The Treasury Department put fresh sanctions on Russia on Wednesday to stem the flow of money and goods that can fuel the country’s war against Ukraine, leading Russia to announce an immediate suspension of dollar trades on the Moscow Stock Exchange, according to Reuters. Russia’s continued pullback from the dollar is just the latest example of U.S. adversaries growing opposition to the current world reserve currency, and if the dollar is ever widely abandoned around the world, it could usher in huge levels of inflation and force the U.S. to deal with its mounting national debt, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“If the Biden administration were intentionally trying to destroy the dollar, I’m not sure what they’d do differently,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “His spendthrift agenda has resulted in the dollar losing one-fifth of its value in less than four years, and his international policies have done even more harm by eroding the dollar’s reserve currency status. By freezing and then eventually stealing dollars owned by foreigners, Biden sent a clear message to the world that the dollar is no longer a safe asset.”

The Biden administration’s weaponization of the financial system against Russia has been particularly pronounced since the country launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with the U.S. and its allies removing many Russian banks from the worldwide financial messaging system SWIFT and freezing hundreds of billions in Russian foreign reserves.

“A Rubicon was crossed in the form of policy choices made in the immediate aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in early 2022,” Peter Earle, economist at the American Institute for Economic Research, told the DCNF. “Those decisions included seizing hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Russian FX reserves (Russian holdings of US dollars) and ejecting most major Russian financial institutions out of the SWIFT messaging system.”

“In taking those actions, Russia was effectively kicked out of the U.S. dollar system,” Earle continued. “It was a turning point as it has put adversaries — and allies — of the United States on notice that the dollar, which has for seventy years been the default currency for international trade and settlement, can be weaponized, and thus that dependence upon the dollar comes with a heretofore unconsidered risk.”

The US, under Biden, has also continued to impose harsh sanctions on Iran in connection with the funding of terrorism. The Biden administration used $6 billion in seized assets in August 2023 as leverage for the exchange of five American prisoners.

Saudi Arabia became a full participant in Project mBridge, an effort dominated by China to create a central bank digital currency that could replace the dollar in the exchange of oil on the world stage, according to Reuters. The addition of Saudi Arabia to the program puts the project in the “minimum viable product” stage for wider use.

“Russia’s suspension of trading in dollars on the Moscow exchange is just the latest domino to fall, and it won’t be the last,” Antoni told the DCNF. “As de-dollarization snowballs, foreigners won’t want dollars anymore, and they’ll start exchanging the currency for American goods and services. It’s no exaggeration to say that this will mean 70 years’ worth of trade deficits pouring back to our shores.”

Further de-dollarization, depending on the speed at which it occurs, could cause another surge of inflation, which has already wreaked havoc on the finances of average Americans under Biden, with prices rising 19.3% since January 2021. Inflation has failed to fall below 3% since it peaked under Biden at 9% in June 2022, most recently measuring 3.3% in May.

“If you think the last three years have had bad inflation, just wait until those trillions of dollars currently held by foreigners come home and start bidding up prices,” Antoni continued. “It will embolden our adversaries and impoverish Americans. We’re in the opening stages, and it’s unclear if there’s enough time to stop it.”

A group of countries posing themselves as an alternative to the U.S. and its’ allies in the G7, including Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), have expressed their opposition to the dollar as the global reserve currency. In June, Russia announced that it had begun the development of a payment platform that will allow BRICS countries to bypass the dollar, providing countries that fear the weaponization of the currency by the U.S. another avenue for foreign exchange, according to Business Insider.

“The dollar’s status as the dominant international reserve currency affords the US what Valery Giscard d’Estaing famously called an exorbitant privilege,” Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “By that, he meant that the US government could finance its budget deficit at relatively low interest rates by having the Fed print dollars that foreigners would hold. It also allowed the country to live beyond its means by consistently importing more goods and services than it exported. This is something that the US should not want to lose.”

