Alternative Realities on the Debt Limit and Paradigms. Debt Limit, what if it was a real thing and not a weapon of mass destruction?

Stephanie (Bell) Kelton’s white paper: https://www.levyinstitute.org/pubs/wp244.pdf

#DebtCeiling #LearnMMT #Neoliberalism #SocialSecurity #Greenspan #PaulRyan #MintTheCoin #Bonds

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Everybody, it is Steve the Rogue Scholar, and today

we are going to touch on something.

Um, that most of us probably shouldn't have to give a shit about,

and that is the death ceiling.

And I'm really annoyed.

I'm just, let me just be really frank here, really annoyed that

this is even a conversation.

I'm annoyed that we have to have it over and over again.

I'm annoyed that it's used as a weapon.

I'm annoyed that we continue to believe things.

In fact, even the deputy, uh, secretary of the Treasury, um, says nonsense about

borrowing money, uh, the US government's ability to borrow money and and so forth.

Um, there's a, there's an entire thing, man.

There's an entire kinda like narrative around this.

Um, you know, the death ceiling construct went all the way back to World War I.

In fact, Stephanie Kelton was just on M P R talking about this.

Um, she got to sit around with people that weren't necessarily,

uh, straight shooters.

Um, but the reality of it all is, is that the dead ceiling

was set up during World War I.

It was supposed to facilitate and help with making sure that bills were paid

and paid on time in the midst of war, um, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

But here's the thing.

It's a statutory law.

It's a law that came much later.

We have a constitutional amendment, the 14th Amendment that says that the United

States debt shall not be questioned.

It, it, the validity of it shall never be questioned, okay?

And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the United States

Constitution has a higher standing than some random law passed later.

So the question is, how will Joe Biden approach this?

Because whether you would think this is real, and they're all sitting there

really, really trying to work it out.

They're working it out.

They're, they're, they're hanging out and they're, they're wrestling with these

ideas and they're trying to work it out.

If you really believe that, okay, we'll talk that way too.

Or if you believe this is political theater and they pop these things up every

so often to keep us on pins and needles.

Uh, and then they do whatever hostage taking they're going to do.

In fact, I think, uh, what's his name?

McConnell recently said, this is a hostage you want to take.

Man, it's worth taking.

There's, there's value to be gleaned from the hostage taking that is

the debt ceiling, but, If you also listen, I want to take you back

momentarily to an interview I did with Raw and Gray on the subject.

And he talked about the statutory limits of various types of debts, the, the types

of debt limit for each type of thing.

And there was, you know, bond issuance from the treasury.

There was coins, which is why you hear typically conversation about

minting the coin because the coins, there is no debt limit on that

there, there's no borrowing per se.

We can just simply create a coin of any, um, denomination and any value

that we want and simply deposit and be done with it right now.

Obviously people like Randall Ray have spoken, um, in other papers

that, hey, this meant the coin things and neat idea to get rid of this.

However, I'd like to attack it straight up and just get rid of the thing.

The problem is, is that why in the world would Republicans give up

the opportunity to hijack spending?

And also why would Democrats give up the ability to hijack spending when they

can go ahead when they're out of power and they can kind of play games with,

uh, the Republicans in the reverse.

Let's be fair, typically these games are conducted by the Republicans,

and that could be just the cosplay of the government that they're

doing, or that could be real.

My, my belief system doesn't allow me to take this stuff too seriously

because when I hear elected officials talking about United States government

borrowing money, I immediately think this person is either fucking lying,

they're an idiot, or they're a paid actor.

There is no valid excuse for saying the US government borrows money from anyone.

It literally is the patent holder.

It's the creator of a unit of account of, of a inch, uh,

you know, a pound, whatever.

So why in the world would the United States government borrow money?

And you can go through the debt limit history and the debt ceiling

history and it's fascinating.

There's lots of neat stories that you can go back to World War I

and read it on up to present.

And you can see how these games have been played consistently.

I, I mean it's really ratcheted up here of late and I don't know that

there's any end in sight because you know, when we talk about it, it's the

most plain in your face subject of all time to me, but to other people

that really believe the United States government borrows money from China.

There are people that really believe this.

I'd like to know how China is able to print US dollars to lend back to the us

but that's another story for another day.

A lot of people think this stuff.

You can't shake it.

And then worse, there's smart people that go full metal, stupid and believe

that the United States government borrows from commercial private banks.

It just goes out and takes out a loan.

And that its credit rating is really important.

Or also it'll hurt.

Its chances of getting loans in the future.

The more you say it, harder it is to believe that.

It's not like you just complete murderous intent that they

keep this lie going but worse.

Your friends, your friends, repeat this, your friends repeat this ad nauseum hell,

some of you all probably repeat this.

There's probably a few of you watching right now that are the kind of person

that thinks, oh my God, I don't wanna pass the debt to my grandchildren.

Right?

And so each year the president puts together a budget.

He submits his budget.

To Congress who passes a non-binding resolution to approve the budget.

Now, budget, because it's approved, doesn't mean that that money is approved.

It's only approved when there's a bill that's been passed

that those dollars are spent.

Now the problem is this, and if you go back to the video I did a few weeks

back where I drew out the flows and how spending actually occurs, okay?

The United States government has a T G A or a, uh, Treasury's general account.

And in order to pay bills, there needs to be money in the treasury's general

account, or at least keystrokes, numbers, whatever, in their general account.

And what happens is, every single day the United States government

pays tons and tons and tons, billions of dollars in bills.

And it also, quote unquote, brings in revenue of billions of

billions of dollars of tax revenue.

Okay.

Taxes aren't paid at the end of the year.

They're paid throughout the year.

Deposits are constantly made in the treasurer's general account.

They're constantly pulled back, but this is all smoke screen.

Even the T G A is a fucking smoke screen.

Okay.

The whole thing is a smoke screen.

And I'm not saying this in the traditional way that people that

don't understand this stuff, so yeah, it's a SIOP or whatever, right?

Whatever, whatever things that people don't understand the stuff say to cover up

the fact that they don't know what they're saying, those things, we're not talking

that cuz we do know what we're saying.

Okay?

But the Treasury's general account, it's just a silly little thing that

they use to make payments out of.

There's no reason that they could not have an overdraft.

There's no reason that they couldn't do that other than the

fact that there's a rule on the books that says you can't do that.

So there's all these little rules they put in place that are like bullshit.

They don't really mean anything.

It's like, Telling your child that they won't get pregnant if they put an aspirin

between their knees and they actually put the aspirin between their knees.

Okay.

This is the kind of stuff that the debt ceiling, the treasury's general

account, all these things are their props to give legitimacy to all this hand

ringing and all this voodoo logic, okay?

Of how hard it is and how we gotta borrow money.

And the treasury's gotta issue treasury bonds out there, blah, blah, blah.

But what is a bond?

A bond is nothing more than a savings account.

That's it.

A bond is a savings account with specific instructions

for when it comes to maturity.

In other words, like a savings account.

You just put your money in a savings account and it could stay

in there Yeah, forever, right?

And whatever the interest rate is, it's 1%, 2%, whatever.

That savings account will continue to grow in the fashion in which you agreed.

To take on the savings.

Well, that is all A bond is as well.

That's all A bond is.

The difference is, is that it's, it's got a timer on it.

Okay.

It might be a six month timer.

It might be a one year timer.

It might be a five year timer.

Okay.

And the intent there is there's a penalty to pulling your money out

before that timer strikes zero.

Okay.

And so with all that, with all that, I think it's important to take a

step back and recognize that anything that we try to do, any possible idea

that we come up with for how to get around the debt ceiling is missing the

fundamental point that the debt ceiling, they don't want to get around it.

They're not looking for a way around the debt ceiling.

This is why Joe Biden hasn't come right out and done the 14th Amendment yet, okay?

Because once he does the 14th Amendment, once he pulls the 14th

Amendment, it can never be unpled.

The 14th Amendment will suddenly be the way it works, period.

And you can effectively end all debt ceiling debates going forward, because

you know that the 14th Amendment, which says that the United States government

will always pay its bills, okay?

And if that 14th amendment holds up against this rando law, which it

would in any logical sense, it would absolutely be the end of it all.

Well, what happens when the Democrats aren't in power or

they are in power and vice versa?

They use these tools as a means of hijacking.

A political agenda has absolutely nothing to do with actually saving

the country money or preserving the debts who our grandchildren

don't, you know, take on this stuff.

The overall debt is over 31 trillion in the United States.

Think about that.

31 trillion in debt.

Now, what that means in the real world is that we've got 31 trillion and basically

securities of some sort of, and actually is the net money supply to a penny.

To the penny.

It's the sum total of every untaxed dollar in existence.

Okay, now, The interesting thing is, is that because there are

types of debts, the debt ceiling doesn't pertain to all of them.

It only pertains to the United States government sending out treasuries to

authorize additional deficit spending.

That's it.

To bring in cash to sell treasuries, and that'll go into the treasuries,

general account, fava, blah, blah, blah.

It's all smokescreen though, folks.

It's all a smokescreen.

Now, one of the funny things I heard today, let's see if you guys find

this nearly as funny as I do, because you're gonna see it ties together

with an awful lot of other issues.

If the debt ceiling isn't lifted, guess what?

Payments can't be made.

Social security payments can't be made.

Just that alone.

I don't wanna take on all the other things, just, just social

security for a minute, right?

Uh, if you paid.

Into the Social Security Trust fund and the trust fund was really a thing.

You wouldn't have to worry about the treasury and the debt ceiling

to make treasury bill payments of Social Security, but you'd have to

be thinking to get this part, your brain would have to be operational.

It would have to have sparked synapses firing.

There'd have to be light behind the eyes to see this, okay?

Most people, the candles turned off completely.

Okay.

Once again, each of these stories is a lie.

It's all a lie, right?

Yes.

There is a law in the books about the debt ceiling, about, which was,

like I said, brought about during World War I, but it's a farce.

So when they talked about minting the trillion dollar coin, As a workaround

around the debt seal, let's assume they really, truly want a workaround this way.

Okay?

They would take a coin, maybe it's this small, maybe it's this pig rolling it

down the road and deposit it at the Fed.

