This week, Spud Underground is going to take you to the depths of America’s economic despair. I hate to get all serious, but it’s worse than you think. These stories hardly ever make it to the mainstream news. Maybe they’re hiding it, maybe the American public is just too stupid, maybe it’s so scary that people just can’t grasp it. I couldn’t tell you.
If you’re my age, you’ve been born into a dead America. You won’t be owning a house anytime soon. You can’t afford to go to the doctor. Your retirement options are nil. If you made the mistake of going to college, you’ll be paying that off forever. Meanwhile, the people who did this to you are siphoning money out the country by the shovelful. It’s like a bunch of greedy kids looting Grandpa’s savings account before he dies. You don’t hate these people enough.
I can’t afford to leave, even if I wanted to. I was born here. My family has been here for over a century. I’m as American as it gets. So, I read economics. Hayek, Taleb, Milton, Rickards- all the prophets who predicted our exact situation as many as 80 years ago. The more I read, the angrier I get. I hope that if I can make you aware of how bad things really are, you’ll be angry, too. If we’re all angry enough, maybe we can do something about it. Maybe you think this all sounds like sensationalist paranoia- Christ alive, I hope you’re right.
I know you were expecting something funny, but this is important and I’ve got to get it out there. Next week, I’ll make it up to you with all the hyuk hyuks and hardy-hars you can eat.
Stay Dangerous, My Friends
-RJ
VIPERHAWK: WITNESS PROTECTION
A hilarious sci-fi adventure! Miguel Murillo is a smuggler for the Irish mob, and if these witnesses don’t get to a distant planet on time then there will be war…
BRICS EXPANDS MISSION TO KILL DOLLAR
The United States Dollar has been the world’s reserve currency since 1944. This simply means that when other countries make trades or loans with each other, they do it in dollars. This is a handy way to get past wonky and unstable exchange rates and maintain a reasonably stable price of commodities, like gold and oil. This makes trade easier between other countries, but the real winner is obviously the United States. This system creates a global demand for the dollar that the U.S. Government can exploit. If the U.S. doesn’t like what the Iranians or Russians are doing, they can impose sanctions and cause serious damage to their trading abilities. Back home, the Federal Reserve can create as much money as it wants without any serious threat of inflation. Rampant printing of a currency backed by nothing should destabilize it. Our government simply says otherwise. If you don’t like it, then maybe one of our 11 aircraft carriers can convince you.
In 2009, Brazil, Russia, India, and China joined forces to challenge the dollar’s dominance in the global market. South Africa joined in 2010, and BRICS was formed. This economic alliance contains the largest country by land mass, the two most populous countries in the world, and the economic leaders of South America and Africa. Together, they make up 28% of the global GDP. This is a force to be reckoned with.
On January 1, 2024, BRICS expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran. Now, they’ve got major oil producers in the middle east. Saudi Arabia, the crown prince of oil production, almost joined but returned to sitting on the fence. Saudi Arabia has long shared BRICS’ views of doing away from the dollar as a medium for oil trades (nicknamed the “petrodollar”), and with this new development, that’s starting to look like a possibility.
BRICS are building their own international banking system and have discussed creating a new common currency. This makes them a promising alternative for countries that are sick of US foreign policy or don’t trust the US economy. I don’t trust our economy, either. We have a serious spending problem, our debt outpaces our production, the dollar is over-leveraged ten to one, growth has been dead since 2007, and we just won’t stop printing money.
The strength of our currency depends on our ability to make other people use it, and now large parts of the world are ready to just say “no.” If the middle east stops using the dollar for oil trades, that will cause a huge drop in demand for dollars worldwide. Couple that with inflation back home, and we’re looking at a devaluation double-whammy. This could easily lead to severe inflation. If inflation makes it impossible to pay back our stratospheric debt, then a United State debt default is on the table within our lifetimes.
When other countries default on their debt, they can scrap their own currency and adopt a stronger one to stabilize their economy. Italy and Greece did this by adopting the euro, and El Salvador adopted the dollar, for instance. If the US defaults on its debt, there is no stronger currency to turn to. We’re out of luck, and we’re taking a lot of the world down with us.
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ATLAS IS SHRUGGING
The American dream is toast. You can work hard and make good investments, but it isn’t much better at the top. When your wealth goes up, so do your taxes get more expensive and more complex. The incentives to hire people are gone. If you hire people anyway, they’ll hate you just because you’re the boss. If you try to move your company overseas, you’ll still pay taxes to the US, even if you don’t make any money there. Even the rich are living paycheck to paycheck. The middle class is gone.
If life sucks at the bottom, but working hard to improve your station doesn’t make a damn bit of difference, why bother? Why chase a dream? Why strive for excellence? Why do all that work to improve the world around you if there’s no reward?
