No country other than the US could cope with a currency burdened by a $500 billion deficit and skyrocketing international debt. Instead of rising up and plunging the country into chaos, the American public goes about its daily business, and calm is maintained in the boardrooms.
Whether it soars or plummets – somehow the dollar’s antics always seem to have a negative impact on others. This exorbitant privilege of passing on its debts to others stems from the fact that, since the post-war period, the dollar has developed into the international currency. It is hardly ever questioned. The dollar is thus the ultimate symbol of the US’s economic strength, imperialism and supremacy. The only question is: will it stay that way? Or are we currently at the end of an era?
Did you know that the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by more than 97 percent since 1913? Sadly, as you will see below, the decline in the purchasing power of our currency appears to have greatly accelerated in recent years. Thanks to the rising cost of living, most Americans have lost faith in the American Dream. In fact, a new survey that was just released discovered that 51 percent of us believe that the American Dream is now out of reach for most people… 
There is a high likelihood that, due to the past large decline in the yearly growth rate of the money supply, the US economy is heading towards an economic bust. 
In the shadowed annals of human striving, where fortune’s wheel turns with inexorable force, few spectacles provoke deeper unease than the concentration of unimaginable riches in a single pair of hands. A trillion dollars – more wealth than many nations command, a sum vast enough to dwarf the economies of continents – rests now, for the first time in history, within the grasp of one man. Elon Musk, that restless engineer of rockets and circuits, stands as the emblem of this milestone. Yet the achievement, while born of ingenuity and daring, stirs ancient moral qualms.
“The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”
There is a particular kind of financial wisdom that used to be passed down at kitchen tables. A grandparent, someone who remembered harder times, would explain that the first obligation of a responsible person was to spend less than they earned, put something away, and let patience do its quiet work. The savings account was not a sophisticated instrument. It was a vessel for deferred consumption – a way of translating present discipline into future security. The interest it paid was modest, but it moved in the same direction over time.
Social Security recipients are usually already working on a shoestring budget. However, policy shifts from the Trump administration mean those monthly funds could shrink due to a pair of new(ish) benefit offsets – one that is already taking a bite out of checks, and another looming on the horizon.
The first inflation report under new Federal Reserve chief Kevin Warsh shows consumer prices in April were at their highest level in almost three years.
The US debt surpassed $31.27 trillion, exceeding the country’s $31.22 trillion in GDP. This represents a debt-to-GDP ratio of 100.2%, according to data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, compiled by the Committee on a Responsible Federal Budget and released in April. This level is well above the historical average. Debt-to-GDP ratios, in principle, are not a cause for concern, but other economic conditions in the US aggravate the situation. 
The price of gold has been consistently rising for so long that even savvy investors may have missed something in recent months – a considerable decline in the precious metal’s price.