Who would then in turn markup the treasury's general account and they would

never have to worry about any of these issues with overpayments or underpayments

or not having enough cash to clear.

Cuz every year the, you know, you have that resolution for what the

budget is every year it's set.

Every year they agree to a certain amount that they'll pay.

Well the depositing the trillion dollar coin in there literally is absurd enough

to block out any of this nonsense.

Okay.

So I'm, before I start taking questions, cuz I'm seeing some

questions in the, in the chat, let me just finish what I'm seeing here.

So you watched as Paul Ryan and, uh, Alan Greenspan years ago fought about

the solvency of the, uh, uh, what do you want to call this, uh, the

solvency of the Social security system.

And you know, when you realize that even Alan Greenspan, who was Reagan's guy who

was Clinton's guy, I mean, this is a guy who's the, one of the worst people on

the planet, neoliberal to the extreme.

Okay?

Not above any kind of shitty shenanigans, but he had the ultimate.

Actual act of honesty as he pushed back against Paul Ryan.

Um, I think I may actually have the video of this.

Let me see if I have the video still on him.

I do have the video on hand.

Let's go ahead and watch this together real quick.

So, having personal retirement accounts is a, is another way of

making a, a future retiree benefits more secure for their retirement.

And also, do you believe that personal retirement accounts as a

component to a system to solvency does help improve solvency?

Because when you have a personal retirement account policy, it,

it's a company with a benefit offset with that feature in place.

Do you believe that personal retirement accounts can help us achieve solvency

for the system and make those future retiree benefits more secure?

Well, I, I wouldn't say that the, uh, pay as you go benefits

are insecure in the sense that, uh, There's nothing to prevent the federal

government from creating as much money as it wants and paying it to somebody.

The question is, how do you set up a system which assures that the

real assets are created, which those benefits are employed to purchase?

So it's not a question of security, it's a question of the structure of a

financial system, which assures that the real resources are created for

retirement as distinct from the cash.

The cash itself is nice to have, but uh, it's got to be in the context of

the real resources being created at the time those benefits are paid so that

you can purchase real resources with the benefits, which of course are cash.

Mm-hmm.

Anyway, I'd never get tired of seeing Paul Ryan

go, Uhhuh, uhhuh, like, like just the hilariousness of it all.

It, it, it, it's beyond comedy, right?

So here's the deal.

I'm gonna go up here and answer a few questions that came up here.

Carpe DM says, Steve, how much would it matter if China cashed out?

20%, 40%, 90%, a hundred percent of its secure treasuries.

Not at all.

All right, let's talk about this for just a second.

And, and, and it's very frustrating cuz as you know, There's a lot of

folks out there who had a problem with a lot of people regarding Ivermectin

and Fauci and all that stuff.

So instead of agreeing to disagree on vaccines, they went the full Monty and

they listened to trash platforms that pump up nonsense about China and Dad and

Bitcoin and other things I see out there.

I know who you are.

I know the people out there that gave up on real honest reporting and went off and

chased these people and said, ah, I can put up with every other lie they tell.

As long as they tell me good things about Ivermectin.

I see you.

I know who you are, you.

Your Ivermectin moment is over, but the rest of this debt stuff you fucked us on.

It's here to stay, baby, all because you sold out for a Ivermectin deal.

It's gone.

It's over.

It's done.

But not the debt and not all the shit we've gotta deal with because of it and

because you gave rise to these shitty platforms that pump up all this nonsense.

About debt deficits, China and all the other crap.

Well, we're fucked now.

Thank you.

Give yourself a round of applause.

Pat yourself on the back.

Sure.

Joe Rogan and others congratulate you for that.

All right.

That's said.

Put my gun back in my holster here for a moment.

When I think about China, China literally sells huge amounts of goods

and services into the United States.

And when China sells goods and services into the United

States, it receives US dollars.

Okay?

It receives US dollars.

Now, what it does with those dollars is another thing altogether, because

it's still gotta be able to facilitate transactions done in US dollars.

If they sell off all their treasuries, it's just gonna

make it harder to do business.

Nothing more than that.

Warren Moses says, all we owe China is a bank statement.

Okay?

Now ask yourself the safest investment bar none is United States treasuries.

There's nowhere in the world you can put your money.

Regardless of this debt ceiling stuff, there is nowhere in the world that

you can put your money safer than in the United States treasuries period.

Okay?

Now, part of the problem here is, is that if that if we don't pay our bills,

it will rock the confidence in the dollar, and people may not wanna buy

treasuries and blah, blah, blah, right?

Well, if you listen to M M T or at all, and you should maybe not on

all their political stuff, but you should definitely understand it in

terms of the legal framework and in terms of the monetary system.

Okay?

With that in mind, you gotta understand that China.

Has to do business with us or they don't.

If they choose not to do business with us, we would find a replacement.

They would find a replacement to do business with.

We would find a replacement.

But one of the reasons why China is not like a great place to store your

money, save your money in China.

Cause they don't have a robust finance system.

That's not good.

It's quite frankly, I'd love to get rid of all this finance all together.

Okay.

