Sounds like China needs a war to save its economy, the same as ours.

How about we fight each other to save each other?

Not save chancey, reset.

Dirt the 95 or so trillion figure doesn't take into account unfunded liabilities. That figure is truly staggering.

Ken I don't see how the US government can withstand these rates much longer or much higher ones. Eventually the service on the debt will cripple the nation.

Frankly I don't see how the math is going to work.

I'm pretty sure the only math politicians are working on is how much taxpayer money do I have to spend to buy votes.

That sounds like a really, really bad idea to me, but I still can't wrap my mind around debt based fiat currency; I can't figure out how it works, and I have tried. It makes no sense at all to me to print more money to buy more weapons to go to war. We can't spend what we don't have. I don't see how a war will help us, but the folks on the hill seem heck bent on making it happen anyway. None of it makes any rational sense at all to me.

Reset it to what Steven?

Could you please give me the Cliff's notes version of what you mean by the sentence in Bold? I don't understand it. I thought we need the high/or higher interest rates to tackle the inflation.

Many economist consider money not backed by a commodity like gold or silver debt backed. The dollar is backed by the full faith in the credit of the U.S. government.

Since the U.S. government borrows money, increased interest rates mean they have to pay more interest on new loans ( higher interest on their bonds ) and the FED is reducing their Bond holdings which was where the government borrowed money for almost free since most of the interest paid to the FED came back to the government.

Chancey we do need higher rates to combat inflation. Those higher rates will have consequences when new debt is issued and old debt is rolled over from the old rates to the new.

Dirt the FED is now losing money, so not only is the interest on those bonds is coming back, there is an good chance we will be bailing them out as well.

Only thing backing our current debt is our military. Bet that gives you warm fuzzies with current military leadership.

I thought our national debt was about 30 tril. Where does the 91 figure come from? I'm the first to admit I know nothing about it or understand it except the Fed gubmint has nobody to answer to unlike the common citizen.

Unfunded liabilities are well over that.

As in pensions?

Mostly entitlement programs.

I believe this number reflects all the loans in the U.S. Personal, Business, Governments., etc.

The number in White's article on China seemed to reflect the overall debt in China, not the Chinese government's debt. I thought;" How bad is this?", and found out ( I believe) that this number is similar to the U.S. If this is staggering, why is our debt not staggering?

Steve how can the FED lose money on money they just made up? Accounting nonsense. IMHO.

Bad news for the U.S. government though.

"This isn’t good news for a government already buried in debt and running massive budget deficits month after month. It means the US government will have to borrow even more money that the Fed will ultimately have to monetize.

This is yet another reason the Fed’s inflation fight is doomed to fail. Raising rates and shrinking its balance sheet to tame the inflation dragon means more federal government debt. That puts more pressure on the central bank to prop up the government’s borrow-and-spend policies. And this will ultimately necessitate lower interest rates and quantitative easing."

Source: Schiffgold

The other very remote possibility is that it might result in some fiscal discipline from Congress........not likely though.

You're right Dirt is is accounting nonsense. Unfortunately it has a very concrete, real world impact on tax payers.........and not a good impact.

The 12 reserve banks must, by law, utilize GAAP rules (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles).

As of the end of this month the entire reserve system will have an unrealized loss of 100 BILLION dollars over the past 18 months. That means no monies will move from the Fed system to the US Treasury. As you posted above.....that will lead to greater deficits requiring greater borrowing by Treasury, and consequently, higher interest rates for everyone while at the same time those higher rates increase the debt service that Treasury must pay.........compounding the problem.

I can hear Janet Yellen crying and it is music to my ears. Powell too would love to reduce rates to improve his own balance sheet but of course he has committed to doing just the opposite.

Like Steven, I don't see any way this math works.

Dirt the FED is losing money is paying out more in interest than it's taking in.

The FED takes deposits like any other bank. It ispaying more interest on those deposits than it is taking in.

Simple math

Fiscal discipline from Congress?

The people won't stand for it

X2

And it doesn't dare stop taking those deposits or all that surplus capital will overwhelm the financial system. Banks will start making more loans with that capital and drive inflation back up

Terrible! The government will have to sell treasuries to the FED to bail them out. At least the new treasuries will pay better interest than the old ones. This gets so ludicrous, you just got to shake your head.