저자: PeterSchiff · 외국인
요약 보기
미국 재정적자와 사회보장제도가 폰지 구조라 인플레이션 또는 달러 기축통화 지위 상실이 불가피하다고 주장. 지금처럼 수입 상품을 달러로 사는 구조가 무너지면 물가 급등, 신용 축소, 대량 실업이 온다고 경고. 해법으로 정부 지출 대폭 삭감과 세금·규제 축소, 국내 생산 복원을 제시하며 정치적으로는 어렵다고 봄. 특정 자산에 대한 매수·매도 언급은 없음.
다듬은 글
Not only are things going to be much more expensive because we no longer have the products, but you're not going to be able to put them on a credit card. You're going to have to buy the products and pay for them with cash. Forget about this buy now, pay later crap. That's over. You got to buy now and pay now.
And you got to pay three, four, five times what you used to pay. If you look at where interest rates are and what the interest on the national debt is likely to be at the end of next year, we really need to cut government spending by about 50% in order to balance the budget. That shows you how out of whack it is and how far we're living beyond our means.
Um, nobody is willing to cut the budget at all, let alone by 50%. So, you know, there is no political way out of this. It's just not going to happen. So, the reality is inflation is what's going to happen, right? The the the money is going to lose a lot of value. The key is going to be to prevent hyperinflation.
That's going to be the key to prevent the dollar from losing all of its value. So people are going to lose the value of government benefits. So let's say you're getting social security. The real value of those benefits at a minimum is going to be cut in half. You know that that's reality. But the worst case would be if the value of your social security benefits go down by 90% or 99%.
Right? So they're basically worthless because the currency is completely destroyed. So that's the outcome that we have to prevent. But I don't think there's any political chance that we're going to do the right thing. I mean, what I would do personally is I I I would I would give a big haircut to everybody, including the bond holders.
I I would not pay the treasuries off 100% on the dollar. I you know, we'd have to restructure because everybody has to participate in the pain, including people who bought US treasuries. And if that means US treasuries are are downgraded, well, that's what it means. You know, I don't it doesn't matter.
Uh because the government can't pay because if we're going to cut Social Security, if we're going to cut Medicare, if we're going to cut government pensions, if we're going to ask middle class Americans to take a big haircut, we have to ask wealthy investors, especi, you know, they took a risk. They loan money to the US government.
The US government was clearly bankrupt. You know, they they deserve what they get. First of all, the biggest threat is that the pensions aren't even pensions. It's a Ponzi. It's not a pension. If it was a pension, it would be funded. Now, some pensions are underfunded, and there's problems with those.
But social security isn't funded at all. It's not like it's underfunded. It doesn't have any funding. Its funding is future taxpayers, right? So, it's not like there's any income that's being generated on investments that were made with money. on a normal pension. If I pay into a pension, when I retire, I'm getting my own money back plus the the income that's been earned uh through investments of my money that I've been putting in over the years.
Well, when when somebody gets money from social security, they're not getting back their own money. Their own money was spent, you know, a long time ago. They're getting back the new money that somebody else puts in. And the only chance that new guy has of getting his money is if the government finds somebody in the future to put that money in, right?
So, it's a whole Ponzi scheme, but it can't work. You know, you can look at the nature of the Ponzi. When it first started out, there were like 50 people paying taxes for every one person that was collecting a benefit. So, okay, it worked. Now, it's more like 2 to one. You pretty soon it'll be one to one, right?
It can't work. You you can't uh one person can't support himself and an entirely other additional person. The numbers just don't make it. And so it's all going to be paid for by printing money, which just destroys the value of everybody's money, not just the social security money. When the government wipes out social security benefits through inflation, it wipes out everything.
All dollars lose value. Doesn't matter where they are, even if they're stuffed under your mattress, right? They're all going to lose. But I still don't think the mainstream really understands the significance of what this means and how life in America will change so profoundly if the dollars or when the dollar's reserve currency status is lost.
Well, first for consumers, the reason that our uh consumptionbased economy works is because of the dollar status. You know, we're able to export dollars and import real goods. We have a trillion dollar a year trade deficit and we pay for all that merchandise just by printing money. So we don't have to expend any resources yet we can import a trillion dollars worth of goods that the rest of the world uh consume considerable researches resources producing.
So the first thing that's going to happen is we're not going to be able to run these trade deficits anymore. Our trade is going to have to be brought into balance. And that means basically let's say a trillion dollars worth of merchandise every year disappears from our shelves and there's really nothing to replace it with.
So what's left is just going to be that much more expensive because not that you know many people will be able to buy what's there, right? So you prices have to go way up because the supply of goods has gone way down. Also credit is going to become far less plentiful because the reverse of this, right?
We've been able to send out these dollars that we just create out of thin air and get a trillion dollars a year worth of goods that are produced in factories by real workers, right? And then we give them these dollars and then what do the Chinese or everybody else do with those dollars? They lend them back to us, right?
They buy mortgage back securities. They buy securitized credit card debt or all these uh debt instruments that are created. They they buy them. So they supply us with goods and then they loan us the money right back after they after they get paid. And so what's going to happen is we're not going to get the goods anymore, but we're also not going to get the credit.
And so interest consumer credit rates are going to skyrocket. So not only are things going to be much more expensive because we no longer have the products, but you're not going to be able to put them on a credit card. You're going to have to buy the products and pay for them with cash. Forget about this buy now pay later crap.
That's over. You got to buy now and pay now. And you got to pay three, four, five times what you used to pay. Yeah. And of course, a lot of people are going to lose their jobs. There's going to be massive unemployment initially when the dollar loses its reserve currency status because that reserve status has supported this consumer economy that is really just a gigantic distribution center where we import goods from the rest of the world and then we distribute it uh throughout the country.
And you have all these stores that people go to to buy all this imported stuff that has been, you know, distributed. So it's it's all logistics and shipping and retail, but when you take away the underlying products that all this service sector economy is based on, then everything that was built on top crashes down.
So if you don't have any more merchandise on the shelves at Walmart, you don't need all these Walmarts anymore. There's too many of them. We don't we got nothing to put on the shelves. We don't need all the people that work there. We don't need all the people that were delivering the goods. We don't need all, you know, all all this stuff collapses when you pull out the bottom, which is the stuff.
And so unemployment is going to be widespread. We're going to have to rebuild a legitimate economy that is self-sufficient, meaning that if we want to consume, we got to produce. If we want to borrow, somebody else in America has to save. We can't rely on the world's manufacturing capacity and we can't rely on the world's savings.
We have to rely on ourselves like we did in the 1940s, the 1950s, 1960s, or go further back when we were an exporting nation, when we were a creditor nation. We have to get back to what where we were. But we can't get back there with today's level of government. We need a dramatic reduction in the size and scope of our government.
We need lower taxes. We need fewer regulations. But in order to make that possible, we need massive cuts in government spending. Now, again, if we don't get that, we just get inflation that wipes everything out and then we're going to have to start all over again. Uh but it's going to be very difficult to start over again, especially given the way the political winds have been blowing, given how dumbed down the electorate is.
It's very scary uh to be in this situation because America may end up going allin on socialism. I mean, we've been, you know, going down that road uh to surfom for a long time and we may finally get there, you know, and and and just blame all this on freedom and capitalism and just say the solution is the government has complete control over the US economy and, you know, then, you know, then we're Cuba, you know, or Soviet Union or something like that.
I mean, so it's it's it's very scary where where this might may eventually head.
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