I'm tired of Wall Street, but the people that have faith in the dollar confidence,

ain't you and I, you and I don't have a say so in what we do, you and I go to the

store and we buy whatever we have to buy.

We buy it with whatever we have in our pocket.

But these are the countries that big investors and stuff like that, the

ones that you're worried about having confidence, you know your rich people

that you're always complaining about, oh, I wonder if this rich oligarch

has a confidence in the dollar.

I really care what that rich oligarch does.

Right?

Assuming for a minute that.

They wanted to get away from the us.

There's no safer place to put your money than in the us.

Now, Biden and others have done a hell of a job of shaking that confidence by

cutting off Russia from the Swift system that certainly didn't do any favors, okay?

Certainly did not do any favors.

However, however, it's important to understand that it wouldn't do shit.

Okay?

Somebody's gonna take those dollars, and if not the US, just write it down.

It's not a big deal at all.

That's their savings account.

That's the Chinese savings account.

If they don't want that, who cares?

We'll sell those bonds to someone else, okay?

They'll sell those goods to someone else.

They don't, it doesn't matter.

And then let's just say hypothetically, no one else will buy the US debt.

In other words, they won't buy any more US bonds cuz they've lost confidence.

Whatever trash you hear out there, fucking flush it.

Okay?

The real deal is the US buys its own debt up, just like

Japan bought its own debt up.

Why?

Because it's not really debt folks.

You wanna stop seeing debt, stop selling bonds, you wanna stop selling bonds?

Well, you better be prepared for all the pension plans that rely

on bonds to keep them steady, even in good times and bad times.

You know, it's like, you know when you get your own personal investment

portfolio, you have a certain small amount, and I'm saying this for people

that have 401ks and stuff that you.

You work at Walmart, they provide you with a 401K at this point.

Okay?

I'm not saying everybody has one.

This is still elite world here, but most people when they go into a job and they

get hired and they're not a contractor, have access to some sort of savings plan.

Within that savings plan, it tells you the breakup of all the different investments.

Are you old?

If you're old, you may want to take a much more safe way, which they

would dump it a lot of it into bonds.

If you're young and you have risk, you might dump it into some risk.

Your more perspective type investments, whatever.

So there's this whole pie chart of how your investments are broken out.

We don't need, we collectively don't need to finance our pensions with bonds.

We could literally make it a point that the federal government takes all those

pension plans on period, fully funds them, could do anything, could literally do it.

Dollar for dollar.

It could even fund it more than it's doing now.

Okay.

But because we can't fucking get out of our own way and we can't use

our brains, this brain's in short supply these days, apparently we're

content with this bond situation.

And those bonds are important elements to pensioners and savings

accounts and people that are saving for retirement, IRAs, whatever.

Very, very important, especially for folks, older folks that are really coming

close to the end of their working lives or productive lives in terms of making money.

And now they've gotta find a way to survive the last

20, 30 years of their life.

And so these are the ways they do it, but even that could be directly

funded without this mirage of bonds, the need for bonds and all this crap.

Okay.

The government sells bonds.

They sell bonds to defend a positive interest rate.

Okay, well that interest rate could be set to permanent zero.

Okay.

Could be set to permanent zero.

And as Randy raise says, we could stop selling bonds altogether.

Now you could have Federal reserve notes that are turned into bonds.

You conf fed could sell bonds to people, others could sell bonds to me, and they

can make a decision to pay a certain amount of interest for those bonds.

Okay.

Somebody just said something and I'm gonna repeat.

I'm gonna say something.

It really is highly offensive when, when I see someone say this, okay,

you cannot print money forever.

First of all, just don't say these things.

I'm giving you permission to back away.

I'm not gonna make this a long point because I'm assuming you just

don't understand what you're saying.

The government always digitally prints money every single time it spends.

And every single time it taxes, it digitally removes and

deletes and destroys currency.

It doesn't respend it.

So it's not like they're just filling the thing up and just printing money.

That is the most uneducated thing to say.

We don't wanna do that.

We want to be the smart ones.

We never want to be the people that say things that aren't smart, and

that's something that's not smart.

That's something we've all probably said at some point in time.

It's something we should never say again because it's not

even in the realm of truth.

It's, it's a lie.

Right?

It's not true.

It's a fairytale.

It's a myth.

It's a legend.

It's a lie.

It's a nothing burger.

Okay.

We don't print money.

We, there's enough money printed to satisfy atm, uh, and teller transactions

and for people that wanna hold some cash.

That's it.

The rest of it is digitally created via keystrokes.

And when money is spent, keystrokes into an account.

And when it's taxed out, he strokes remove it out.

That's it.

That's it.

Full stop.

Anyone?

No, you can't do it forever.

All these things are lies that breed austerity.

The rich never suffer, by the way, they never suffer these things that

the people at the bottom fight over.

Yeah, you can't print money forever.

And the ritual happened.

They're like, Hey, where are we going on vacation?

You wanna fly to Paris tonight?

Sure, let's do it.

The person trying to get food on their tables, like, God,

there's not enough money.

And so, well, you can't print money forever.

We don't do that around here.

We, we try to only save worthful things, not things like that.

So it's no offense to you, victory over.

I just wanna make sure we get this shit straight.

