A week until the government goes unfunded or some putrid stopgap that smells of old socks and bad cheese keeps things running a few days or a week or two longer.
Exploring federal budget data is a journey through endless rabbit holes, some of which are eerily close to Alice in Wonderland insanity. Countless variables interact in unexpected ways.
Recently, several major banks were unable to process hundreds of thousands of payments for days. The issues were a technical glitch with the Federal Reserve System.
The US government seized full control of gold within the US during the Great Depression; it made owning gold illegal from 1933 to 1974. So, consider no asset assuredly safe.
Manipulation of the gold market also manipulates other markets insofar as the price of gold powerfully influences interest rates and the price of everything else.
"Like everyone else, I can predict the crash, I just can't predict when. Bonds are going to have their 'Come to Jesus' moment and the stock market is an accident waiting to happen."
We used to worry that someday the deficit would hit a trillion dollars a year, and then it did that and worse for each of the last four years. We’re snowed in!
