Bankruptcy Alert! Interest on Debt Now Greater Than "Defense" Budget
America was never meant to be an empire. It was meant to remain the "land of the free." Empires are the antithesis of freedom, and they always end up going broke. Alas, after 100 years of foreign misadventures, we Americans find ourselves saddled with the biggest government in history and an empire that's going broke! Just the interest on the national debt is now higher than the extremely bloated "defense" budget. We all know what happens when interest payments overwhelm, right? Liquidation.
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With us today, we have Chris Rosini, our co-host.
Chris, good to see you this morning.
Great to be with you, Dr. Paul.
Good.
We'll be talking about serious problems.
The government's spending too much money.
Oh, that's not very newsworthy, is it?
But more than ever, and it looks very serious.
So people do grow into satisfaction and failing to look at the things that they're facing every single day.
People are waking up.
But the debt and the spending is totally out of control.
So we'll talk about that a little bit.
And Chris, you found a special little statistic that I think we'll be talking about in a little bit.
And that shows just the interest on the debt is more than we spend on our national security safety, you know, the military budget.
And that is, you know, getting up there.
And maybe that's an alert signal.
But sometimes, you know, even over the years, you think, oh, they're going to wake up.
This is so astounding.
People have to wake up.
And the politicians, if the people wake up, the politicians will, and they will come up with a balanced budget and they'll get together.
The Republicans and the Democrats will say, okay, cut our programs by 10% and cut the Republicans by 10% and the budget is balanced.
Well, that never happens and it's not going to happen.
And that's one thing that we're going to be talking about.
But the one thing when you live in times like this where they resort to monetizing debt, it does one thing.
It devalues the currency that we're working with.
And the currency, of course, is the dollar.
It's the World Reserve currency.
It's very, very important.
It has given us special benefits that we were undeserving of.
We became very wealthy.
We became an empire.
We, you know, in a way, financially ruled the world.
But things are changing now.
And I think the statistic we're going to talk about today is evidence of changing times.
But that is it.
But when a currency is challenged, like the dollar is being challenged now, and there are precise governments that are getting together and trying to overthrow the dollar.
It won't be easy, but it eventually will come one way or the other.
And that's what we have to look forward to.
But in the meantime, if you're looking for something that's rather stable compared to fiat money, when you think of fiat money, our dollar became fiat, total fiat, in 1971 means we lost 98% of its value.
Well, if you look at what the Federal Reserve has done to the dollar, what has it done?
It took gold from $20 an ounce when the Federal Reserve was established up to $2,000 an ounce.
So I would say people should pay more attention.
And that's one of the reasons we partner with Birch Gold Grew, because that's what they specialize in.
Trying to get people to realize that they need to be protected against something that might be much worse.
And I anticipate things will get worse before it gets better.
Although I'm optimistic that if we did the right thing and it's not complicated, some of the rules that we could follow, that this wouldn't be too tough.
But that's the big question.
Will they do it?
How much effort?
They haven't responded to some of the problems we've had in the past.
But the problems are building, whether it's in foreign policy, domestic policy spending, or the rest.
So that's why having some information about gold is important.
So if you look at the number on the screen, it says Ron 989898.
And that's a line that you can call up and get some special information.
It will be free information from Birch Gold that will help you understand the best ways to invest in gold and protect your assets unless you're determined that, oh, well, the Dow Jones, I think Dow Jones looks like a good time.
I'm going to sell my house and I'm going to buy the dog of Dow Jones out.
So, no, but if you're concerned like we are about the debt and the continuation of it, and it isn't like just one party spends all the money, believe me.
Both parties are spending the money and they both endorse deficits and wars and all this nonsense.
So, this is the reason we work with a gold company that suggests there are ways that you can protect against a disaster that we're in the middle of and is going to get a lot worse.
And that is with Birch Gold.
And the number to ring is Ron 989898.
And they will send us, send you some information about what you might do to help protect your investments.
But, you know, it's something pretty interesting that they use a statistic that we're talking about today.