Now, if you understand that the debt ceiling is not about

the overall national debt.

The debt ceiling is about the annual budget, and that's why there's an

annual battle over the debt ceiling.

So when the president passes a budget and you get up to the point of what the

allowable debt is for that month, when I say debt again, it's selling treasuries.

And when do we sell?

Trish, ask yourself this.

When do we sell treasuries?

Do we sell treasuries before we spend to get money?

Or do we send sell treasuries after we spend?

We sell treasuries after we spend.

Why?

Because it's not a funding operation.

Okay.

It's not a funding operation.

So there was a paper kelton put out long, long, long time ago.

And that paper that she put out was Ken Taxes and Bonds

finance, government spending.

And she went through the whole stabs and tabs thing.

This is a white paper, peer-reviewed white paper.

I suggest everyone go out and read it.

It's under the name Stephanie Bell.

In fact, uh, somebody wants to look it up.

They can do it.

I've done it too many times.

Somebody please that, particularly if there's an admin from the team.

Go out there and drop Stephanie Bell's.

Um, uh, white paper in about canned bonds, uh, finance governments, my

bonds and taxes and taxes and bonds.

Literally do not do this.

All right.

Um, so that's said, that's said this concept is going to keep going on and on,

and it's never going to impact the rich.

I want you to understand that these debt sailing battles

is not impacting the wealthy.

This is not hurting the wealthy.

Yes, somebody may get a delayed payment once they, um, once they actually, uh,

you know, look at a, anyway, I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna skip past that momentarily.

So, right now the Republicans are holding hostage all the spending.

They're trying to roll back things like, uh, the student debt support.

It was minimal.

Folks, Biden's, student debt relief was like nothing.

It didn't even cover the interest for most people.

Okay?

We're talking about a very, very meager thing, but they're gonna claw it back.

They're gonna use it to hold it hostage.

The next thing, the most important one of that is that, quite frankly,

if we go through this every year, then you should be able to have historical

record of going through this every year.

And there is a historical record.

Most of the times they just simply do it without any fight.

There's no fight.

There's no fight.

But here recently, there has become a constant fight.

And it's a constant battle because why?

What have mm, tears poorly done?

Mm, tears.

First of all, poorly stuck together.

They got too many little clicks running off in their own little ways.

Um, but the other thing that MMTs haven't done is made the case not just

to Democrats, who still consistently say the most stupid shit about

their hard-earned tax dollars, okay?

But it's the Republicans.

Now, if we were Republicans, let's say, and maybe one of you is out

there, I don't know why, I don't know.

But let's just say you were, and you really believe in your heart

of hearts that the government is taking on unsustainable debt.

That they're just printing up money that you're printing away, man.

Print, print money.

God damn.

They're devaluing the dollar, right?

Nevermind the fact that we're not on a gold standard anymore.

So we don't have a base to devalue.

We don't have a base to dease.

It's a free floating fiat currency.

So nevermind the fact that it's completely bullshit.

All right?

I used to say it's real in fantasy world, right?

If you believe that you're handing off debt to your grandchildren and you've

been working tirelessly to ensure you don't have any debt to pass on to your

grandkid, why the hell should the country pass on debt to my grandchildren when in

reality it's just to pay for Johnny over there transitioning to Juanita, they're

using my tax dollars to let children transition trans males to females.

What the hell's going on?

Right?

It's like all this nonsense.

I think I on and they be, well, my, my hard-earned tax dollars

should not be paying for abortions.

Right.

Should not be paying for abortions la Right.

And so because we have not explained in spades that taxes are revenue, and as

war Moser says, it comes from the old French word revere, which means returned.

It was returned back.

Where'd it get returned?

To?

The government.

Right?

The government from when it came.

Okay.

So the idea of revenue is not the same thing as receiving something

to spend, it's not going into a piggy bank where we spent.

Now what happens, unfortunately, and this is where good friends disagree, I'm

not gonna give it any air cover though.

I'm just going straight for the kills shot.

Okay.

Within the government sector, the treasury's general account

is merely a speed thing when you're riding down the road.

And you go through one of those places where they're doing like a

census to see how many cars cross this lane highway right here.

And they have that little rope going across and every time you go, goes

tally's up another stroke, tally's up another stroke, tally's up another stroke.

Okay?

We're doing those sorts of things, not only in the Social Security Trust fund,

but also the treasury's general account.

In the end, there's a statutory requirement that says the treasury

cannot have any kinds of bounce checks.

It can't have an overdraft, blah, blah, blah.

Okay?

Cuz otherwise it'd be counterfeit, whatever.

The reality is, is that it's all bullshit because within the government

there is no such thing as money.

There is no such thing as money.

It's only once it hits the private sector that it becomes actual money.

All right?

So within this space, within this space, they are literally creating a scenario.

Where those Republicans feel completely valid and worrying

about this unsustainable debt.

Where ever forever is this money gonna come from?

We can't spend what we don't have.

They don't realize that this money is literally spoken into existence

by fiat, which is by decree.

Look up the word fiat.

You'll see by decree, okay?

From Congress.

Article one, section eight gives your Congress the power of the purse.

Now, of course, the laws that they have the power of the purse over have

to go through the Senate and then have to go to the President for signature.

Okay?

But once the legal requirements for passing a bill go through the money that

was promised to be spent on that bill.

Was brought to you courtesy of your United States Constitution,

article one, section eight.

Okay?

So this whole nonsense is ridiculous, but you must understand

that they really believe this.

So if you don't take the time not only to learn so that you can disabuse

your fellow Democrats and Republican friends, and of course the worst,

the libertarians Jesus Christ.

Is there anyone less economically literate?

I can think of a few.

Unfortunately, probably some of my socialist friends are almost

as economically illiterate as my libertarian friends, and I

consider myself a socialist.

So there you go.

I'm calling you out friends.

But as long as that paradigm exists, republicans have a leg to stand on.

Do you understand?

As long as we give the air of legitimacy to this stuff now, it's not just

enough to say it's stupid and be done.

It is stupid and you should be able to be done.

We shouldn't even have to talk about it cuz it's that stupid.

But because alas, they believe it and because alas, when you go to read the

documentation, they've done a good job.

Winston sitting there at his little news speak station speaking UN

persons into existence and out of existence and all sorts of other stuff.

When they do this stuff, they ensure that they, the documentation

says what they want it to say.

But if I tell you, stand in the corner, rub your belly with your right hand and

pat your tinfoil hat with your left hand and out will come dollars, and suddenly

they keystroke dollars into existence.

Do you believe that rubbing your belly and rubbing your tinfoil hat created dollars?

If you do, why don't you try it sometimes.

See if it does.

But they could say that in the reality.

The thing could say until that guy rubs his belly and rubs his head with

the tinfoil, of course, on there's no money gonna be put in there.

And you'd be like, oh my God, if we don't rub our bellies and pat our heads and

stuff, we're not gonna have any money.

And if you let that stand, that stupidity will stand.

And because most people don't give a fuck, they don't look into stuff when

they do, they go to some shitty YouTube channel where they talk about other

things that have nothing to do with understanding how federal finance works.

In fact, they deep dive into Bitcoin and shit like that.

Okay?

When you do that, you don't create an informed populace.

That group of people thinks suddenly that printing money devalues the

dollar, all this stupid shit.

But we've already had determined, and if you've been paying attention at all,

the US government says, I will take.

$1 in payment for $1 in tax.

Okay.

One to one always.

It's not like you gotta give me $5 to pay $1 in tax.

No, it's always $1 for $1 in tax.

All right, so with that in mind, with that in mind, keep assuming

that Republicans have a leg to stand on that they're, it's real.

Wouldn't you be concerned for your kids?

Wouldn't you be concerned for your grandchildren?

Wouldn't you be concerned for the health of society that they

not be debt slaves to China?

That China's gonna come to this country with their billion plus and enslave

us all to work in sweatshops for 'em?

Wouldn't you be scared?

I think it's stupid, but sure, why not?

Let's keep playing the Republican game for a minute.

The tea bagger, the right wing, the conservative mind.

And by the way, Democrats say this stupid shit too, folks, so

don't pat yourself on the back.

Don't get smug.

You guys are saying the dumbest shit too.

So how do we move on past that?

How do we get them over the hump?

Well, you gotta get them to the point where they stop believing

it's their hard-earned tax dollar that's paying for things.

We gotta change the word taxpayer money to public money.

We gotta stop calling it the debt and start saying the net money supply.

We gotta stop acting like the US government borrows from private

banks and that I'm so fresh.

There's lefties that say this shit and it disgusts me.

Stop.

Just fucking stop.

Resist the urge to sound like a sig rightwinger resist.

Have it within you, you, you alone have the power to not say stupid right

wing things, thinking you're being cute, lefty, you're not a cute lefty.

You might be owning shit libs, but you're owning it from the fascist playbook.

Pick a lane.

Yes, Democrats suck, but that doesn't mean acting like a re thug.

Thinking the gold standards king doesn't mean any of that stuff is real, okay?

But you can clearly see there's logic to their thinking in their mind.

They're the most afraid people in the world, and they're also about fairness.

So if they've been skipping the party on Friday nights, if they've

been pinching pennies and making sure that they don't pass debt to

their children, you can certainly understand their concern that you

would be doing something irresponsible.

Creating a government that creates irresponsible spending.

With money they don't have and that they're taking the hard earned

tax dollars you made that you purposely were avoiding spending,

so your grandkids wouldn't get it.

Now they're taking your money away once again, and they're redistributing

your money to some poor black kid, some poor trans kid, some immigrant coming

to this country to ruin our society.

Okay?

I mean, think about what I'm saying.

These parties are fucking political theater.

If you're gonna watch news, you should have popcorn m a soda ready.

You should dim the lights.

And you should trust that no one's gonna talk in the theater.

And if they do throw something, throw some popcorn at the

person that's talking during the fucking, you know, announcements.

Fuck them, man.

They don't have any respect.

We're watching the, we're in a movie theater.

So now you can go further with this, obviously, obviously

the Icks, I don't like that.

Oh my God.

You can almost envision Republicans who probably do this as much as everyone else,

but you can almost think of Republicans as worrying about the butt sex, worrying

about all kinds of other crazy stuff.

