*Note: This is an informal note that is not directly related to my last essay. The second part of that is still to come.*

Notwithstanding the headline, I don’t really think that panic accomplishes anything useful. But I am amazed that we are looking at a catastrophe and hardly anyone is talking about it. The current situation is the opposite of the “food crisis” that I addressed last year. At the time I talked about how even though there were a lot of bad headlines when you looked into the actual numbers there was no crisis in the immediate near term (it might be different now at least in terms of rice, but I have not really dug into the numbers yet for this year). But in terms of the US deficit, very few people seem to be panicking and yet when you dig into the numbers they are really bad.

So I thought I would write a short informal piece to break down the headlines that I have been linking to and explain why they represent a catastrophe in the making that will directly impact your life. Let us start with a recent CNN story titled “Federal budget deficit expected to nearly double to around $2 trillion.”

Now, if you are a typical American redneck, you will see a head line like that and sagely tell whoever is next to you “the politicians are going to bankrupt this country” and then go on with your business without giving the headline another thought. And who can really blame the typical redneck for reacting like that? In 2020 the Federal Government ran 3.1 trillion dollar deficit and in 2021 the feds ran a 2.8 trillion dollar deficit. It is true that in 2022 the deficit was just over a trillion dollars but if the world did not come to end back in 2020 or 2021 then, why should a mere 2 trillion dollar deficit be a cause of panic today?

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