And Chris will talk about that some more on the interest of the debt being greater than the amount of money we spend on the military.
And they call that defense spending.
The only thing I do when I talk about this, I try to avoid using the generous comment that, well, we have to have defense spending, don't we?
Well, I've come to the conclusion, this nonsense about defense spending is not defense.
It's offensive.
We buy weapons, pass them around the world, and there's big profiteering in it.
The lobbyists in the military-industrial complex, very, very powerful.
So, and we will slip up, and I will today, and end up calling it DOD defense spending.
And that is the comparison of the chart.
But the truth is, put that in quotes.
Defense spending doesn't mean that it's going to help defend us.
It's going to increase our chances of getting involved in a war, and it's going to increase our chances of suffering economic ramifications from getting involved in something that we shouldn't have.
And their concern about not following the Constitution hasn't entered the mind of about 98% of the members of Congress, which is something, Chris, that someday we hope to stir up interest in that to help solve these problems.
Chris.
Very good, Dr. Paul.
Yes.
And if our studio engineer can bring up the chart that we're talking about, I'm going to ask our viewers to sit down for this one because it's a serious one.
And if you're on the treadmill at the gym, maybe slow the treadmill down.
If you can see those two lines, the white line is the annual, you know, quote-unquote defense spending.
And the red line is the interest on the debt, which has hit $34 trillion recently.
And you can see that now interest payments are more than the bloated defense spending.
And this is just defense spending.
This is not Medicare, Social Security, and all the other promises that people expect from the government.
And as Dr. Paul just alluded to, this is offense spending.
This is empire spending.
If we had actual national defense, national, our nation defending our nation, it could be done at a fraction of the price.
You just defend our nation.
But that's not what our country does.
We have a thousand military bases peppered all over the planet.
We get in wars on a daily basis.
We read about them.
So this is not defense.
This is 800 billion in empire spending.
But now the interest in paying for all this is getting out of control.
Defense Spending Empire Cost00:02:48
And unfortunately, this has been a joint effort.
Voting has not helped the American people one bit.
Both parties, presidents of both parties, have been a part of this.
If you go back to Obama, I got the numbers.
It was $9 trillion that he added in eight years of his presidency.
Trump, $7.8 trillion in four years of his presidency, half of the time of Obama.
And now Biden is over $6 trillion so far.
So both parties, you know, they really care less about what anybody thinks about these wars.
They are going for broke, and we're the ones that are going broke.
It really goes along with my theory that bipartisanship is a facade.
It's a fake because it doesn't happen.
In visibility, it doesn't.
People print, oh, I work with so-and-so, so it's bipartisan.
Matter of fact, I think bipartisanship, if it's true bipartisanship, just to do it to do it, both sides have to sacrifice some of their sincere beliefs in order to bring people together.
I believe in bringing people together and working with another person who happens to agree on issues.
But to be bipartisan and go along with that, that's what they're doing.
But both sides overlook the whole problem of the debt.
Both sides overlook the problem of the monetary issue, that you shouldn't be able to print money at will.
And deficits don't bother either side, even though there's some on each side that might say something.
But that doesn't happen.
It just continues to go on.
And that is a big problem.
Now, on that chart, you saw the line that was going straight up was the interest.
It's straight up.
Charts that shows lines going straight up.
Oh, you know what?
So often they go straight down, too.
But that line might not go straight down because they're going to keep printing money.
The line may go straight up, but what will be going down is the real value of the dollar.
Sure, they can print forever and in nominal terms of the dollar, but that doesn't mean like the dollar at one time when the Fed started was $20 an ounce, but now it's $2,000 an ounce.
So that's what the trick is.
But in real money, when a line is going, that's over speculation or anticipation or whatever.
But straight lines that go straight up is a warning sign.
That's really what my point is, that it doesn't last.
But in this case, it might end by going straight up more, but a dollar that just loses more, and although the dollar has lost 98% of its value since 1971, when we had no linkage to gold.
Dollar Decline Warning00:15:11
And the government's in the business of deceiving the people.