Okay.

Stuff that just icks them.

They get the Icks right, and they just wanna make sure

none of that icky stuff does.

But they also don't want to see people that are hurting rise up because

whether they acknowledge it or not.

They were born on third base compared to the immigrants that come to

this country seeking a new life.

They were born on third base compared to all the black and brown people that

were actually come from freedmen, from slave trade, not just the diaspora,

but literally freedmen from our slave trade in the United States.

People that were literally slaves.

Okay?

And and they suddenly are like, well, why should we give them a handout?

They forget all the shit that's gone on since we started importing

slaves into this country.

And they forget all the shit that went on during reconstruction,

and they forget all the shit that went on during the 19 hundreds.

The Industrial Revolution.

I'll even forget about it today because neoliberalism does something

to help us forget about all this while we're going to this debt limit crap.

Naturally.

Neoliberalism would like a token billionaire black person.

It would like a token billionaire, gay person.

It would like a token billionaire president of whether it

be woman, black, whatever.

They want those things.

So why?

What happens in regular discourse?

Well, you say there's racism.

Well, there's no racism.

How else could Barack Obama get in there?

Right.

But then you start looking and you realize the capital order

knows no color boundaries.

The capital order is all about capital.

It's all about people of wealth and means being taken care of, and that us

being kept desperate, okay, us being kept in bondage, basically is there for

them as kind of a tribute, if you will.

We're there to serve them.

They need to keep enough of us hurting and hungry.

To continue to service the wealthy class that they cater to.

And that is how we transferred from a slave environment to our modern

open air slave environment where everybody can be a slave, okay?

And they use debt instruments, private debt, drive an interest, traits up,

all these things to keep us deaf, dumb and stupid, pliable willing.

And so what does the debt limit do to regular people?

It does a lot, right?

Payments for people that are on welfare payments for people

that are in retirement, social security payments, you name it.

Small government contractors.

Large government contractors who pay huge salaries, suddenly

wouldn't be able to pay it.

And you wanna talk about a catastrophic event?

That would bring on a tremendous recession, possibly a depression akin

to what we saw during the pandemic, except with no intention of solving it.

Okay.

That's what you're looking at.

That's what you're looking at.

So this Monday, you know, I, I, I came in, I heard Stephanie's talk

on npr, like I started this out and, you know, I've talked to Ron Gray

so many times about the Minta coin.

I'm sure it's gimmicky, but it solves a huge problem, right?

You gotta understand that it's not good enough to be right.

What is important is that you understand the motivation for

why things are the way they are.

If you think that government believes that it borrows money from China, If

you think that government doesn't know that when they pass a law, that money

is just spent into existence, if you don't think they know that you're wrong.

So what's the motivation?

Okay, you gotta ask yourself these questions.

What is the motivation?

What is the motivation for jailing so many people who needs to stay

large and in charge, who is desperate to make sure that there's always

a lower class to look down upon?

Just have to ask yourself these questions because this construct of the debt

ceiling is used to great weaponized purposes to keep us from believing

that we can do better, that we can have better, that we can live a better life.

It's used to make us believe that there just isn't enough to go around.

And when there's not enough to go around, you see people do this, they,

they put their hand around their plate and they give you the stink eye.

Right?

You know, when someone has an ounce of weed, they're quick

to share a joint with people.

They're quick to smoke it up.

But when someone's down to their last joint, they're like, what do I do?

Right?

Same with beer, same with steak, same with shrimp.

Whatever it is, people tighten up.

As long as there's oceans of fresh drinking water, nobody's

worried about water wars.

But the more we have to worry about desalinization, and the

more we see drought rise up, the more precious water becomes and

different people act different ways.

Scarcity.

Is a way of ensuring that people hate each other.

Stay hateful, stay separated.

Stay un unified.

Stay out of the solution space and into the pointing fingers and blame game.

This is how fascism rises.

When you have scapegoats,

when you have scapegoats, when you have all kinds of other people to blame

for why things are the way they are.

If these people over here just wouldn't do this thing, everything would be okay.

Those damn immigrants coming into the country weren't stealing all of our jobs.

The lazy fuckers.

Schrodinger's immigrant, right?

So lazy that they steal your job.

Gotta love the fucking mind, the idiot mind of the fucking

people that don't fucking think.

But remember, there's an ounce of logic to this.

If the federal government doesn't spend money on the people, When

immigrants do come in this country, they are taking scarce resources.

See how this works?

And by ensuring the resource availability is scarce, it keeps those nado goods,

those immigrants in your crosshairs.

Now all of a sudden, you can blame the immigrants and oh my God, the gays and

oh my God, the trans kids and oh my God, c r t, and oh my God, all this

stuff plays directly into the fallout of the debt ceiling conversation.

You don't even realize it, but it does.

All the scarcity, every one of you that buy into this bullshit of the country

not having money, it's run outta money.

Well, it's run outta money based on games they're playing to intentionally make

you feel like we can't do nice things.

Because if the government can't do nice things like, I don't know, create

nasa, well, then we can go ahead and give it to SpaceX and Virgin and

all these other things to make the private sector look like it saved us.