This is why entrepreneurs are leaving the Land of Opportunity in droves. The IRS publishes a list of names of people who renounce their US citizenship every quarter. Andrew Henderson counted those names and shows that the number of people leaving the US for good has been growing almost exponentially since 2008. In his book Nomad Capitalist, he lays out this table:*
- 2008: 231
- 2009: 742
- 2010: 1534
- 2011: 1781
- 2012: 933
- 2013: 3000
- 2014: 3415
- 2015: 4279
- 2016: 5411
- 2017: 5133
- 2018: 3983
- 2019: 2577
- 2020: 6705
The IRS publication, called the Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, is notorious for low-balling these numbers. Furthermore, it only publishes the names of covered expatriates. A covered expatriate is someone with a net worth of $2 million or more, and thus qualifies to pay an exit tax upon renunciation. I just checked the latest issue, published on January 29th of 2024, and counted 976 covered expatriates renouncing their citizenship last quarter alone. Clearly, there is a pattern here of wealthy people leaving the country for good, and it shows no signs of slowing.
In a country of 330 million people, these numbers don’t seem very big. So let’s translate them into dollars. Every one of the 6,705 people who left in 2020 is worth at least $2 million. That means that the fake pandemic pushed a minimum of $13,410,000,000 right out the door. This exodus doesn’t just rob us of a few millionaires’ taxes. We’re losing all the money they would have spent, all the income tax their employees would have paid, all the money those employees would would have spent, and so on.
These expats are going to places with lower taxes, more freedom, and better business ethics. It’s not just entrepreneurs, although they arguably cause the most damage when they leave. Doctors are leaving the insurance-addled hellhole of American healthcare to practice in places like Vietnam, Bangkok, Latin America… places with affordable free market health systems and decent standards of living. Skilled laborers and tradesmen are finding opportunities overseas in developing countries that need new infrastructure installed. Those people don’t even have the wealth to qualify for the IRS list- so we have no idea how many of them have left!
And who’s coming into this country to replace them? Losers. The millions of migrants coming over our border illegally are unskilled, uneducated nonentrepreneurs, often criminals. This might not be so bad- except the people who would have hired them just moved to Mexico.
The United States is losing productive people in record numbers. Simultaneously, we are importing non productive people in even higher record numbers. This is a disaster.
*Nomad Capitalist, Henderson, 2nd edition, p. 114
ORWELLIAN MONEY MACHINES
China is already working on rolling out a Central Bank Digital Currency, CBDC for short. That acronym reminds me of the famous New York punk venue CBGB’s from the 70s. CBDCs are not a fun place to go see Bad Brains, they are Orwellian money machines to track your spending and freeze your account if they don’t like you.
This article sums it up, and with the perfect amount of innocuous propaganda. CBDCs use blockchain technology, and are a government response to the success of cryptocurrencies. The author is very quick to jump on the claim that cryptocurrencies are anonymous and therefore a handy tool for criminals and money launderers. THIS IS A LIE. There is nothing opaque about cryptocurrency. Every transaction is recorded on a public ledger, forever. This is the exact design of the technology. There are even blockchain analysis companies that work directly with the IRS to trace money from licensed exchanges to undeclared wallets. There is no hiding on the blockchain.
That’s exactly why China wants one. China is already infamous for their social credit score system, where you’ll be turned away at banks, car rentals, or other services if you aren’t a good enough citizen. The express purpose of a Chinese CBDC, as this article admits, is to attach that social credit system to a transparent, cashless banking system under complete government control.
China is terrible already, so what’s the problem? Well, the Federal Reserve here in the United States is looking at the exact same thing. This Investipedia article gives a very basic look into the pros and cons of a digital currency, and completely misses the fact that by their nature, blockchains are completely transparent. Again, the only thing private about cryptocurrency is the key you use to sign transactions. To give that transaction permission and the public ledger directly to the Federal Reserve, you give them complete control over your digital wallet. The article’s segment on risks doesn’t even mention this.
If you think that the United States is noble enough to not follow the same path as China with this technology, then you’re an idiot. We’ve already seen political de-banking as a tool of the regime, and we know from Edward Snowden’s leaks how much the government likes to spy on it citizens. A transparent ledger of all US transactions, attached to names and amounts, controlled by the Federal Reserve, while also giving them the power to freeze or confiscate assets right from your wallet, is one of the most terrifying things I can think of.
In March, 2022, President Biden signed an executive order to declare the Fed’s research into CBDC’s as “urgent.” This is probably just posturing on behalf of his handlers, but why is the White House in such a hurry to roll out this insidious technology? That was two years ago, are they almost done?
HOT CHICK OF THE WEEK
Welcome back, Mikayla! I’ve covered her before. She used to be a hockey goalie, now she’s a model. I’m bringing her back up because she recently signed with Playboy. Good for her, I could use some good news after this issue.
ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Subsurface by Threshold is one of my favorite political albums. It blasts right off with Mission Profile, and eight-minute jam about government control. The Destruction of Words is a good one about political correctness and changing language. The album has other pertinent themes of censorship, military intervention, environmentalism, and all my other favorite subjects. It’s alarmingly current, considering it came out in 2007. ■
Spud media 