Remember, yesterday and today, we let the shades speak.

We make no predictions. Nor do we connect any dots.

Instead, we merely stand back and marvel at the gall…the conceit…the shameful, egotistical, self-dealing of it. We’re talking about the vanity of the living.

Phantoms of the future

And rather than pass judgement ourselves, we call upon the dead…and the unborn…to do the talking. Yesterday, we heard from the ghosts of the past. Today, the phantoms of the future tell their tale:

‘Thanks. I’ll get right down to it. Thanks a lot…you jerks.

‘You’re supposed to leave your children and grandchildren a richer, safer world. You are doing neither.

‘You ran up $22 trillion in debt by 2019. Who did you think was going to pay that? Not you. Donald Trump was already 72. And the average baby boomer was in his 60s, getting ready for retirement. He expected to draw medical and pension benefits for 20 years. Where did you think that money would come from?

‘The feds were already running deficits of $1 trillion per year. At that rate, it was just a matter of time before they went broke. But rather than put on the brakes, you just kept at it…so the debt hit $40 trillion by 2030.’ [Our speaker has the advantage of being able to see what happens in the future.]

‘What’d you think? That you needed that money so much more than we did? That we should pay for your stupid wars…your stupid programmes…and your stupid medical and retirement benefits. Didn’t it occur to you that we might have our own stupid programmes?

‘And didn’t you ever stop to think that we might have some ideas of our own? You think your hopes and your desires are of such paramount importance that you can’t imagine that any future generation could have an agenda of its own?

‘You spend $800 billion a year claiming to defend yourself. Against whom? You build all those ships…planes…and have troops stationed all over the world…What do you think you’re doing…preparing to re-fight WWII? Well, I got news: No WWII replay is coming.’

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Some miracle

‘And then there are your other dumb programs…fighting drugs…rounding up immigrants…subsidising poverty…encouraging ‘equality’…keeping the planet from overheating…paying people with handicaps…offering medical services to old people…

‘…I could go down the list of all the things you spent money on. About one out of every three dollars was borrowed. Now, what does that mean? It means you wanted it, but you were unwilling to pay for it.

‘So, you took the money from us — in future generations, who weren’t even born then…and had no say in it — to pay for a third of your numbskull spending.

‘Did you think that we would be such morons that we wouldn’t be able to come up with any boondoggles of our own? That you had to spend our money for us…because we wouldn’t be smart enough to spend it for ourselves?

‘And just look at what you spent the money on. The War on Poverty had no effect on poverty. The war on drugs just increased the population of prison inmates…and made the streets much more violent. The war on terrorism radicalised Muslims so they wanted to kill us. And your cockamamie finances opened the door to a series of calamities.

‘You want to know what happened? It was obvious. But you never even bothered to look. You must have thought some miracle would take care of it. But someone had to pay that $40 trillion of debt. And guess who did. We did.

‘We neither borrowed it, nor lent it, but we suffered one financial disaster after another, as the feds kept trying to avoid it.’

Crash of 2019

‘First, the Crash of 2019 caused the feds to panic. They tried the same tricks they used in 2000 and 2008. But they didn’t work (partly because they never ‘normalised’ interest rates.) So, they turned from monetary stimulus (the Fed) to fiscal stimulus (the federal government).

‘The Trump government passed another tax cut and a big infrastructure bill (more stimulus). Now the deficit was at $2 trillion. Still, everything seemed to be going okay for a while. But by then, the whole economy was running on fake money.

‘More than half of federal spending, for example, was funded by the Fed. And after a while, we noticed prices beginning to edge up as the money worked its way into the economy.

‘At first, it seemed like a good thing. Finally, the economists said, we were overcoming the deflation. The stock market went up. It was the best performer in the world in 2023, for example.

‘But it was all phony. All distortions. The feds were printing money and pumping it into the economy. We all felt richer, at first. The economy seemed to be picking up. But then, as prices continued up, we realised that it was no different from Zimbabwe…or Venezuela…or Argentina.

‘That’s when it got really rough. People were getting poorer and losing faith in the system.

‘This was at the end of Trump’s second term. The two parties had radicalised, with the Trump supporters on one side and the socialists of AOC on the other. They would each hold political rallies and one side would attack the other. It was getting bad. Almost like a civil war.

‘You can’t hold an honest election in those circumstances. So Trump called another state of emergency. And he put into place that Chinese system of social credit. Everybody got a score. And if you were seen at a demonstration or you said something against the government, you lost points. Then, they’d cancel your credit card or take away your job.

‘It sounds harsh. But it’s probably a good thing he did it. Because things were getting out of control. Inflation was running about 40% per year. But what do you expect? You set that up…your generation.’

Main victims

‘The retirees — your generation — weren’t going to agree to a reduction in benefits. And the military wasn’t about to surrender its honey pot. The result was political and economic dysfunction. Nobody could cut spending, because the other side wouldn’t go along.

‘And who were the main victims? You’re hearing from them now. The young. Even the unborn. Depression, inflation, martial law, street fighting, repression…Young people couldn’t get jobs…and couldn’t cover their own living expenses.

‘We had to live with Mom and Dad…and yes, we voted for AOC because at least she promised to forgive our student loans and give us an income. And then Donald Trump cancelled our votes because it was a national emergency.

‘It was crazy. But it was your fault. Jerks…We spit on your graves…’

Regards,

Bill Bonner