Monday, March 30, 2026

Point of No Return

 

Not if. When.

3/27/2026,

I’m not good at math. I want to get that out of the way up front. Fortunately, other people have already done the math, so I don’t need to.

Keep in mind that in a financial crisis the people that as a group suffer the most are working people in the middle class and lower financial tiers and social structures. That’s nothing new. It has been that way throughout history.

Some folks that have been reading my stuff a long time may remember that back in 2007 I went along with the very few people that were then predicting a financial collapse. (We were right.) We’re getting ready to face another one.

IT’S MATH. BORROWING. INCOME. PAYING BACK.

When President Biden got elected, he inherited a crashed economy caused by the Covid pandemic and the hopelessly mishandled response of President Trump and his administration during his first term. MAGAts like to ignore his 3rd year in office because it was so bad. Trump had better quality help then, but he was still incompetent as a leader. He’s even more incompetent as a leader now as dementia takes its inevitable toll, and he and his minions are not only not actually governing our country but are out to loot it for everything they can get.

After Biden was elected President, I wrote him a letter saying that it was going to take a different kind of economics to deal with the problem our nation and the world were facing. I doubt he read my letter.

As President he did come up with “Bidenomics.”[1] It was the opposite of Reganomics.[2] Reganomics was trickle-down economics that essentially meant if you gave rich people a lot of money, they would let the rest of us have a little bit too. They didn’t. It was fucking stupid to think they would.

A lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum won’t like hearing this or agree with what I’m about to say but the truth is Bidenomics was working. Our economy was in fact turning around at a faster rate than most other nations were in recovering from the effects of the pandemic.[3] By the end of his administration, inflation was finally starting to come down.

What the Biden administration was not good at was messaging. They completely lost the narrative and thus lost the 2024 election. But that’s not the point of this post. What President Biden did wasn’t really new in terms of economics. He borrowed a lot of money to accomplish his goals of putting the people of America first.

Biden added $8.5 trillion to the national debt (ND).[4]

KEEPING PEACE

To keep peace, I’m going to provide the increases that other Presidents have done to our ND as well.

During Trump’s first term in office, he added $7.8 trillion to the ND. When Trump took office this time the ND was roughly $36.22 trillion as of Jan 20, 2025. So far this term Trump has added another $5 trillion to the ND as of July 4, 2025, bringing the ND to $41.1 trillion.

President Obama added $7.7 trillion to the ND during his TWO terms in office. He had to deal with the recession caused by the housing market crash caused by greedy Wall Street.

Everybody happy now?

Hardly. And you shouldn’t be.

WHAT’S CHANGED

In my Substack post < Golf on Brave Warrior > https://bykeiththomas.substack.com/p/golf-on-brave-warrior I posted a comment about the United States being insolvent.

“The United States has been declared insolvent by the Treasury Department.[5] $6.06 trillion in total assets. $47.78 trillion in total liabilities. (September 30, 2025.)”

That hasn’t changed. Neither has much else.

The most recent data comes from fiscal year (FY) 2024 (October 1, 2023-September 30, 2024). The federal government took in $4.92 trillion in tax revenue and spent $6.75 trillion resulting in a $1.83 trillion deficit.[6] Simple math.

A huge transfer of wealth has already taken place. It started in 1975. Since then, $79 trillion has transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%.[7] Under King Trump that already huge transfer of wealth to the upper elite has continued on steroids now that MAGAts control all three branches of government.

There is a difference in Trump’s approach. He’s using the same business model that he always uses. Trump and his family made money off his bankruptcies.[8] He’s doing the same with government. He wets his beak on government contracts, the stock market, pardons, taking outright bribes, selling accessibility to his presence, selling government land leases, and just basically trying to get a cut any time money changes hands.[9] [10] [11] [12] [13]

King Trump has increased his worth by $3 BILLION since he took office.[14] Yes, you read that right. Does that sound like he’s putting the country or himself first? I can answer that. No. With Trump, Trump always comes first.

In addition to Trump and his family making money other oligarchs are also cleaning up on government contracts both small and large. They’re making money hand over fist. War adds to their profits. Cutting/gutting regulations also adds to their profits.[15]

In 2026 the federal government is going to spend $1 TRILLION on servicing the interest of our ND.[16] Yes, you read that right. In a decade interest payments will amount to over $16 TRILLION.

Let me put this simply.

Our nation is not on a sustainable path.

NUMBERS CEASE HAVING IMPACT.

The above doesn’t factor in consumer debt. The majority of the $18.775 trillion in consumer debt comes from mortgages accounting for $13.17 trillion.[17] The reason that I mention these numbers is that they contribute to the problem when there’s an economic downturn. People lose homes, cars, and anything purchased on credit. It’s all debt. People lose the collateral that they have put up for loans if they can’t make their payments.

How much we pay to live we can understand. These are the kinds of numbers that the average person is used to dealing with. Text prediction keeps suggesting billions instead of trillions as I write this. It’s hard to wrap one’s head around the stratospheric numbers of debt I’m talking about. We don’t often contemplate these kinds of numbers and how they can affect our lives until they crash around us.

The purpose of this post is for us to contemplate if we have already passed the point of no return when it comes to avoiding a worldwide crash of epic proportions and what that would mean what would follow. No matter how bad you think it could be it would probably be worse up to and including WW3.

Perhaps we should stop and think about what to do about this. We need a different kind of economics.

As a country. As a people.

~

Substack Link:  https://bykeiththomas.substack.com/p/point-of-no-return

The Old Fart: https://substack.com/@bykeiththomas

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/bidenomics-8363974

[2] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Reaganomics

[3] https://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2024/02/28/joe-biden-economic-policy-covid-recovery-election/2831709130611/

[4] https://www.investopedia.com/us-debt-by-president-dollar-and-percentage-7371225

[6] https://aier.org/article/financing-the-federal-government-how-government-takes-spends-your-money/

[7] https://www.nationofchange.org/2025/03/05/since-1975-79-trillion-has-been-redistributed-from-the-bottom-90-to-the-top-1/

[8] https://www.abi.org/feed-item/how-trump-leveraged-other-people%E2%80%99s-money-to-make-bankruptcy-work-for-him-a-timeline

[9] https://apnews.com/article/drones-eric-donald-trump-powerus-iran-defense-089bff3892f921a10ef4ec785308e716

[10] https://www.npr.org/2025/04/10/nx-s1-5360062/why-some-are-accusing-trump-of-manipulating-stock-markets

[11] https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-pardons-clemency-george-santos-ed-martin

[12] https://www.factcheck.org/2025/05/unwrapping-qatars-400-million-winged-gift-to-trump/

[13] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/fossil-fuel-industry-donors-see-major-returns-trumps-policies

[14] https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/09/09/presidency-boosts-trumps-net-worth-by-3-billion-in-a-year/

[15] https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/report/reducing-regulations-produces-strong-economic-growth-responses

[16] https://www.pgpf.org/programs-and-projects/fiscal-policy/monthly-interest-tracker-national-debt/

[17] https://www.fool.com/money/research/average-household-debt/ 

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