You know, if you listen to the broadcast for the campaign going on, you think things are wonderful.
We had an employment report today, and things didn't sound too bad, new jobs, until you looked at what kind of jobs were they?
How many full-time jobs did they add out of that great number they have?
Well, they didn't add any.
They lost full-time private jobs.
So it's terrible.
But you got to really be careful to look for something that the government reports so you can believe in it.
And that's a job.
So be cautious all the time when they start telling you what is necessary.
Because they just think of the lies told about COVID.
And they had a goal and they achieved their goal, taking over medicine and showing how powerful they are.
Getting people to join in and go to war.
You've got to be frightened and scared because they're going to attack us and bomb the country.
And so they're always going to exaggerate.
And they exaggerate on the positive side and say, things aren't so bad, especially an incumbent president.
They just say, boy, we just had the greatest four years in the world.
But the American people, I think, are waking up because they themselves aren't feeling good like the government tells them they should be feeling.
And truth will win out.
Excellent, Dr. Paul.
Yes.
And empires in general are largely illusions.
The so-called, you know, it's not one big happy family, these so-called allies that we have.
They have to be bought off and bribed with our money, of course.
We go to work, our money is taken from us, and it goes out as foreign aid, you know, or they have to be coerced to stay in line.
But after enough time goes by and the finances of the empire are strained like ours are, and it loses wars like ours has for decades, the most recent Ukraine.
But, you know, they're so good at shifting to other parts of the world that you forget about all the losses behind you.
But those losses are there and they all count.
And they all have cost us dearly.
So our empire suffers from both finances that are strained and lost wars.
And what happens after time goes by is these so-called allies, they start to feel a little bit freer.
You know, they start to peel off.
They feel emboldened that, you know, maybe it's safe.
We could get out of here now or get under the protection of another major power.
And that's what we see with the BRICS, which are major powers, major nuclear powers in and of themselves.
And I saw that January 1st, they added these five countries, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE.
So these are very significant countries that have now gone over to the BRICS.
They obviously feel that it's safe enough for them to do so.
And if only our country could just, you know, quit it.
But they don't.
The thing about power, and we saw it with COVID, is they never ever want to quit.
Even when it was up, the jig was up with the vaccines and the lockdowns and the masks.
You still had the clingers.
No, keep going.
Put those masks on.
Keep getting updated.
They never ever want to quit.
And that's what it feels like, our empire.
It doesn't want to quit.
And this is not good for us because we end up paying the price.
Very good.
You know, bankruptcy is something that I've talked about for a long time because we were moving in that direction.
And technically, we have been bankrupt in this country for a while, but we can limp along because of our power and strength and the various things that have benefited us in having the reserve currency.
But there has been and is a financial bankruptcy.
People right now, you know, the government tells us we should feel great about our finances, but the people that I meet are always concerned.
And they're not just poor people living in a slum.
I mean, they're average middle-class people who aren't positive and totally satisfied with the way things are going.
But I think mixed in here is something else that adds to it, and that's a moral bankruptcy, because people now resolve, they now depend on the DEI and the ESG and all this Mickey Mouse stuff that is imposed because it's part of the Marxist movement is to overwhelm and do it all in the name of humanitarianism.
That's what is so begalling.
They declare they are the beholders of humanity.
And what they are is they're introducing things.
And I keep thinking the real example of what DEI leads to is what happened at Harvard.
Harvard is a great institution and there was a lot of education there.
They have had a great reputation.
But I'll tell you what, the most educated thing they've ever done was educate to the world what DEI is.
And that's if you depend on DEI on how you pick management and let people get ahead and reject outright merit.
Meritocracy is, oh, that's illegal.
You go to jail.
You get canceled for that.
So that is a bankruptcy.
But the message that came out, this has to awaken a lot of people, you know, when they saw that.
This example said by the leaders of Harvard is the whole idea that you can't accept this because they say that if they do this, there will be a bad time.
So they go over it.
They cover it up and they support all this.
But it is a bankruptcy.
