Attention, attention: the USA is bankrupt!

Don’t leave the world to the madmen:

The real reasons behind the customs tariffs and other harassments.

By Theobald Tiger

Those who deny climate change and those who have to organise their finances with their backs to the wall sometimes betray even their best friends – just to make sure that they themselves can survive. The United States of America is broke. Unexpectedly, and completely bypassing the financial markets, Donald Duck (78) has now taken over “a company” facing bankruptcy, for the sixth time. Quite simply, he can no longer use the national budget to pay for many government services because the tax pots are empty; the USA is hardly selling any government bonds, as it used to do when everyone thought the USA was strong and rich. Although, in fact, it wasn’t at all. It never was. And Donald Duck is a president who has been convicted by the court in New York and therefore has a criminal record. And what does a bankrupt do when his back is against the wall?

He makes mistakes. He is closing down organisations such as USAID by decree, because they are creating holes in the balance sheets of the “company USA”; he is withdrawing from the Paris Climate Agreement, because he considers it to be too expensive and useless; and he is preparing the US Internal Revenue Service so that he can lay off thousands of employees in the coming weeks. According to two people familiar with the subject, this will save salaries and wages. ECO123 has drawn back the curtain of the USA state theatre just a little and taken a look behind the scenes. The exact number of redundancies is still uncertain. Under the administration of former President Joe Biden, the agency’s staff had grown to around 100,000 people in number. Biden wanted to expand the tax authority’s powers in order to scrutinise the tax payments received from companies, and, in particular, the contributions made by wealthy taxpayers, among other things. Elon Musk?

Despite all the prophecies of doom, the banks have repeatedly provided both Donald D., on the one hand, and the USA, on the other hand, with loans and financing. But, as ECO123 has just learned from the AP news agency, Duck not only has to impose import tariffs on all EU goods in order to replenish the US taxpayers’ coffers for 2025, but he must also impose various tariffs on goods imported from China, the world’s largest economy. Without the import tariffs imposed on Canadian and Mexican products, the USA would be practically finished in financial terms. Donald D. could then write off Greenland anyway…

STOP. Take a deep breath and have a short break before you continue reading.

Do you remember? In recent years, the USA has been plagued by various budget crises because all governments have spent more money than they have succeeded in taking in. In the middle of the current budget year of 2024, the US government accounts were so empty that the previous Treasury Secretary could no longer repay the US debt. The worst-case scenario painted on the wall by Janet Yellen, who was Treasury Secretary until recently, was that the loans could no longer be serviced, and government employees could no longer be paid on time unless additional money was found (on credit, of course). However, as a debtor, the US has always been able to skilfully conceal what was going on behind the scenes.

Ever since an actor named Ronald Reagan became the 40th president in the White House in 1981, successive governments have always just managed to avoid bankruptcy. This situation is now set to end. Donald D. finally wants to be honest, although there is no actual question of his ‘wanting’ to do so. He has to. The 100.000 American soldiers stationed in Europe are also due to be brought home before the end of the year. “We simply have no more money,” Duck is said to have replied to questions from a small circle of journalists.

After decades of denying reality, the USA now finds itself under severe pressure. As the Associated Press news agency learned from the Oval Office, Duck is said to have given Elon Musk far-reaching powers to bring spending into line with the amount of revenue that is received by the American state apparatus. No, the carnival did not play a role in this decision. In the future, Americans, who are used to living on credit and paying for everything with credit cards, will finally have to become accustomed to buying only what they can really afford to do so, and then purchasing preferably domestic products. And import tariffs are known to make foreign goods considerably more expensive: cars, clothing, electronic toys Made in China, etc.

In the midst of this whole business, the really stupid people are the American consumers themselves, with their dependence on loans. Of course, the USA could finance itself without this ridiculous customs spectacle. All you would have to do is raise taxes accordingly and accrue greater revenue from billionaires. But loudmouth Donald Duck doesn’t (yet) dare to do that, as long as Elon Musk from Tesla, X and Star Wars continues to do the dirty work for the first US president to be convicted of criminal offences.

On 29 December 2024, Janet Yellen wrote a letter to all members of Congress, in which she clearly stated the truth. The letter from the outgoing US Treasury Secretary to Congress turned out to be a dramatic warning: once again, the government was in danger of defaulting on its loan repayments to creditors at home and abroad. In order to avoid being in default – one might even say in order to avoid national bankruptcy – Yellen said that she would have to take ‘extraordinary measures’ as early as January. Donald Duck is now taking these measures, firstly at the 2025 Munich Security Conference, where he stated that he can no longer pre-finance NATO’s financial obligations for the Europeans…

Are we looking at the national bankruptcy of the world’s largest economic power? The Americans have enacted this spectacle so often that many observers are beginning to get bored and are turning away. It’s all theatre. But is it really? The background to all of this is that there is a statutory upper limit for the level of national debt in the USA. If the government reaches this limit, it is no longer allowed to issue new promissory notes in order to finance its current expenditure and pay off old loans. To prevent this situation from happening, Republicans and Democrats regularly raise the debt limit – but not without weeks of arguing, haggling and threatening beforehand. Party politics is teetering on the edge of the abyss. This is democracy, American-style.

What is often overlooked is that Congress is playing poker with ever higher stakes. The US national debt now totals an unimaginable 36 trillion dollars; should the last-minute compromise fail to be achieved, the shockwave will quickly engulf the entire global economy. The likely consequences will be recession, stock market chaos, job losses and bank failures. So, before we continue to buy US government bonds in order to bail out the American government, we should think twice: we should not bail out the Americans this time and invest in the EU Commission’s Green Deal instead.

Is the stability of the USA important for its creditworthiness?

How can it be that the USA still dares to live on the razor’s edge? Should we Europeans allow ourselves to be led by the nose time and time again? And why do the world’s governments, central banks, insurers, credit institutions and other investors keep lending their money to such an unsafe client?

Until now, the explanation for this situation has always been the United States’ unique position in the global structure. For many decades, the country has had not only the strongest economy, but also the world’s most important currency and the largest capital markets, as well as a powerful defence force. More than half of all cross-border transactions around the world are conducted in dollars, and the demand for the US currency is correspondingly high. And this is precisely where the American import tariffs are meant to have an effect. Yet, on the other hand, in order to ensure that the money earns a decent interest, or at least that it doesn’t lie pointlessly in an account in Lisbon, London, Tokyo or Berlin until it is needed, the owners have invested it in US government bonds, at least until now. In other words, investors have been lending their money to US governments and thus supporting the very system that is supposedly faltering with every fresh dispute over raising the statutory borrowing limit. So, now we are witnessing the first signs of a giant beginning to totter and betraying its friends in ‘the free world’.

Donald Duck, aged 78, who recently became the 47th new president in the White House, is a former estate agent. He knows exactly what state the USA was in when he took over. After all, this is his second term in office. So, his maxim is quite simply to cut spending and increase revenue in order to survive. He is first and foremost a gambler and an actor, and he is a fraud, a convicted fraud who should never have been allowed to run in the presidential elections.

And he is a traitor, a traitor to Ukraine. This week, he is selling out Ukraine to Russia. If Ursula von der Leyen and her EU Commission don’t come up with some grand plan designed to put the crook out of business, the USA and its first freely elected impostor will succeed in dividing Europe one country after another. One thing should be clear. The USA is coming to an end, it is broke. In fact, Donald Duck is already finished before he has even begun to govern. It would be his sixth bankruptcy. How much longer can diplomacy be used to orchestrate financial policy? Why don’t you throw the big man in prison, where he really belongs? Too bad he didn’t hear the shot (in Butler, Pennsylvania)…