In my latest series for Medium.com and Substack, I've been comparing the current U.S. with the old U.S.S.R. before they went bankrupt in 1991. Because of the nature of the U.S. economic structure, Dr. Powell tells us that, although the United States is running a very high national debt, and its current trade deficit is high, they won't become insolvent, but they can reach a point where they can no longer sustain certain policies.

The U.S. is at that point now. The U.S. can no longer afford to go to war, other than to defend itself, nor can they afford certain foreign aid expenditures, such as USAID. That doesn't mean that Trump is going to stop spending like a sailor on a shore leave, it just means that the budget can't afford it. Which means, that in order to pay for the over blown defence budget, and the enhanced DOJ, aka, ICE, Trump has to take money from other line items in the overall budget. Which he's been doing. All the while, the treasury secretary is trying like hell to sell more bonds and treasury bills.

With the interest rate going up and up, that's becoming a hard sell now. Foreign investments are down, because Trump has pissed off nearly everyone across the planet. No one wants to give money to Trump, just to have it weaponized against them someday. That's the word going around in the international financial circles.

Then there are the heads of state, like Saudi Arabia for instance, who are starting to regret making so many trade and financial deals with the U.S., when Trump has suddenly decided to turn away when they need a little help. You wait. These countries that used to be so elated to invest in the U.S., either with trade deals, or other ways, will start pulling out of their deals soon. Some have already started. Canada and Europe for instance. East Asia is starting to make some moves. Japan and South Korea are sitting on the fence, as they are heavily entrenched militarily with the U.S. to just shut the doors. You can bet they're working on something though.

I remarked to someone yesterday, that it won't be much longer before the U.S. dollar stops being the world's reserve currency. I give it less than ten years, given how things are going. The days of the petrodollar are about finished. The countries in the Persian Gulf will likely start selling oil in Chinese Yuan and Russian Ruble predominantly soon.

The worry for the average U.S. consumer, is that once that happens (and I have little doubt that it won't), the value of a dollar on the global market will drop like a stone in a pond. Americans will have to shell out a lot more dollars to buy any imports in the near future.

Consider that Americans depend on imports for nearly every aspect of the economy these days, that's going to hit hard. It won't be a sudden switch. Economies don't work like that. It won't be like the price of a Mexican avocado is one price, until Americans wake up one day, and the price has tripled overnight.

No. It will continue to gradually creep up until one day, people go shopping at the local grocer, and realise they no longer have the money to buy avocados one day. Beef is getting to that point, and now, so is pork. My wife spent $25 on a family pack of pork ribs today. That's how bad things are starting to get. Beef has been ridiculous for a while now. Which is why we rarely eat beef anymore, other than on very special occasions. It looks like pork will have to go on that exception list now as well.

One of my favourite financial news podcasts, is Sean Foo from Singapore. I try to watch his show daily, whenever he posts something. Dr. Powell is another, but as he writes more like a scientist, which tends to be a bit dry most of the time, I read the highlights only. Otherwise, he would put me to sleep.

The takeaway from all of this, is that the U.S. economy is heading for another major recession. The signs are all there, if you care to look. That's the problem with most Americans, they know that the economy is bad, and they see how they can't afford things like they used to before last year. Especially now, with Trumps's disastrous war with Iran. They're mad, and they want someone to do something about it.

But they are missing the bigger picture. Which is, that this is just the beginning of their misery. We're already at the beginnings of a major recession. No matter who gets elected in November, nothing will change that. The democrats will not be able to stop what's already begun. Trump and his people are most assuredly going to blame the democrats once the recession is announced, which will probably be early next year, once all the new democrats get sworn in.

So the question now, is what are we going to do? I argue that we will do what we've always done. Tighten our belts and weather the storm. It will be a rough one this time though. Mostly because Trump doesn't have a clue on how to manage anything like this, and his MAGA arseholes will sit around while Rome burns, pointing fingers at the democrats. The democrats will run around flailing their arms, yelling that the sky is falling, but don't panic. All will be good soon.

Their answer will be congressional hearings about everything. While they're doing that, the average American consumer will watch as the consumer prices keep rising. It won't take too long, before they start asking questions of the democrats, such as why aren't you doing what we elected you to do, which is to bring down the cost of living down to where it was before Trump destroyed everything?

We've seen this show before with past republican presidents. They break everything, the people elect a democrat to fix things, and things get broke even more. This happened with Nixon, Reagan, George Bush senior, George Bush Jr., and now, Trump. Each time, a democrat came in with a promise to fix things, only to make things worse.

I will give the democrats a little credit. At least they tried. Which is more than I can say about the feckless republicans. With the current crop of republican candidates in the running for public office this year across the country, it feels like they're not even trying anymore. The only republicans showing up to run for office appear to be right out of America's most wanted list.

Maybe they're getting their inspiration from the gangster in chief living in the white house. Whatever it is, there are a large handful that have made the news, with everything from racketeering in Texas, to theft, grift, and even domestic abuse. It's like they just don't care anymore about ethical integrity. Getting elected and grifting the people in their voting district so they can massively profit by their time in office is all that matters anymore.

There's a republican running for office in my district. I won't vote for him just because he's a republican, and therefore automatically on my grifter list. I have seen one flyer in my mail box describing him as just another rich guy on the take of the republican party. Now, normally, I don't pay much attention to that kind of trash in my mail box, but I thought about that flyer as I am writing this. And it just happens that I received more today.