And I think where this comes from, the financial bankruptcy, moral bankruptcy, the degrading of morality, generally, a lot of people understand that.
But the thing that gets mixed up in here and allows people to do this with a clear conscience is they are able to deny there is such a thing as a higher law, a natural law, and that nothing restrains them, especially when they have control of the order, the economic order and the moral order.
And that is what their goal is in Marxism.
Their job then is to set the standards of what is right and wrong.
They don't even call it right and wrong, but there's this goal who will be the boss.
And it's the people who are bosses are the authoritarians.
But they have to deny there is truth, and that's why they're called nihilists.
And that is very true.
I often wonder how people who've committed so much evil with warmongering and torturing people and doing policies that everybody knows very stupid and people are injured and hurt by this.
Why do they do this?
Well, the one thing is, is they don't have a conscience, because the ultimate goal is to save the world.
And that is it.
But they are in total denial that there is such a thing as knowing right and wrong, good and bad.
And that is one step above the authoritarianism of government.
The idea that, oh, well, that's true, but we want the government to tell us what is right and wrong.
Sure, have the FBI and a few other people try to sort it out and find out what happened on January 6th.
It doesn't work.
The morality has to come to an individual.
And there's too many in Washington that are in total denial of this.
And believe me, they don't lose any sleep at all with the policies that go bad.
They couldn't sleep at night if they realized that the policy, just in my lifetime, how much has gone on and how many innocent people died?
How many innocent Americans have died?
How many innocent people were the results of our bombs and our financial system?
People, if they knew, and they have to know that their policies have failed, but they lie themselves up, but they don't go to bed uncomfortable.
They don't have a conscience.
And it's something that they learn and they adapt to because I think if they had to admit the truth, they would be pretty miserable people.
Very good, Dr. Paul.
I will finish up with my closing thoughts.
And I was thinking, how could I close today?
Obviously, we can see that this is a bad situation that it inches towards us and sometimes even leaps towards us.
So how do we as individuals treat it?
And I thought, maybe there are some things that we really don't have the power to stop.
And I thought it's very similar to like a hurricane.
I live in an area that gets hurricanes here and there.
And you don't go out there and say, hey, go turn around.
It's not going to listen to you, obviously.
So the best thing you can do is get out of the way as best as you can.
And as this is happening around us, we have to get out of the way the best that we can.
Not be like the empire is.
Be the exact opposite.
So that means get out of debt or pay down debt as best as you can.
You know, every debt that's every dollar that you pay down in your debt is a dollar of freedom that you've given to yourself.
And if you're dependent on the government and expect it to take care of you, it may be time to rethink that because it's in big trouble financially.
And, you know, one thing that the empire is, it's a busybody.
It's the New York and California of the world, you know, imposing itself with all its bad ideas on everyone else.
So the opposite of that is to not be a busybody yourself.
Hey, handle what's in front of you, what has been given to you to handle.
And, you know, that's the way to help yourself because there is no way to cure all the ills of the world.
We don't have that power.
And finally, I thought, you know, is to arm yourself with the truth as best you can.
Nobody has perfect truth, but we can always strive for more of it.
And not just economic and liberty, which is what we cover on this show, which is very, very important.
There's more.
There are more foundational things to being a human being.
We have a major morality deficit in our nation, a major health deficit.
So truth in those areas, if those could be provided to people, are valuable.
And that's when, you know, when things start to fall apart, all the people that ignore you now will be looking for answers.
And it's our job, the best we can, to provide those answers to help them along as, you know, times get tough.
Very good.
You know, the problems seem overwhelming.
And people, when they look at this and we describe the problems and try to wake people up, and it is frightening at times.
And they say, well, you guys are too pessimistic and all.
Well, I don't conclude that you should be pessimistic.
You should conclude that if you understand the disease, the political disease and the economic nonsense, that you should become more optimistic because you find out policies are wrong.
We can identify policy.
Fiat money is a big problem.
Metal, money made out of metal makes a difference.
And personal liberty is important.
