US National Debt Passes $15 Trillion!

Good day… No contact from James Bullard, so I guess he doesn’t read the Pfennig… HA! I was hoping he would read yesterday’s letter, and answer my questions in writing, since I was unable to ask him in person the other day. But I guess that was like wishing, and hoping, and thinking, and praying that someone at the Fed would answer those questions, because… I know that someone at the Fed does read the Pfennig… Wink, wink…

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A Currency and Commodity Rally for the Ages

Front and center this morning we have a currency and commodity rally going on for the ages! But first… Today is also my long time, good friend, and the Big Boss’ birthday! Yes… Happy Birthday, Frank Trotter! YAHOO!

OK… The currency and commodity rally for the ages… It’s as if the overnight markets guys and gals had the light bulb go on over their collective heads, and inside the light bulb was this thought… “Interest rates around the world are going up, but staying down in the US and S&P just downgraded the US’s outlook to negative, so why are we holding dollars?”… The rest is history as they say, with the euro (EUR) rallying to 1.45, the Aussie dollar (AUD) to $1.0650, and gold at $1,505…

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Beauty is Truth

Beauty is truth; truth beauty, the poet, John Keats famously mused in his Ode on a Grecian Urn. Neither Greece nor Goldman Sachs can seem to get the hang of this concept.

Grecian finances, for example, illustrate an opposing principal: deception is ugly. For more than a decade, the Greeks have engaged in a mass deception that a revenue-starved nation could finance generous social programs. The idea was never viable, feasible or legitimate. But the Greeks wanted to believe it…and so did the rest of the European Union. They all wanted to believe that Greeces last six defaults were a fluke that the new and improved Greece would behave nothing like the old, profligate one.

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US Government Spending: Capitalists Repeating Communist Mistakes

Panel will tackle national debt, says a headline in this weeks Washington Post.

Would anyone like to bet?

Who writes these headlines? What are they thinking? Are they thinking at all?

While the bi-partisan group of bumblers may do something; tackling the national debt or even slowing it down is not one of them. It would be going against the tide of modern financial history, which rolls debt into bigger and bigger piles and turns small problems into huge ones.

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A Rock and a Hard Place: Understanding the US Debt Crisis

The developed nations are over-extended, their debt levels are ballooning and their governments are creating copious amounts of money. Put simply, most industrialized nations are now caught between a rock and a hard place.

After years of excesses, the developed world is slowly beginning to realize that you cannot continue to live beyond your means and spend your way to prosperity.

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Is Your Money What You Think It Is?

Louis James (Senior Editor, Casey Research): Doug, last time we spoke, you said quite a bit about debt, in the context of your expectation that the euro is on its way out. At the end of that conversation, you mentioned, of course, that the problem is not limited to Greece, nor the eurozone. America as a country has become a world-class debtor, and many Americans seem to think a maxed-out credit card is a reason to get a higher credit limit, not to economize. Its like a global epidemic. Lets talk about debt.

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National Debt: $12.4 Trillion and Counting

We have deficits and debts on the brain today. The federal deficit for the first four months of fiscal 2010 just clocked in at $430.7 billion. Thats 8.8% higher than the year-ago figure.

We remember that when the annual deficit hit a record high $430 billion under the second Bush administration, we thought the world was going to end and wed have to buy guns, ammo, dry goods, go into hiding, cling to God and wait for the country and the rest of world to collapse.

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Keeping an Eye on 13-F Filings

13-F filings. Usually, theyre like watching grass grow — unless someone from Berkshire Hathaway is involved. Tuesday was a little different.

In short, 13-Fs are the form institutional investors have to send the SEC when moving $100 million or more. This 13-F, dear reader, is one everyone should see:

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