficient inspiration for reforming the Deep State, the collapse of the American empire is inevitable. When Trump leaves office, the entrenched, unelected bureaucracy will insure the resurrection of the corrupt practices that allow them to undermine the elements of America's greatness.

There has been a lot of skuttlebutt about Trumpets plan to "Re-Boot" the dollar and going back on the gold standard if he can get the central banks to go along...time will tell, but there is only one source for this info and is suspect in my opinion.
I'll gladly wait to be pleasantly surprised and no big disappointment if it is BS cause I have been planning against a collapse anyway.

Again, Great effort as always.

posted to facebook under..."just like Reagan, Trump will fall prey to the leviathan govt..."

Excellent essay succinct and to the point. The President should tell the European nations pay your own way no more money. The same we're giving to all the other nations. No More! We're Tapped Out! Most of these other nations just piddle it away.

Great point Robert. Empires collapse because they are built on plundering rather than innovation, construction and building. Keeping resources (people) at the ready to create destruction to expand your empire consumes far more than it produces. I don't think Trump wants to turn it around and if he did he will discover that the impetus of the iceberg will push him aside. At best if he accomplished even a very small portion of his promises they will be swept aside in the next go round of socialism politics.

As a nation we defaulted with Bretton Woods, when we refused to repay gold at the agreed upon price, because we had inflated so heavily.

A Debt based economy will ONLY produce debts. The holder of the debts reign supreme. They knew that when they set it up. Notice how we first got the Federal Reserve, and THEN next year, INCOME Tax??? That was no accident.

Russia has found a way, by "buying out" the central bankers and taking over government ownership of their shares in the central bank, to slowly get out of debt... This is why they are hated and targeted. God forbid if the US did this, and we should do this.

Imagine this: We borrow money from the fed at 1% interest. the make bonds to sell and CREATE the money from this.

Then for EVERY $, they do this 10-30 times INTERNALLY and pay ZERO interest back to the government. Yet they collect interest on this money as they cycle it. They should HAVE TO PAY 10-20% of the interest rate charged to the government, back to the government when they Leverage it up. Then we would NOT PAY Interest on our debt, we would in fact COLLECT IT.

The other way is to OWN 30-40% of the Federal reserve and get that percentage of the dividend to pay down the debt!
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The real question should be: Did our government Officials ENCUMBER our national resources/people with this debt agreement? (ie, does the government OWN us, or do WE OWN our government?)