Quote:UPDATE 29MAR26: right on cue, WTO members to hash out global digital trade rules.

According to the US Department of the Treasury’s just-released, unaudited financial report for FY2025, the United States government has USD 6.06 trillion in assets, USD 47.78 trillion in liabilities, for a net position of -USD 47.7 trillion. This does not include long-term unfunded Social Security and Medicaid liabilities, which are reported separately and add roughly another USD 100 trillion.

Nor does this include the notorious “black budget” which, by definition, is not accounted in public reporting.

The estimated GDP for the United States for FY2025 is USD 31.5 trillion.

The country’s liabilities are an order of magnitude more than its assets, and if you took all the goods and services produced and delivered in the country for one year to pay down the debt, you’d still have USD 10 trillion in liabilities, which is still more than the assets. The Treasury declared the government insolvent, which hardly comes as a surprise.

I’ll let that sink in for a moment.

There is no single-source number for the total value of the United States, including public and private assets over liabilities. Depending on who you check with, the US is worth somewhere between USD 170 trillion and USD 500 trillion all in, with somewhere on the order of USD 149 trillion in consolidated debt.

Let’s take a middle of the road estimate and say the United States are worth USD 300 trillion. If a sovereign entity could be seized and liquidated, they’d have to sell off Alaska, Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and everything from Malibu to the Mississippi River to pay off the debt.

Fortunately, there’s no superior court (yet) that can adjudicate such things, so bankruptcy is not a consideration.

The Big Question is, how are the United States still a viable entity?

The US is a unique case. It issues debt in its own currency (United States dollar), has a deep, liquid bond market (Treasuries are global collateral), and has an independent central bank (Federal Reserve private corporation). Top that off with having the global reserve currency that is wound into nearly every transaction on the planet, and you have the recipe for carrying huge amounts of debt—though not endless.

One of the common tricks the US pulls is foreign aid. Give countries piles of dollars every year, which are then used to buy goods and services on the open markets. This maintains velocity in the dollar, which is essential to maintaining a viable currency. Like all other assets, if there’s no demand for a currency, then it’s value in real terms quickly drops.

There are a number of economic slights of hand that can slowly reverse such fiscal irresponsibility, but I don’t think that’s the plan.

Instead, what I see is someone on the verge of declaring bankruptcy running up their credit cards in an orgy of consumerism before tapping out. The most logical reason behind this is that “they” are ready to launch a new system that will basically reset the whole ball of wax.

The key to modern economic theory is “velocity of money”. The metal system of centuries past was entirely to slow and cumbersome, so along came paper money. That worked for a century or two, but it’s been tweaked to its fullest extent now. Digital tokens and “coins” is the new darling, increasing efficiency and sending velocity into the stratosphere. It also happens to work rather well for interplanetary financial systems, which we are clearly heading for sooner or later.

There is clearly no will to clean up the dollar system. Instead, all indications are that the US is squeezing all the power and control out of the husk before tossing it on the trash heap of history. The Great Reset is upon us and all the signs are that this year may be the critical mass for digital and crypto currencies. Hang on to your wallet!

As I wrote this, King Lear kept playing in my head. It seems appropriate:

Quote:Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!
You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout
Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!
You sulphurous and thought-executing fires,
Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts,
Singe my white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,
Strike flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!
Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once,
That make ingrateful man! — King Lear, Act III, Scene II

Si mundus vult dicipi, ergo dicipitatur.

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Today’s cinematic nugget is probably long forgotten if ever known. It’s called Mister 880 (1950), with Burt Lancaster and Dorothy McGuire in a quaint romcom about a Secret Service agent trying to catch a counterfeiter while falling for a UN translator. Ah, the good ol’ days when folks believed governments were benign, agents were sincere good guys, and the justice system functioned.