What Comes After A Trillion?
Cash is trash. Or soon will be.
Don’t believe me? There’s something called the U.S. National Debt Clock and I’d encourage everyone to pay it a visit on their computer or smart phone. As I write this on May 12, 2021, the U.S National Debt is $28,281,564,802. This is over $28 trillion, but by the time this is printed, it will be over a hundred billion more.
I can’t give a more accurate number because the debt clock is spinning faster than my grandpa in his grave after he heard about the sorry state of America’s finances. The way the current administration is printing money, I don’t think it’s too early to discuss what comes after a trillion. It’s quadrillion and it’s only a matter of time before we reach this miserable milestone.
Let me put this in perspective. A billion dollars in hundred dollar bills weighs 11 tons, so a trillion dollars would weigh 22 million pounds.
Or, consider this. If a person spent a dollar each day since the day Christ was born, they would not have spent a billion dollars. They would have a quarter of this billion left to go on spending for another 760 years.
Or, one could look at it this way. A million dollars in thousand dollar bills would be eight inches high. A billion dollars in thousand dollar bills is 666 feet high, or 110 feet taller than the Washington Monument. A hundred billion dollars in thousand dollar bills is 66,600 feet high, equivalent to 12 miles.
Our national debt at close to $30 trillion in one thousand dollar bills stacked to the sky would be 3,600 miles high. But, since the U.S. stopped printing the $1,000 bill, the largest denomination printed is the $100 bill, so our national debt would be 36,000 miles high in legal tender. Keep in mind this is stacked money, not placed end to end.
And all this borrowed money is backed by… well, by nothing. And $7 trillion dollars of this debt is held by foreign countries – primarily China. When our federal debt is compared to our gross domestic product (GDP), one will find that in 1980, our debt was 34 percent of GDP. Guess what it is now… 128 percent. If a normal person operated in this manner, they would be in jail and the bank would grab everything they had faster than green grass goes through a goose.
The only way our government can even pay the interest on all this debt is to print money faster than they borrow it, which basically means cash is trash. At the current rate of money printing, we’re headed for a society where everyone’s a millionaire but no one has enough money to buy an ice cream cone. Have you seen those old photos of Germans pushing wheelbarrows of money down the street to buy a loaf of bread? That’s us down the road.
So where are the smart people putting their money? The second wealthiest man in the country – even after his impending divorce – is Bill Gates of Microsoft fame. Where’s Bill putting his money? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not a Certificate of Deposit that pays a third of a percent or treasury bills backed by thin air. No, Bill Gates is buying farmland, and lots of it – 242,000 acres of American farmland at last count.
John Malone, who made his billions in telecommunications, years ago displaced Ted Turner as the largest landowner in America. This financial genius couldn’t wait to get some of his money out of the stock market and into ranchland. He’s currently worth $7.9 billion and owns 2.2 million acres of land, including the historic and massive Bell Ranch and the historic TO Ranch, both in New Mexico. Under the name Silver Spur Ranches, he also owns big ranches Wyoming, Colorado and overseas as well.
Money talks, and these days it’s saying to invest in things which produce real wealth or has real value. And no, I’m not talking about Bitcoin.
I don’t know when this Ponzi borrowing scheme comes unwound, I just know that it has to. So take the money out from under the mattresses and buy something that will let you sleep better at night. Perform a cashectomy and remove all money from the bank to buy more land, cows, gold, silver and ammunition.