I already have my Virginia mail in voting ballot sitting here on my desk, waiting for me to open it up and vote. I will vote this month, and figure out which drop box to take it to. That's the difference in this election. In the past, I would always just put it in my mailbox for pickup and not worry about it again. This year, I now have to worry about whether the post office will actually deliver it, or add it to the pile of other undelivered ballots Trump says are invalid, just because they came from a democrat leaning voting district. Rather than worrying about that, I'll just take it to a drop box location and give to someone in person. I'm not taking any chances with Trump and the post office this time, I don't care what the news media says. Better safe than sorry in this case.

Think about all of this for a minute? When was the last time anyone can remember, when we the people had to worry about voting integrity? When was the last time we had to worry about whether someone in the government was going to stop us from casting out votes in an election? I'm seventy, and I can't remember a time when I've ever seen this much doubt sown about an election in all my years of voting.

I may have missed a few because I was either deployed or out on other missions, but I always voted when I could. I haven't missed an election since I got off active duty in 2004, and I'm not going to be intimidated from voting now. People would argue that I should just stand in the long lines at the polling station where I'm assigned and vote in person on the one and only day that the government gives us to vote.

Think about that. I am a 100% service connected disabled veteran. Which means I'm handicapped, like millions of other Americans, veterans or otherwise. Why should people like me have to make a choice between suffering from our disabilities standing in long lines in order to vote in person, or not vote because of our disabilities? Which is what Trump wants. He thinks that by dissuading a large portion of the American public from voting, he, and his hand picked people, like Ken Paxton of Texas, can win by default, because not enough people were able to get out and vote for the opposition.

It sounds stupid when you say it out loud, but that's just how stupid Trump and his people are. Donald Trump is a very stupid man. He always has been. If you go back in time to when he was a lot younger, and hanging around people like Jeffrey Epstein, just because Epstein happened to be the man around town to get to know, if you wanted things to play with that were not something you wanted society to know about.

From the videos that were uncovered last year, it was obvious that Trump was doing all he could to fawn all over Epstein, in order to get the toys he wanted to play with. Jeffery Epstein was known in all of the best circles of high society around the world, as the procurer of those "special" toys that normal people wouldn't touch. But, for someone like Donald Trump, nothing was too much, because he needed to be seen as someone who would do anything in order to be one of those "special" people. Being seen as special is all that matters to Donald Trump, even his dotage today.

We have the latest state visit by China's president, Xi Jinping for example. It was very obvious that Trump was fawning over the Chinese president, in what little news footage that managed to leak out.

This is the kind of man the U.S. election system was rigged into electing back in 2024. Trump didn't win the popular vote. He didn't win the popular vote back in 2016. But he did win the electoral votes in both elections. That's what I call election manipulation. George W. Bush got away with it against Al Gore back in 2000. Look at what that election got us by 2002 and afterwards?

I've long said that George W. Bush should be tried in the ICC for war crimes, along with his crew of misfits, most of whom are dead now. But, I digress.

We will weather this next recession like we have all the others. It will be a rough time for a lot of people, again. As for the ICE prison camps, I suspect they will get dismantled by the democrats next year, and the traumatised people will be allowed to return home. I can't say that for a certainty, but the democrats know how unpopular this mass immigration deportation policy is to the vast majority of main stream Americans. I think that will become one of their top priorities once they get situated after January. If they don't, then the democrats will quickly become as unpopular as the MAGA republicans, and I know they don't want that.

I also believe that this whole chapter in American history will change how people see the United States, both from the view of the Americans, and for the rest of the world. Trump's biggest historical legacy will be of the one president who managed to piss off nearly everyone around the world, including a vast majority of the American people, both the Trump haters, and now, the Trump voters, who thought he would deliver on his campaign promises.

I knew he never would give anyone what he promised. He never has, so why would he start now? I also couldn't vote for the democrats who supported the genocide in Palestine either back in 2024. I don't support those who still support the Zionists in Israel even now. Anyone who's been paying attention to the news over the last three years, knows that it's all about the money. These stupid American politicians are only following the money, to enrich themselves, at the expense of the hapless Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians. As long as the Israelis pay them, they will do as they're told.

I could write about this stuff all night. Don't get me started. The bottom line of all of this, is that we the people allowed this to happen to us, just as we allowed this to happen to us in the past. As a collective American society, I believe we are the most gullible people I've known for a long time. We vote for the best liars and con men, and cry in anguish when they take advantage of our good nature. We do this over and over again, and we don't seem to learn our lessons. We vote them out, only after they've fleeced us to the tune of billions, and sometimes, trillions of dollars, and elect more like them or worse, later down the road, when the latest one terms out, and does some outrageous things to make us mad at them. Most of the time, it's been both. At least in my lifetime anyway.

Trump will go the way of all past wannabe American tyrants eventually. He will get voted out, and in this case, termed out as well. His is an unusual presidency anyway, because of the skipped term. In the meantime, we have to put up with him for two more years. The question a lot of people are asking around the kitchen tables and quiet rural coffee stops, is whether the democrats be able to put a stop to him and get things back to some kind of normalcy? I'm asking that one myself. What do you think?