Category: Business & Economy

State legislatures are working to lower barriers to use of precious metals as money.

Newly published data from the U.S. Treasury shows that the federal government has amassed $84.3 trillion in debts, liabilities, and unfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations. This amounts to $670,000 for every household in the U.S., a fiscal burden that equals 93% of the nation’s private wealth, including the combined value of every American’s assets in real estate, corporate stocks, small businesses, bonds, savings accounts, cash, and personal goods like automobiles and furniture.

A new problem that has suddenly emerged is the record levels of gasoline sitting in storage. The market has already had to digest the fact that U.S. crude oil stocks were rising, and investors have done their best to explain away the trend. But now gasoline inventories are climbing to unexpected heights.

Economics begins with the proposition that people, individually and collectively, are not able to command sufficient productive resources to satisfy unlimited consumption desires. In economics, this is called the “scarcity proposition.” The flip-side of the scarcity proposition, one that economists and others usually ignore, is that limitless consumption desires, relative to productive resources, means the number of tasks for people to do is also limitless. This means, jobs aren’t scarce! And, the introduction of robots simply increases the size of the community’s economic pie.

Record auto sales have been propped up by low interest rates, a perpetual loosening of auto lending standards with terms being stretched to the max and a wave of leases, all of which have allowed the American consumer to trade up to more expensive vehicles while maintaining low monthly payments. With rates recently on the rise and a flood of lease returns driving down used cars prices the tailwinds that have been propelling auto sales to record highs over the past several months look set to change course.