23 reasons Americans need to get out of the dollar and buy gold now

Whether it’s the enormous national debt, the consistent political instability, the deterioration of the dollar or the blatant disrespect to capitalism, free markets and economic freedom, the United States is in a collapse of all kinds (yes, even moral). Unfortunately, it may not matter who is in charge. If it’s a Democrat, a Republican or even an Independent, the country is in a steep decline.

Economic Collapse News has reported on numerous instances to further the case that Americans need to flee the dollar and find a hedge to protect the fruits of your labor, whether it be gold, silver, a foreign currency or anything else that can be deemed as tangible.

There have been numerous explanations as to what went wrong, but it would be prudent to quote Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital and former 2010 Republican Senate candidate, who has put forward quite a bit of analogies to identify the nation’s woes.

“The main problem for the past several years, what we’ve done as Americans, we spent a lot of money we didn’t have, to buy foreign products we couldn’t afford.  We’ve run up an enormous debt to the rest of the world and we’ve got nothing to show for it.  It’s analogous to an individual who loses his job and instead of getting another job, he simply buys everything on a credit card and then he shows his life his credit card bills and says, “Look, honey! Look how great we’re doing.”

Here are 23 reasons to show that Americans need to get out of the U.S. dollar and buy gold at this very moment:

1. The United States national debt stands at nearly $16.4 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the debt will increase to $20.3 trillion by the end of President Barack Obama’s second term and hit the $26 trillion mark by the year 2025.

2. Debt per citizen is $51,930 and debt per taxpayer is $142,393.

3. As of 2012, the total interest paid on the U.S. national debt is nearly $4 trillion. This accounts to $12,484 per citizen for just the interest alone.  In total, on top of the national debt, that’s close to $75,000 per U.S. citizen.

4. If you total all of the country’s debt, including household, business, financial institutions and state, local and federal governments, it equals $59 trillion ($705,773 per family).

5. The budget deficit has hit the trillion-dollar mark four years in a row. Although that number is expected to drop for the next three years, it will once again exceed $1 trillion in President Barack Obama’s final year in office.

6. The U.S. does not suffer from a revenue problem, but rather a spending problem. Total U.S. federal spending stands at more than $3.5 trillion and there are no real substantial cuts in sight.  The fiscal cliff on Jan. 1, 2013 includes only cuts to future automatic spending increases.

7. There hasn’t been a lot of talk in the fiscal cliff negotiations regarding the coming tsunami in liabilities.  At the time of this writing, U.S. unfunded liabilities and expenditures total $121.7 trillion (Social Security Liability: $16.05 trillion, Prescription Drug Liability: $21.2 trillion and Medicare Liability: $84.5 trillion).

8. In late November, the Treasury Department released its latest statistics regarding foreign holdings of Treasury securities. It found that the number now stands at $5.46 trillion with China ($1.15 trillion), Japan ($1.13 trillion) and three oil exporters ($267 billion) holding the most.

9. Chairman Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve announced in November that U.S. interest rates will stay near zero until early 2016 – this hurts savers who put their money into savings accounts and receive hardly any interest at all.

10. The U.S. dollar is on the verge of losing its world reserve currency status.  The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has listed the Australian dollar and the Canadian loonie as currencies to be placed in the basket of reserve currencies.

11. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s August statistics, total U.S. household debt stands at $11.38 trillion – the household debt includes credit card debt, loans, student loans and other expenditures.

12. Since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913, the dollar has lost 90 percent of its value. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s many monetary policies have further devalued the dollar to make it virtually worthless. Remember what Peter Finch from “Network” said? “A dollar buys a nickel’s worth.”

13. One of the Fed’s latest actions includes purchasing 90 percent of new bonds.

14. Although there is a belief that taxes are too low in the U.S., many Americans will start to pay 50 percent marginal tax rates as of 2013. This doesn’t include the numerous federal, state and local taxes, such as self-employment taxes, property taxes and tire taxes.

15. For years, the U.S. economy has suffered from bubbles, which are usually propelled by the Federal Reserve through the forms of low interest rates, artificial lending standards and a black helicopter dropping down money. From the dot-com bubble to the housing bubble to the present day credit card and student loan bubbles, one must ask: what will the next bubble be? Answer: U.S. debt.

16. The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) reported that present and future regulations, including Obamacare, are costing businesses and taxpayers more than $1.8 trillion per year – check out John Stossel’s various programs on this very issue.

17. New data suggested that the entrepreneurial monster that once engulfed the U.S. is now at a 30-year low. This means that there are a lack of new start-ups and employment opportunities for American workers.

18. The federal government likes to suppress real unemployment figures. The latest suggest that jobless rate dropped to 7.7 percent, but it doesn’t factor in part-time work, a person who has stopped looking for work for more than one year or those who have quit the workforce and entered retirement. If this is factored, the real unemployment rate is in the low-20s.

19. Two-thirds of the U.S. economy is based on consumption. This doesn’t provide real economic growth because producing things is what grows an economy. The economic growth rate is between 1.3 percent and 2.7 percent.

20. Since the year 2000, the price of gold has risen from $200 to nearly $2,000.  The price of silver has also risen from a few bucks to as high as $49.  All of this has been in the time of the “lost decade” for the country where debt has risen, bubbles have formed and there has been much intervention in the economy by government and central banks.

21. Will the president launch an attack against Syria? When will the Western world strike Iran? The U.S. foreign policy has been militaristic and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost the taxpayers more than a $1 trillion. Other foreign ventures, such as the drone strikes and the war in Libya, has also cost in the billions.

22. Faustian Economics.  Who is Mephistopheles in this case? Well, whoever is portraying the legendary character, the U.S. has been spending, borrowing and printing too much today, while forgetting about the bill tomorrow.

23. In the future, the U.S. will only be able to afford to pay the interest on the national debt and some Social Security.