The U.S. trade deficit widened to around $74.6 billion in April, the largest loss since October 2022. The federal government currently holds around $34.7 trillion in debt as of June 12, up from around $27.8 trillion when Biden first took office, according to the Treasury Department.

The Left is FURIOUS About Viral Joe Biden Wandering Video pic.twitter.com/witRcpoA0b

— DC Shorts (@theDCshorts) June 14, 2024

“If foreigners start selling dollars, we could have a dollar crisis in the sense that the dollar would get into a downward spiral,” Lachman told the DCNF. “That would be bad news for consumers in that it would tend to fuel inflation by substantially increasing our import costs.

“It would also lead to higher interest rates,” Lachman continued. “I do not expect that this will happen soon since the currencies of the dollar’s main competitors (the Euro, the Chinese renminbi, and the Japanese yen) all have serious problems of their own.”

The share of U.S. dollars in foreign exchange reserves has been gradually declining for the past several years, falling from over 70% in 2000 down to close to 55% in recent years, according to the International Monetary Fund.

“Global use of the dollar has been a major source of demand for US government securities — Treasury bills, bonds, and notes, as well as Agency paper,” Earle told the DCNF. “Falling demand for dollars would, in short order, translate to falling demand for those government issues, which would both restrict the amount of debt that could be sold and result in higher yields on the outstanding debt.

“With less of a market for US debt and presumably no less of an appetite for government spending, taxes would have to rise and/or inflation to be used to make ends meet,” Earle continued. “Both of those mean higher costs of living and consequently a declining quality of life.”

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

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The government-sponsored corporations Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, regulated by the Federal Home Financing Administration (FHFA), have taken a number of steps to increase financing opportunities for higher-risk borrowers under the Biden administration, including subsidizing higher-risk borrowing by hiking rates on lower-risk borrowers. Many of these actions have led to Americans taking on an increasingly large amount of debt while lending facilitated by government entities has grown in size, creating a growing possibility that a wave of foreclosures and defaults could create a shock in the housing system, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“The new Fannie and Freddie mortgage pricing directive raised rates on low-risk borrowers and reduced them on high-risk borrowers,” Jason Sorens, senior research fellow at the American Institute of Economic Research, told the DCNF. “This is not really a free market to begin with, but the risk here is creating something like the subprime crisis, where high-risk borrowers are encouraged to take on debt they can’t repay. Again, this has the potential to hit the bottom line for Fannie and Freddie.”

The guidance from the FHFA to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to essentially subsidize higher-risk borrowers took effect in May 2023, according to the Congressional Research Service. For example, under the new guidance, those with credit scores between 640 and 659 who put down a down payment between 15% and 20% would have a fee rate charged of 2.250% instead of 2.750%, while borrowers with a credit score between 760 and 779 with the same down payment would have their added rate hiked to 0.625% instead of 0.250%.

Rising housing costs have also led the entities to raise how much housing debt Americans can take on through the government entities, with the FHFA announcing near the end of 2023 that it was raising the mortgage limit for single-family homes to nearly $1.15 million in some areas, compared to the standard limit of $766,550, allowing Americans to take out even larger government-facilitated loans.

To fund its rising expenses and facilitate more loans to lower-income and higher-risk borrowers, the FHFA has proposed a new rule that would allow the government entities to purchase second mortgages.

“But the reality is that you have to look at Fannie, Freddie and FHA as one big entity, its government mortgage: it’s all run by the government, and as a single entity, it’s tilting towards higher-risk loans and higher debt ratios.” Edward Pinto, senior fellow and co-director of the American Enterprise Institute’s Housing Center, told the DCNF. “So you may be able to handle that debt ratio for a period of time. It’s when economic stress increases that you find out; as Warren Buffett said, ‘It’s only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.’ It’s not until the economic stress increases that you find out who’s over their skis in debt.”

Total debt reached an all-time high for Americans in the first quarter of 2024, with consumers holding a collective $17.69 trillion. Around $190 billion of the increase in the first quarter was in mortgage debt.

Following the 2008 financial crisis, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau set standards for private lending so that mortgages could not exceed 43% of a borrower’s income. The FHA, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae often try to meet these standards but are not required to due to their relationship with the government, meaning the entities can give riskier loans.

The Biden administration also issued a rule in 2023 seeking to prevent “racial bias” in home valuations, arguing that societal prejudice was effectively leading minorities’ properties to be valued less than their white counterparts. As a result, the price of some homes owned by minorities might be being boosted, with the left-leaning Brookings Institute findingthat the vast majority of homes in majority-black neighborhoods are already appraised at or above their contract price.

Since 2008, the Federal Reserve has also been buying mortgage-backed securities from government housing finance institutions, totaling over $2.3 trillion as of June 5, providing extra liquidity sponsored by the government to the industry.

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae were bailed out and placed in a conservatorship under the federal government after the 2008 financial crisis, where they played a key role in funding the housing bubble by buying up risky loans. As the risky loans began to inevitably default, the institutions took huge losses on the valuation of their assets, triggering the collapse of the housing market.

Full-Time Jobs Vanish While Americans Race To Take Up Part-Time Work

great piece from @willkessler12 https://t.co/0D9nn9DfHM via @dailycaller

— Rob (@RobMcGravytrain) June 7, 2024

Pinto argues that while there is less tension in the housing system compared to 2008, an increase in the unemployment rate to around 6% from its current rate of 4% would leave enough Americans without a way to pay their debts that it could trigger a wave of defaults due to the increased number of risky loans. Stress in the system could be building in part due to the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) increasing the time frame in 2023 that mortgage holders can modify their payments, kicking the issue down the road.

“You can only do that so many times before you run out of the ability to do that and you spread that cost over everybody that has a mortgage so that those with good credits are paying for the risk of the poor credits, and what the federal government is doing through FHA, Fannie and Freddie is basically trying to eliminate risk,” Pinto told the DCNF. “You can’t have the housing finance system without foreclosure. Get the federal government through these forbearance programs, which are, in effect, eliminating the ability to foreclose.”

The cost of homes has increased rapidly under Biden amid high inflation, reaching an all-time high in March and rising 6.5% in just the last year. The average 30-year mortgage rate is also currently around 7% as of June 6, rising from under 3% when Biden first took office.

“The most dangerous FHFA proposal is a rule that would enshrine a ‘tenants’ bill of rights’ capping rents as a share of household income, providing free legal representation to tenants, and more, on any property financed by a Fannie or Freddie-backed mortgage,” Sorens told the DCNF. “This rule has not been finalized yet. If it were to go into effect, it would impose nationwide rent control on a large percentage of the multifamily market, which research has overwhelmingly shown will shrink the supply of rental housing and drive up rents for most tenants.”

The Biden administration has so far not announced concrete plans to cap rents, despite reports from the media citing unnamed administration officials in March saying that a plan to prohibit hikes of more than 10% a year on certain government-subsidized units was set to be released. The FHFA was charged at the behest of the Biden administration in January 2023 to examine putting “protections and limits on egregious rent increases for future investments.”

“It will also have the perverse consequence of driving business away from Fannie and Freddie and driving down the value of existing properties with government-insured mortgages,” Sorens told the DCNF. “As a result, the government mortgage guarantors could lose a lot of money. One major New York mortgage lender (NYCB) has already suffered credit downgrades and an investor bailout as a result of the tightening of rent control there.”

The White House did not respond to a request to comment from the DCNF.

Featured Image Credit: DHS photo by Tia Dufour

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U.S. annual economic growth measured just 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024, following a report of persistently high inflation in March of 3.5% year-over-year. The combination of both low growth and high inflation, in conjunction with continuously high amounts of government spending and debt, has led to signs of stagflation in the U.S. economy, which wreaked havoc on U.S. consumers throughout the 1970’s, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

“It’s not so much that we risk stagflation as we’re already there,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “We have basically pulled forward trillions of dollars of economic growth by borrowing from the future, but that must be repaid at some point. And it is highly inefficient as well.”

Stagflation is a unique economic phenomenon that involves slow growth, high unemployment, and elevated inflation and is particularly difficult to address as solutions for one issue can exacerbate the others, according to Investopedia. The most notable example of stagflation occurred in the 1970’s, after an oil crisis.

The U.S. national debt climbed above $34 trillion for the first time at the start of 2024 and currently sits at nearly $34.6 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. The national debt has increased by around $6.8 billion since President Joe Biden first took office in January 2021.

“Stagflation is the inevitable result of Bidenomics,” Michael Faulkender, chief economist at the America First Policy Institute, told the DCNF. “When you massively increase spending, whether green subsidies or student loan forgiveness, while simultaneously reducing the ability of the economy to produce because of all the regulatory restrictions being imposed, you get reductions in growth with higher prices. If Bidenomics continues, then we should expect stagflation to continue.”

Biden has made high-spending policies part of his broader agenda, signing the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March 2021 and the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November 2021. The president also signed the Inflation Reduction Act in August 2022, which authorized $750 billion in new spending, with $370 billion of that dedicated to green initiatives to combat climate change.

The Biden administration’s latest plan to forgive student loans would cost an estimated $559 billion over the next ten years through various loan cancellations and interest suspensions. The president had one of his previous, more costly plans to forgive student loans struck down by the Supreme Court in June 2023.

Jai Kedia, a research fellow in the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives at the Cato Institute, cautioned the DCNF about assuming the U.S. was suffering from stagflation, noting that the phenomenon is usually accompanied by major supply shocks.

QT continues but there's a long way to go before we return to normalcy, and that likely won't happen w/ Powell & Co. chomping at the bit to cut rates and taper the balance sheet runoff – securities are only down 18.6% from their peak and total assets down just 17.4%: pic.twitter.com/PV48bGZozW

— E.J. Antoni, Ph.D. (@RealEJAntoni) April 25, 2024

“The news on both fronts — inflation and output — is far from ideal, but there is no reason to think that we will get stagflation from just this one report,” Kedia told the DCNF. “When stagflation last occurred in the 1970s and early 1980s, the U.S. economy had significantly different characteristics. That era was marked by severe wage inflation and strong wage contracting at unsustainably high levels, driven primarily by labor union bargaining. Businesses passed those labor costs on to consumers, and since those wage increases weren’t the result of any productivity gains, the result was inflation with little economic growth. That unique situation is (hopefully) unlikely to occur again.”

Despite recent low growth figures, gross domestic product surged in the third and fourth quarters of 2023 to 3.4% and 4.9%, respectively. Economic growth projections in those quarters included huge gains from government spending.

“Today’s report shows the American economy remains strong, with continued steady and stable growth,” the White House said in a statement following Thursday’s GDP report. “The economy has grown more since I took office than at this point in any presidential term in the last 25 years — including 3% growth over the last year — while unemployment has stayed below 4% for more than two years. But we have more work to do. Costs are too high for working families, and I am fighting to lower them.”

Top-line job growth has remained high as well, with the U.S. most recently adding a total of 303,000 nonfarm payroll positions in March with an unemployment rate of 3.9% after adding 275,000 in February. Despite persistent growth, gains have been dominated by part-time jobs and employment from the government.

“In general, high inflation and low output occur as a result of severe supply shocks,” Kedia told the DCNF. “The Fed does not have much control over such shocks, and it’s usually best to avoid making drastic monetary policy decisions on the basis of such shocks. It’s too early to tell if such a shock has occurred over the past month, so it is unclear whether output has gone down due to supply constraints, or whether the increased borrowing costs have finally cut down on people’s consumption, or whether this was a noisy data observation.”

In an effort to reduce the rate of inflation, the Federal Reserve has already raised its federal funds rate to a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest in 23 years, with the last hike being in July 2023. At the Federal Open Market Committee’s (FOMC) most recent meeting in March, the majority of Fed governors kept their estimate from December that there would be three rate cuts by the end of 2024.

“There is absolutely no reason for the Fed to cut rates this year besides the obvious political motivation,” Antoni told the DCNF. “Recall that during the first three years of the Trump presidency, the Fed was raising rates and selling off the balance sheet, also called ‘quantitative tightening.’ The reasoning for tighter monetary policy was fast labor market growth and inflation fears. Today, those indicators look even worse according to the Fed’s own thinking: job growth has been much faster according to official government metrics, and inflation remains far in excess of the 2.0% target, with inflation expectations completely unanchored. They should be talking about raising rates, not cutting them.”

A majority of investors now predict that there won’t be a rate cut until the FOMC’s September meeting as inflation remains persistent, according to CME Group’s FedWatch Tool.

Business leaders are cautious about the current state of the economy, with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon saying on Friday that he is hopeful that the U.S. can bring down inflation and maintain growth, but he is worried about the possibility of stagflation, according to The Associated Press.

“Sadly, the indicators point to stagflation for quite some time because the excessive government spending that caused this problem isn’t letting up,” Antoni told the DCNF.

The White House deferred the DCNF to previous statements.

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Dimon emphasized the usefulness of LNG as a form of affordable energy for the U.S. and its allies, with the project pause increasing dependence on oil and coal and harming economic and geopolitical advantages, according to the statement. He also issued a warning for the economy that the current high rate of inflation could stick around for longer than expected, which would also mean that the Federal Reserve’s federal funds rate could remain elevated to suppress inflation amid high levels of government spending.

“Trade is realpolitik, and the recent cancellation of future liquified natural gas (LNG) projects is a good example of this fact,” Dimon said in the statement. “The projects were delayed mainly for political reasons — to pacify those who believe that gas is bad and that oil and gas projects should simply be stopped. This is not only wrong but also enormously naïve. One of the best ways to reduce CO2 for the next few decades is to use gas to replace coal. When oil and gas prices skyrocketed last winter, nations around the world — wealthy and very climate-conscious nations like France, Germany and the Netherlands, as well as lower-income nations like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam that could not afford the higher cost — started to turn back to their coal plants.”

He also pointed out key global events that he believes threaten the U.S. economy and require Americans’ attention.

“It is important to note that the economy is being fueled by large amounts of government deficit spending and past stimulus,” Dimon said in the statement. “There is also a growing need for increased spending as we continue transitioning to a greener economy, restructuring global supply chains, boosting military expenditure and battling rising healthcare costs. This may lead to stickier inflation and higher rates than markets expect.”

The national debt is currently nearly $34.6 trillion as of April 4, according to the Treasury Department. In February, the federal government spent more than double what it took in, adding $296 billion to the national debt.

Prices have risen 18.5% since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, most recently rising 3.2% year-over-year, far higher than the Fed’s target of 2%. In response, the federal funds rate had been placed in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, the highest level in 23 years.

JPMorgan reported record profits in 2023 despite a crisis that rocked many medium and small banks, which was started by a bank run at Silicon Valley Bank. Following the collapse of First Republic Bank, JPMorgan purchased the bank’s assets.

JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon weighs in on the LNG pause in his Annual Shareholder letter

“The projects were delayed mainly for political reasons — to pacify those who believe that gas is bad and that oil and
gas projects should simply be stopped. This is not only wrong but also… pic.twitter.com/d3rLd9NbjA

— Shaylyn Hynes (@ShayHynes) April 8, 2024

“There are downside risks to watch,” Dimon said in the statement. “Quantitative tightening is draining more than $900 billion in liquidity from the system annually — and we have never truly experienced the full effect of quantitative tightening on this scale. Plus the ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East continue to have the potential to disrupt energy and food markets, migration, and military and economic relationships, in addition to their dreadful human cost. These significant and somewhat unprecedented forces cause us to remain cautious.”

JPMorgan declined to comment further to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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The Baltimore Bridge was struck by a container ship navigating the Patapsco River out of the Port of Baltimore in late March, sending several cars and workers into the water and rendering the passageway unusable. It is unknown exactly how long the bridge could take to rebuild, as officials could expedite the process, but experts warned the DCNF that government red tape, such as environmental reviews filed by government entities or environmental activists, could slow down its construction after debris is cleared from the site and new plans for a replacement bridge are drawn up. +

“If the bridge gets special regulatory treatment, then five years is a reasonable timeline,” Ryan Young, senior economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “There is some hope for this, based on last year’s collapse of a stretch of I-95 near Philadelphia. It reopened in 12 days, mostly thanks to red tape being waived. It would have taken months otherwise. Of course, that was a much smaller project.”

Following the disaster, the Biden administration announced that it would be sending $60 million to the city of Baltimore to assist in the clean-up and rebuilding, far from the sum needed to rebuild the project fully. President Joe Biden has also pledged to completely cover the cost of reconstructing the bridge, pending Congressional approval, according to Reuters.

An official cost of a new bridge has yet to be announced, but some estimates are around $500 million up to $1 billion, depending on the size and design of the project, according to the AP. The original bridge cost just $60.3 million to build, according to CNN.

“The Key Bridge recovery can take multiple paths, but the two we need to be keeping an eye on are first, where is the red tape around environmental historical preservation bogging down the efforts to help this community recover, and second, what coordination is occurring at the federal level to effect a more resilient recovery for the community, who’s looking at what the vision is, long term,” Brian Cavanaugh, visiting fellow in the Border Security and Immigration Center at the Heritage Foundation, told the DCNF.

A similar bridge disaster occurred in 1980, when a freighter struck the Sunshine Skyway in Tampa Bay, Florida, according to The Associated Press. Construction on a new bridge finished 7 years later, in 1987, 19 months later than it was originally projected to be complete and $20 million over budget.

“Federal and state regulations, including in Maryland, give NIMBYs and environmentalists a lot of ways to block projects,” Young told the DCNF. “Hopefully the Key Bridge’s high visibility will help them restrain their worst anti-development impulses, but that is no guarantee.”

Many large infrastructure projects are often bogged down by environmental reviews, such as California’s high-speed rail project, which has spent more than $600 million on environmental reviews since it was approved by voters more than 15 years ago.

“My fear here is that people can generate environmental reviews that they flag concerns for, say the oyster population or if there’s a bird that breeds in the Patapsco River or water quality,” Cavanaugh told the DCNF. “All these things could easily be triggered through a federal review process and would drag on. Those reviews are not always efficient. The efficacy of those is to be determined by others, but they’re certainly not expedited.”

The Biden administration has expanded the national environmental review framework, rolling back changes that the Trump administration made to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to review the environmental impacts of projects before approval. If the federal government remains involved in the project, environmental reviews may bog down the process, as the average NEPA environmental impact statement between 2010 and 2018 took 4.5 years to complete, halting construction completely, according to the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality.

“The rebuilding cost will almost certainly be higher than the original bridge, for several reasons, though I have no idea by how much,” Young told the DCNF. “A good rule of thumb is Edwards’ law—costs are usually at least double what officials first propose.”

Some analysts say that after cleaning up the site, creating new plans and building the bridge, the whole process could take up to a decade, according to WYPR, an outlet local to Baltimore. It took six years to build the Transcontinental Railroad.

“I fear that the cost of regulations is going to be more impactful than people are giving it credit for,” Cavanaugh told the DCNF. “Depending on what design they go with, like what birds fly in the area or what fish are in the Patapsco River, the cost of studying that and mitigating the negative impacts would be a problem. The mitigation measures to make the bridge more resilient and safe are going to be an added cost. But that’s an added cost not captured by inflation for any bridge built today.”

The Maryland Governor’s Office deferred the DCNF to statements made in previous press conferences. The White House did not immediately respond to a request to comment.

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Around 3.6% of 401(k) participants at investment manager Vanguard Group pulled money from their account, compared to 2.8% in 2022 and above the pre-COVID-19 pandemic average of about 2%, according to data from the company given to the WSJ. Americans have been increasingly stressed by high inflation, which has increased prices by 18% overall since President Joe Biden first took office in January 2021.

Of those who withdrew cash from their 401(k) for hardship purposes in 2023, nearly 40% did so to prevent foreclosure on their property, up from 36% in 2022, according to the WSJ. Around 75% of Americans who pulled out of their accounts for hardships pulled out $5,000 or less.

The average rate for a 30-year mortgage peaked at 7.9% in October 2023, the highest in 23 years, increasing housing unaffordability and putting more Americans at risk for foreclosure. Also in October, U.S. home prices climbed for a ninth month, resulting in the highest home prices in American history.

Americans can withdraw from their 401(k) accounts by claiming it is for hardship-related reasons, but they must pay income tax and often a penalty of around 10% if they are under the age of 59.5, according to the WSJ.

American account balances also grew in 2023, rising 19% over the course of the year, nearly counteracting losses of 20% in 2022 when markets declined, according to the WSJ. Less than half of 401(k) participants were able to save more in 2023 than they did in 2022.

Inflation continues to remain elevated, rising 3.1% year-over-year in February, far higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% target but down from the peak under Biden of 9.1% seen in June 2022. In response to high inflation, the Fed has placed its federal funds rate in a range of 5.25% and 5.50%, putting upward pressure on all interest rates, including mortgages.

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Birth rates have steadily declined for a number of years in the U.S. and currently total around 12 births per 1,000 people, which is lower than the 14.2 birth average seen in 2000 and far lower than 24.3 in 1950, according to Macrotrends. The decline in birth rates poses major issues for long-standing economic and government institutions that depend on larger labor forces, but the worst of the effects could be avoided if proper policy actions, like addressing runaway government spending and entitlement programs and investing in measures that improve productivity, are taken, experts told the DCNF.

“Declining birth rates are a major problem for America. Our greatest economic resource is not land, or water, or energy, but people,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “Fewer births mean less economic growth, all else being equal. Additionally, we face another problem in many of our entitlement programs, which have been set up like Ponzi schemes, such as Social Security. These programs require a much higher birth rate than we currently have in order to prolong their solvency. We are already seeing this effect, with major entitlements moving toward insolvency faster than previously anticipated because the birth rate has been so low.”

Both the federal and state governments are facing huge debts and unfunded liabilities in terms of entitlement spending like Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and pensions. Working-age populations have increasingly been unable to provide the necessary funding for these programs as the number of older Americans grows, resulting in more than $90 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

There is a strong correlation between higher incomes and lower birth rates, with countries where gross domestic product per capita is below $1,000 per year usually seeing women give birth to more than three children, while women in countries with $10,000 per year tend to have no more than two children, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED). Economists speculate about a number of different reasons why this relationship exists, such as the cost of educating children in richer countries, higher infant mortality and people in poorer countries more commonly having to take care of their parents as they age.

“It is possible for a shrinking, aging society to maintain and increase prosperity, but that isn’t going to happen automatically,” Nicholas Eberstadt, Henry Wendt chair in political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF. “We’ve got reasons to be cautiously confident, since there are constantly improving technological possibilities, since in general, we kind of hope that health is going to be improving. And since, in general, we think that education is going to be improving. All of those things can lay the foundation for more productive, wealthier Americans, even if the headcount is shrinking.”

Demographically, Japan is done pic.twitter.com/HN70JndcKn

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) February 28, 2024

Investors have been increasingly optimistic that technology related to artificial intelligence (AI) will be able to generate huge increases in productivity, with semiconductor companies leading the charge on AI, like Nvidia, seeing massive gains in stock prices in the last few years.

“What does not work so well is when you have some of the things we see today, with health stagnation, with troubles in education, with a completely feckless inattention to budget discipline in our public finances,” Eberstadt told the DCNF. “Those are not the sorts of things that are going to help lay the foundations for an increasingly prosperous country.”

