Global Economic Crisis

Sheldon Filger-blogger for GlobalEconomicCrisis.com

The supposed raison d’être of the Biden presidency was defined by its political allies and media supporters as  a “return to normality” after the 4-year administration of former president and major-league disruptor Donald Trump.  Now that the Biden administration has been in office for 2-months. what is the  scorecard?

Problematic, for 3 major reasons, all interconnected:

1. Unprecedented rise in the national debt The passage of the latest Covid relief bill, following in the wake of earlier bills Congress approved during the last months of the Trump administration, have skyrocketed the U.S. national debt at a level never before seen. The stimulus package approved during the Obama-Biden administration following the Global Financial Crisis of 2007-09 is trivial in comparison. The latest package adds $1.9 trillion to the already staggering growth in the nation’s sovereign debt during the course of a single year. Defenders of the Biden administration claim that there should be no concern. Other indicators provide a different answer. Rising 10-year bond yields, the growing disconnect between Wall Street and Main Street and other factors point to a growth of future inflationary trends and expectations. Should inflation become realized at  higher rates than the past 15 years. the growth in debt servicing costs for the U.S. Treasury may break the U.S. Federal Budget in future years.
2. Breakdown of control on the Southern border. The Biden administration has undone most of his predecessor’s border control policies. The result is a rise in massive, uncontrolled immigration from impoverished and violence-stricken Latin American countries, outside the legal process. This development has the potential to promote domestic instability in a country already stricken with a partisan divide characterized by growing mutual hostility.

3.Worsening international relations. In particular, President Biden  and his policymakers and advisors have exacerbated the already inharmonious relations that existed between Washington and its  two major global adversaries; Russia and China. The most recent  example was President Biden’s public comment that Putin was a “killer.” This needlessly hostile name-calling directed at the head of state of a major power possessing a nuclear arsenal equal to that of the U.S. was stunning. The supposedly more polished and experienced Biden, often contrasted as such with Trump, engaged in the type of  verbal insults and bullying expected at a schoolyard scrap, not from mature and professional policymakers. That such amateurish behavior has already occurred so early in the Biden presidency points to the likelihood of a worsening of bilateral relations between the U.S. and Russia, and probably a similar trend with China.

The above three factors are interconnected. They  points  to the United States, under the auspices of the Biden administration, engaging  in policies that are fiscally, domestically and geopolitically highly destabilizing. This makes a global economic depression a far more likely event in the near future.