Where is our leadership?  I haven’t written anything in a while because quite frankly it pretty much has been the same old crap going on just a different day.

I mean what do we have to talk about; the Mueller investigation that was initiated under false pretenses and lies has finally ended after tens of millions of taxpayer dollars wasted.  The results will never make the Democrats happy and they will continue to investigate everything Trump has ever done. The Mueller report will go down in history as the greatest façade in our nation’s history.   I wonder if the leading Democrats were scrutinized like Trump what would show up?  I can assure you it would be ugly for many of them.

The immigration crisis, which is real, is being ignored by both parties.  You have President Trump declaring an emergency because no legislatures want to help him and then you have Republican Senators defecting to the Democratic side because they feel Trump does not have the authority under the Constitution to direct this spending.  https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-wields-first-presidential-veto-to-nix-border-emergency-rebuff   Well, I would like to know, as a citizen, when are we going to enforce the immigration laws on the books right now?  I mean why aren’t we?  Well let me boil it down for you in essence: Republicans want cheap labor and Democrats want cheap votes.  This is the reason immigration is where it is today and guess who is footing the bill; middle class taxpayers.

The stock market what a roller coaster ride that is.  Everyone says we are about to have a slowdown, but how can that be with near full employment?  Well, I am certainly no Nobel economist but I can tell you that many people are re-evaluating building a home now with the new tax law in place.  Any income tax benefit received as a result of building a home have pretty much been wiped out with the new standard deduction being as high as it is.  Oh, home sales may be up, but that is for existing homes; look at the stats for homes being built, not good.  Home construction is a big player in our economy in that it pulls forward so many resources like copper for wiring, lumber, concrete, flooring, insulation, plumbing, rebar, and on and on so if housing starts are down so is the economy.  What does this mean?  Well it could mean that there may have to be some changes made to the new tax law to incentivize home building.  Economist point to the inverted bond market interest rates as an indicator that a recession is near.  What does inverted interest rate mean; well it means that the 10 year Treasury bond was at a lower rate than the 3 month rate.  What could cause this?  Again, with a lower demand for new mortgages the interest rate for the long term rate should fall due to low demand.  I personally; however, do not see a recession in the near future with employment as high as it is.

The debt, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  Now if you want to give politicians a horrible scare bring these topics up and watch them run for the hills.  These are the last things they want to discuss, why, because there are no easy answers.  Our debt is now 22 trillion dollars.  That is 22 followed by 12 zeros.  Everybody seems to be worried about interest rates rising, well I can tell you the last thing the Federal Reserve wants to do is raise interest rates. Why, well because as the interest rates rise, the amount the government will have to pay just to pay the interest on the debt will also rise.   Take a guess on what the interest is on 22 trillion dollars at a 3% interest rate is; try 660 billion dollars.  That’s not paying down the debt, just the interest on the debt.  So where is most of the money going, to the 3 big entitlements I mentioned in the beginning of this paragraph.  The other big entity that gets money is defense spending.  The other so called discretionary government spending is small potatoes compared  to the other four.  So what politician is going to recommend any reforms or cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Defense spending, nada, none, and not happening.  Well guess what, something is going to have to happen and happen soon or we are headed for a financial brick wall.  What does the brick wall look like?  It looks like when the Treasury opens its window for bond buyers and the bond buyers say, we’re not buying anymore bonds at those low rates, we want a higher rate because we feel we are at a higher risk owning U.S. debt.  When that happens, look out, things will happen and they will happen fast.  Interest rates will spike and so will inflation.  Our money will be worth less.  It will be horrible times very quickly.  The sad part about this is that it can all be avoided if our elected officials would put forth just a little effort to display a sense that they understand the problem and are trying to address it instead of just ignoring it.

You know, we have so many huge problems in our country and it appears that none of our elected officials want to address them.  All they care about is the next sound bite, or tweet, or Instagram, or whatever electronic media is the next flavor of the day.  Their hate for each other is overriding what they should be doing for our country and it is a real shame.  Meaningful things need to happen soon from our leadership or the only deal we will be getting is a raw one.