Bankers continue to rule over US: 18trn debt ceiling reached

On Monday, the US reached its legal debt limit of $18 trillion - more than the country's entire GDP. Lawmakers will either have to again lift it, or attempt to cap spending.

As of March 12, the US Treasury reported federal debt at $18,114,324,000,000.00 in its daily treasury statement. This figure is above the statutory debt limit, which was extended by Congress through March 15 this year.

Treasury Secretary Jack Lew told Congress that the limit would be reached on March 16, and he also requested lawmakers raise the debt ceiling as soon as possible," in a letter written in early March.

Under current arrangements, the US government can keep running until October using so-called extraordinary measures, or accounting tricks to keep money flowing into government programs, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Now that a new zenith has been passed, a fresh showdown between lawmakers and the President about America's spending habits can be expected.

The US raised the debt ceiling to $17.2 trillion in February 2014, keeping the economy a safe distance from the so-called 'fiscal cliff'. Before striking a deal, Republicans shut down the government in October 2014, which put many federal employees out of work for two weeks, and cost the economy an estimated $24 billion.

The US government is again left with the decision to raise its debt ceiling- the maximum amount of money it can borrow. If it isn't raised, the country in theory could default. The debt ceiling, which has been around since 1917, has been raised over 100 times to accommodate the world's largest economy's ballooning budget.

Republicans and Democrats have long been viciously divided over how to fund the budget, and which programs the government can afford to fund.

The debt, largely foreign-held, is worrisome not only for the world's largest economy, but for global markets, which are always put on edge when the debate comes up.

Comment:

John Law's more enduring Ponzi scheme was the one that escaped detection, the "Philosopher's Stone" by which:

* a national money supply could be created from government debt that had been "monetized," *

or turned into paper money by private bankers.

The reason this sleight of hand never got detected was that the central bank never demanded the return of its principal. If the bankers had demanded the money back, the government would have had to levy taxes, rousing the people and revealing what was up the wizard's sleeve.

But the wily bankers just continued to roll over the debt and collect the interest, on a very lucrative investment that paid (and continues to pay) like a slot machine year after year.

This scheme became the basis of the banking system known as "central banking," which remains in use today:

1. A private central bank is chartered as the nation's primary bank and lends to the national government.

2. It lends the central bank's own notes (printed paper money), which the government swaps for bonds (its promises to pay) and circulates as a national currency.

3. The government's debt is never paid off ,but is just rolled over from year to year, becoming the basis of the national money supply.

Excerpt from the book, written by Ellen Hodgson Brown: