Michael Snyder (Opinion) - Ignoring long-term problems can work for a while, but eventually they catch up with you. Over the years, I have written many articles about alarming long-term trends in our society that desperately needed to be addressed. Of course the vast majority of those long-term trends never got much attention, because our political system tends to reward politicians that focus on short-term issues. As a result, many of the long-term trends that I have written about previously have now gotten to a point where they have started to become very serious short-term problems. In this article, I would like to share 9 examples of this with you.
#1 I have been warning about exploding debt levels for as long as I have been writing about the economy.
Most people know that the U.S. national debt has now crossed the 28 trillion dollar threshold, but hardly anyone is talking about the explosion of corporate debt that we have been witnessing in recent months. According to the Federal Reserve, total corporate debt in the United States is now up to a whopping 11.2 trillion dollars…
Before the pandemic, U.S. companies were borrowing heavily at low interest rates. When Covid-19 lockdowns triggered a recession, they didn’t pull back. They borrowed even more and soon paid even less.
After a brief spike, interest rates on corporate debt plummeted to their lowest level on record, bringing a surge in new bonds. Nonfinancial companies issued $1.7 trillion of bonds in the U.S. last year, nearly $600 billion more than the previous high, according to Dealogic. By the end of March, their total debt stood at $11.2 trillion, according to the Federal Reserve, about half the size of the U.S. economy.
MichaelSnyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is the author of 5 books including his latest, Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” which is available on Amazon.com. He has four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. Michael allows others to republish his work on other websites because he feels people need hope more than ever before, and its his goal to share the gospel of Jesus Christ.