Fear, Inflation and Debt

Yesterday, gold hit fresh all-time highs at $1,432.10 an ounce. Silver hit a 31 year high, closing at more than $34.50 per ounce. Oil nearly touched $100 per barrel, which is the highest it has been since September 2008. What’s going on? Part of the price spikes are, no doubt, due to riots and rebellions in the Middle East, but it is also the world’s awakening realization America’s crushing debt will never be repaid in real money. The U.S. needs to slash its budgets, but finding politicians on Capitol Hill with the nerve to make deep cuts is elusive, to say the least. Yesterday, the Associated Press reported, “The Republican-controlled House is on course to pass legislation cutting federal spending by $4 billion and averting a government shutdown for two weeks. And Senate Democrats say they will go along. . . . Republicans want to slash more than $60 billion from agency budgets over the coming months as a down payment on larger reductions later in the year, but are settling for just $4 billion in especially easy cuts as the price for the two-week stopgap bill.” (Click here for the complete AP story.)

Over in the Senate, the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee asked questions of Fed Chief Ben Bernanke about the state of the economy and raising the debt ceiling. It currently stands at $14.3 trillion. Senator David Vitter said “the biggest” problem the nation faced was “reaching our debt limit . . . sometime between late March and May.” Senator Vitter asked Mr. Bernanke, “Would it be better to increase the debt limit and go along our merry way on the present fiscal path or would it be better to increase the debt limit and at the same time pass meaningful budget reform?” I really do not see how cutting $60 billion is “meaningful reform” when PIMCO’s Bill Gross said two months ago on CNBC, “We have a deficit in the $1 trillion plus arena, which means we must borrow at least a trillion dollars additional a year in order to fund the deficit. And, so, the debt ceiling currently at $14.3 trillion, which is 95% of GDP, has to go up by another trillion or so every 12 months.” (Click here to read more about raising the debt ceiling.)

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