Sierra Madre Precious Metals

U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent

The Treasury Department announced Tuesday that its new verification process found $99 million in payments for deceased recipients.

The department said that it screened over 885 million payments totaling approximately $2.77 trillion, and discovered more than 4,900 payments worth approximately $99 million that were intended for deceased payees. Those 4,900 payments were returned to the federal agencies they came from for review before any funds were disbursed.

“Treasury has delivered on a key promise of President Trump’s mandate to stop improper payments and fraud before money leaves the Treasury, and strengthen the integrity of the federal payment system,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. Continue reading →

The United States recorded a $1.373 trillion federal budget deficit during the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, averaging approximately $153 billion in new borrowing each month. Revenue climbed to $4.151 trillion, but federal spending rose faster, reaching $5.523 trillion between October and June.

Interest has become the most alarming part of that equation. The government spent $857 billion on net interest during those nine months, up $98 billion, or 13%, from the comparable period in fiscal year 2025.

That works out to roughly $95 billion a month and about $22 billion a week when spread across the full October-to-June calendar. Continue reading →

This Is Why It Matters for You

Time is running out!

The “Debt Default Clock” – which measures how close the country is to a financial crisis – is only two economic events away from “doomsday”, a committee of seven economic experts behind the project said this week.

The experts said that two events could lead to the U.S. failing to pay its debts, and trigger a recession or depression. First, the share of debt the U.S. is using to pay interest hits 70 percent. Second, the government blows through the debt ceiling that limits how much the country can borrow.

“The country is increasingly borrowing simply to pay the interest on what it already owes,” Debt Default Committee Chairman Baker Spring said. Continue reading →

If you were born before 1955, your Social Security benefits may be wrong right now — and the SSA will not tell you. In this video, I break down exactly how the Social Security Administration calculates retirement benefits, the most common Social Security mistakes that cost seniors over 65 hundreds of dollars every month, and the one form that fixes it.

Did you know that the number of Americans that are out of work right now is far higher than it was at any point during the Great Recession? I know that sounds crazy, but I will prove it to you in this article. A whopping 111 million Americans do not have a job, and we are spending more than a trillion dollars a year on the social safety net that supports them. Of course we cannot afford to do this, because the national debt has already reached 39 trillion dollars and it is growing at an astounding rate.

If we do not fix our economy, disaster is inevitable. Continue reading →

A quiet but significant shift is unfolding inside the world’s financial system. Central banks, long regarded as the ultimate anchors of dollar stability, are now signaling a gradual but meaningful reassessment of their currency strategies.

According to a recent global survey of monetary authorities, more central banks plan to reduce their U.S. dollar holdings over the next decade than increase them for the first time since tracking began. Continue reading →