Oh my God, fuck nasa.

We've got Elon Musk.

See how this works?

The great man of neoliberalism, the thing that turned me on, one of the

big things that turned me on to mm M T was that Stephanie Kelton long

ago said, let's render the rich irrelevant and do it without them.

We don't need the richest money.

But see, everybody's so con.

Oh, we got, we got, how are we gonna pay?

Well, well, first thing we gotta do, we gotta get rid of the tax cuts and

the the, uh, uh, uh, uh, and then, then we gotta cut military spending

because we can't, we can't do it.

We we're outta money.

How are we gonna, we, we gotta cut military spending or we

won't have schools anymore.

Uh, we gotta, we won't be able to.

You see this

when in reality the money

spoken into existence with a law, whatever, they're not going in.

Imagine some old lady down at the mint got, well, I gotta get a

wheelbarrow to pull this printed cash out for us to spend on these bills.

Just imagine, just imagine that.

Just imagine what I just said.

They want you to believe that the government can't do anything at all.

That it's completely powerless, that it requires private, public, private,

commercial banks to fund its operations.

And then I say, whoa, whoa, wait, hold on.

That's the case.

Where the fuck these private banks get their charter to operate?

Oh no, the government, so the government is king, but some dick

shit fucking tries to do well.

Banks, banks are subservient, but no, we're gonna make it appear that

the government borrows from them.

So banks rule the world, not the governments.

We can make the government look feckless and impossible until we

say, Hey, military, let's go ahead and drop some tactical nukes.

All of a sudden, man, we got the most powerful army in the world.

Can you imagine all these old, skinny bankers running around as Apaches

or dropping tactical nukes on them?

Hey, bankers wouldn't stand a chance because the bankers

aren't large and in charge.

It's an illusion.

They were given a charter by the government to operate.

I just.

After a while, don't you feel like seriously, like just smacking

people around a little bit?

Just a little bit.

Not too much.

You're not trying to put 'em in the hospital.

You just, you just wanna smack 'em a few, you know, take some salt out and rake the

eyes, drop the elbow off the top rope.

Put 'em in a figure four leg.

Glock.

Do a suplex pile driver or something.

You know,

every time I think about it, that's all I can think about.

It's just, just a little, just a little.

Not too much.

Is it too much to ask to give someone the backside of my hand once or twice?

I don't think so.

Why can't I give him the backside?

It's a back smack.

Smack, right?

A little humiliating.

It's not gonna beat him up.

Too bad.

It's a little bruising.

Go get over.

I say this in humor because it, it is annoying, but the reality

is, if the government doesn't pay its bills, guess what other

groups are gonna be hurting too.

Since states are not currency issuers, states are gonna suffer as well.

Now you're not just dealing with a federal problem, you're dealing with every

state, and as it trickles down, you're dealing with every municipality as well.

All these groups that are subsidized, all these groups that

are subsidized by the government, and I want you to think about this.

Halliburton is 100% funded by the federal government because they come

in, they say, yeah, we'll do this thing.

The federal government gives 'em billion dollar military contracts.

They're doing something for it.

But big fucking deal though.

Every last sentence coming from the goddamn federal government.

Do you think these Republican groups, these rich capitalist fucks, want

the government to stop spending?

No.

But they just don't want it spent on you and I, because if we have

choices, we might choose something that doesn't involve serving them.

It's just that simple.

So anyway, I had so many things to talk about in this space, but

the reality is, is that this debt limit thing is, is a game, and it's

a game that will keep going on.

You guys can stash this, put it in your back pocket somewhere and watch

it next year when it plays again.

I'll probably end up doing another stream next year for the new group of people.

Since people lose interest after a while and they go off and watch somebody

sell an ivermectin or something, it's time to fucking think about this shit

because this is what the subject is.

This is what's happening right here, right now, and you should get confident.

You should find your sea legs and not be cowed and, and concerned and worried.

You should be ready to answer all these questions.

The fact of the matter is that there was a law passed in World

War I to help facilitate payments.

Now it's used as a means of litigating already, uh, promised, already spent

bills that the federal government has incurred, and what they're trying

to do is make the government not pay those bills so that it can look

foolish and prove that government.

It doesn't solve our problems.

It's all about proving the government's inadequacy.

It's all about making the government look feckless in it.

Impossibly, you know, stupid because they want you to have to go to private credit.

They want you to have to go to private institutions for your services.

They want you to have to pay a fee, and they want you to

be in perpetual precarity.

False scarcity narratives make us all fearful for our lives, make us fearful

for our families, make us fear every day, and this is what they've done.

This is what they're achieving.

It's all part of a way of saying, Hey, that thing that happened during

the pandemic, don't remember that.

We can spend trillions of dollars on the whim without spending a nickel in,

and there's no tax dollars involved.

Don't forget all that.

We gotta get you back on page, man.

We gotta get you back in the fold, man.

You're thinking too big, man.

We need you back in.

We need you.

We need you back over here, man.

We need you fucked up, insecure and neurotic and emotional

so we can control you.

And with that folks, I think my grine moment is over because I don't have

anything further to say at this time.

So I'm outta here.

See ya.

I did that on purpose.