Rising Debt Troubles the Markets
The US Deficit spending is completely out of control. Over the past 8 years alone, the national debt has risen by 8% each year, while the economy has grown by 2% each year. The only factor that has saved us from financial calamity is the government’s ability to print more money to pay for the shortfall.
There have been some efforts at budget reform. Tea Party Republicans arrived in Washington seven years ago with a clear, loud message from angry voters: Slash spending. The best solution Congress has been able to devise is short-term freezes on new spending. Several debt limits have been set and quickly violated. Once the government ran out of money, lawmakers would set a higher debt-limit target with a new promise of reform.
The Treasury Department would use budgetary tricks to keep the national debt at the same level for several months. Once a new spending bill was passed that raised the debt limit, our total debt would go up by several hundred billion in a single day. On August 6 of last year, the debt rose by $318 billion. On the 7th of this month, it rose by $175 billion.
Because the fiscal year ends on September 30, the Treasury has been able to make our annual deficit appear smaller by moving the debt to the next calendar year. The government claims that our deficit was only $438, $585, and $665 billion over the past three fiscal years. The actual deficit never dropped below $600 billion. Two years ago, the national debt was $1.6 trillion below where it is now, which means an annual shortfall of $800 billion.
We have had huge deficits for so long, the folks in Washington DC are no longer bothering to hide the red ink. In December, they cut taxes by $1.2 trillion and made no effort to balance the revenue loss with spending cuts. They just passed a spending bill that will add $300 billion to the national debt. Trump wants to spend another $1 trillion on roads and bridges.
The President’s budget office is tasked with the responsibility of producing a budget projection for the next year. The spending numbers are always too low because they are based on wildly optimistic guesses on revenue and spending that typically promises to balance the budget in 10 years. President Donald Trump has just proposed a $4 trillion-plus budget for next year that projects a $1 trillion federal deficit and makes no promise to ever balance the federal ledger.
The White House budget projects that we will reach an unprecedented $30 trillion in 2028. Since it is seemingly impossible to maintain positive growth for a decade, the actual debt will most likely be $40 trillion.
It’s absolutely stunning that we are having $1 trillion deficits in a time of positive growth. During the next recession, our deficits will easily be $2 to $3 trillion. The current forecast has Moody’s, one of our key rating firms, warning that it may have to downgrade our debt.
The ability of our government to double our national debt once every decade would seem to indicate that we have discovered the secret to never-ending financial prosperity. All nations that have engaged in this level of reckless deficit spending have had their currency destroyed by hyperinflation. The only thing that seems different about our case is the extreme methods the Treasury and Federal Reserve governors have utilized to avoid calamity.
There are signs that we are running out of options. The Dow Jones suffered two thousand-point declines in recent days. Traders became concerned about the recent rise in interest rates and inflation. The 10-year bond is getting very close to the 3% mark. Soaring bond rates would mean higher interest costs for the government. When you have a debt of $20 trillion, an increase of just a few percentage points could make it impossible for us to service that debt.
The Treasury is at the point where it needs to convince bondholders to roll over $1.4 trillion, and find buyers for a fresh $1 trillion in new bonds each year. If rates rise sharply, people will suffer huge losses on their bonds, making it unlikely for them to buy more.
The only explanation for why the debt market has not collapsed is Bible Prophecy. God seems to be setting the world up for a major economic disaster that will allow the Antichrist to step in as a financial savior. Until the time is right, He will hold things together. Because we are in such a profound state of financial peril, I think time is very short.
“And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark—the name of the beast or the number of its name” (Revelation 13:16-17).
–Todd
Globalism’s Religious Rider
All the beautiful pageantry was there. Excitement and joy were on the faces of the colorfully clad athletes from around the globe. Attention of the world’s media focused on how wonderful was the fact that the two Korean youths were marching together and getting along as if peace and love had overruled hatred and division–all in all, a kumbaya moment in the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.
Not far into the ceremony, a familiar anthem to the brotherhood of man swept everyone involved into a euphoric high. The music invited us all to Imagine all the world as one…
Neo-Babel builders construct even their music in a way that clearly demonstrates the luciferian desire to usurp God’s throne. John Lennon’s universally popular song could easily be mistaken as portraying the biblically prophesied millennial reign of Jesus Christ. But Lennon, like Lenin, preached man-made heaven on earth–an imitative mockery of the true Messiah’s coming kingdom. The words and melody are infectious.
Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…
Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one…
Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one.
Lennon, who once assured us that the Beatles were “bigger than Jesus Christ,” is a bit off in his assessment given through his lyrics. He says “no religion too.” He wanted us to “imagine” a world without religious restraint. Only then could we all “be as one.”
That particular sentiment–“no religion too”–will have to be rewritten if it is to fit what is coming when the first beast of Revelation chapter 13 and the second beast bring their version of heaven on earth to the planet.
It will be a religious system of the most intrusive sort. Here is a brief look from Scripture about that system:
So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. (Revelation 17:3-6)
The angel who showed John the Revelator these things told him–and us–that this whorish woman who rides the beast sits upon seven mountains or hills. The beast she rides is a composite of world kingdoms of the past and one that is yet to come. The last kingdom and the one who rules it will be Antichrist.
We know from Revelation 13 that his sidekick will be a false prophet–a religious leader–who will orchestrate the worship by everyone on earth of this eighth king who will come up from the bottomless pit.
My friend Dave Hunt wrote all about this eventuality in “A Woman Rides the Beast.”
All of this said, it is more than interesting that the world’s most lauded religious leader in Christendom has waded in on how America needs to be brought under the world community’s control if there is to be heaven on earth at any time in the future.
Pope Francis told the Italian newspaper La Repubblica that the United States of America has “a distorted vision of the world” and Americans must be ruled by a world government, as soon as possible, “for their own good.”
The Pope made the observation in an interview with La Repubblica reporter Eugenio Scalfari.
“Last Thursday, I got a call from Pope Francis,” Scalfari reported. “It was about noon, and I was at the newspaper when my phone rang.”
He said Pope Francis had been watching Putin and Trump at the G20 and had become agitated. The Pope demanded to see him at four that afternoon, according to a Google translation of the Italian report.
“Pope Francis told me to be very concerned about the meeting of the G20,” Scalfari wrote.
As translated into English by Agence France Presse, which picked up the story, the Pope said “I am afraid there are very dangerous alliances between powers who have a distorted view of the world: America and Russia, China and North Korea, Russia and Assad in the war in Syria.”
“The danger concerns immigration,” the Pope continued to La Repubblica. “Our main and unfortunately growing problem in the world today is that of the poor, the weak, the excluded, which includes migrants.”
“This is why the G20 worries me: It mainly hits immigrants,” Pope Francis said, according to AFP.
Pope Francis’s idea that Americans would be better off under a world government doesn’t stop there. The radical leftist pontiff also went on record stating that Europe should become one country under one government. (“Pope Francis: World Government Must Rule U.S. ‘For Their Own Good,’” JEWSNEWS, Rapture Ready News, Feb. 11, 2018)
As we near the midnight of world history on God’s prophetic clock, we see the four horsemen of Apocalypse getting set to ride. Might we be seeing the woman that rides the beast of Revelation chapter 17 getting ready to sit upon its back?
–Terry