So all these things, it's not that complicated to solve some of these problems.
But if you look at only the problems, they're overwhelming.
How are we going to balance the budget?
How are we going to get all the troops home?
How are we going to pay the debt we really owe?
And it goes on and on because every day the conditions in the world, certainly now in foreign policy, is deteriorating.
It's getting worse.
How many wars have we have today?
Well, we have three major areas that we're engaged in.
We're not going to walk away.
And that is Ukraine.
That we've been there spending over $100 billion.
And then we have the Middle East, Palestinians and Israel.
That's not going to go away.
That looks like it's going to spread.
Our fight with Iran is going to continue, unfortunately.
And now there's people who say, well, the real problem is China.
We need more ships over there on their borders.
And you say, well, that's overall.
We can't do that.
Well, I have a solution.
I have a suggestion for two laws or two principles for us to accept.
And if you'd set that aside and ask people, well, do you accept this principle?
Most of them will say, yeah, that sounds pretty good.
And those two things would be dealing with the spending and the finance and what happens to the Fed.
We've talked a lot about that.
And to get rid of it with a pen, just, oh, it's gone.
We can get rid of it.
That's not going to happen.
And what could we do?
What law could we pass that would really make all the difference in the world?
Well, it's not complex.
And there are some that argued about this at the time of the founding.
Matter of fact, Jefferson argued against the central bank.
And the Hamiltonians won that argument.
But the one law would be that governments can never monetize debt, government debt or anybody's debt.
They shouldn't have the power of the purse to just print more money for debt.
So that would be one thing.
Government is prohibited from buying government debt.
And that would make all the difference in the world.
It would shake things up.
I know that.
But what is coming is going to shake things up too.
And that, I believe, is going to be much worse.
But there's one other principle.
That's the first principle.
Just quit printing money to cover debt because you'll get more debt for sure.
But the other one is the Bastiat principle that I've talked about a lot.
And that is it's not complex.
In the law, his basic principle is that if you as an individual can't steal from another individual, why do we let the government do it?
Right now, there's probably more stealing when you look at what's going on in our streets and how they tearing up the streets and the mobs are tearing down stores.
There's a lot more of it.
But basically, over the centuries, and even now, I would say the very, very large majority of American people and many others, if they're even just halfway civilized, they're going to say, no, you don't have the right to come into my house and take what you want.
You don't have a right to come in here and take my food.
You don't have a right to take my vehicle.
So people say, yeah, that's right.
Governments Cannot Steal00:02:14
And they would agree with that.
But what they don't think about is the extension of that law.
So, well, I know I can't go into my neighbor's house, and he has a lot of automobiles.
I know that would be stealing.
So I'm going to send the government in.
The government has the authority to do that.
Go in and steal his money and have all kinds of efforts that go in and, you know, through the system of taxation and controls and regulations and special privileges and how we go through the appropriation process.
That is all there.
But I would say that governments can't do anything that you and I can't do because it's wrong, and that is steal from our neighbors or hurt our neighbors.
We are not allowed to do that because then it becomes uncivilized.
But as I say, most people agree with that.
But all of a sudden you say, well, the governments can't do that too.
And then you start looking at how much activity does the government participate in where they're literally taking stuff from one group and giving it to another.
That's all that warmongering, all that spending stuff that goes on.
That goes into the hands of the very rich, the arms manufacturers.
But that principle, if we could just take the Bastiat principle and apply it to the government so they can't do anything we can't do because it would be wrong, I think we would gain an awful lot.
Also, we could rein in the real effort to just keep this cycle going of spend, spend, spend, print, print, print, is you have to stop that by saying government does not have the right to monetize and print money just because somebody created a debt.
I think that would be a major step.
And just recognizing that creates optimism because, you know, it isn't that complicated.
We only have to do two things and things would become much better.
Not in a day or two, but it would be better because the direction we're going in now, we're on the verge of things getting much, much worse.
And that's what we're trying to prevent.
Liberty is far superior to any of this authoritarianism that we're seeing today.