Government debt has continued to grow at a fast pace under the past few administrations, currently totaling nearly $34.4 trillion, according to the Treasury Department. The U.S. added over $800 billion to the national debt in just the fourth quarter of 2023 and spent $659 billion on debt payments in the fiscal year.

“If this continues, the symptoms here in America will grow to the same magnitude as in Japan, China, Korea, and others,” Antoni told the DCNF. “Legal immigration has helped alleviate the problems of America’s low birth rate, but illegal aliens are actually exacerbating the problem. Not only are the latter less likely to pay taxes than legal immigrants, but they’re also eligible for government handouts in several more liberal states. Thus, they simultaneously generate less revenue while adding to outlays.”

The employment level of foreign-born workers in the U.S. has climbed from 27,697,000 in February 2020 to 29,842,000 in 2024, while the level of native-born workers has declined from 130,320,000 to 129,807,000 in that same time frame, according to FRED. In the 2023 fiscal year, Customs and Border Protection saw more than two million encounters at the southern border.

Japan has long experienced issues of an aging population and declining birth rates, with the number of births reaching an all-time low in 2023 and current trends indicating that the country’s population could shrink 30% by 2070, according to Independent. The country has experienced widespread economic trouble since the 1990’s, with some referring to 1991–2011 as the Lost Decades, according to Investopedia.

“Over the long term, a shrinking labor force is going to put a constraint on US economic performance,” Eberstadt told the DCNF. “How much of a constraint it puts on US economic performance is going to depend upon a lot of other things we do politically, like how we schedule and structure our entitlements, the sorts of incentives and the sorts of arrangements we make for our national health care incentives.”

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(DCNF)—American technology company Nvidia has shot up in value over the last several years following speculation about the potential economic impact of new computing technology that some investors believe could increase productivity substantially.

Nvidia posted huge year-end quarterly profits Tuesday evening, up 265% from a year prior as the company continues to grow at breakneck speeds, according to the company’s fourth quarter results. The fourth quarter gain beat expectations and led to a $277 billion stock rally on Wednesday, up 16.3% in just the day, making it the largest single-day increase in the New York Stock Exchange’s history, according to Reuters.

Investor hype around Nvidia is due to its stake in the semiconductor market, where it commands a vast majority of market share in artificial intelligence (AI) related technologies, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Many investors predict that AI and greater computing efficiency will be a boon to businesses, which could greatly increase productivity using the technology for a wide array of applications.

“Nvidia has already made strides in increased efficiency, which is a tremendous advantage in this regard due to the sheer volume of calculations that must be performed to make a technology like AI possible,” E.J. Antoni, a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Grover M. Hermann Center for the Federal Budget, told the DCNF. “With the ability to position data centers virtually anywhere, size is not really a major issue anymore for chips, but efficiency is due to increased energy prices and environmental regulations. Being on the cutting edge of chip technology puts a firm in a position to truly command the market.”

Nvidia was first founded in 1993, introducing products related to 3D graphics, particularly for gaming and multimedia creation, and later invented the graphics processing unit in 1999, taking a big step for computing power, according to the company’s website. The company also claims to have sparked the era of modern AI in 2012, way ahead of trends around the technology, giving it a commanding lead on other technology companies that are now looking to catch up and expand into AI.

“Nvidia controls most (about four-fifths) of the chip market for AI-related technologies,” Antoni told the DCNF. “The explosion of demand around AI has boosted chip demand too, leading to growth forecasts for Nvidia that were completely off the table just a couple years ago. Like all stock prices, no one can say for sure if Nvidia’s current popularity is warranted because stock prices are speculation on future earnings, and the future is by definition uncertain. This is particularly true for AI, where so much of the potential is unknown.”

Nvidia’s stock price has exploded over the past few years, measuring less than $40 a share at the start of 2019, peaking at over $310 a share in November 2021, before sliding to around $127 a share in October 2022, ultimately climbing all the way to around $800 a share in February 2024, according to MarketWatch.

Nvidia breaks stock market record with a $247 billion one-day market cap surge, as reported by Bloomberg.

Renowned for AI & fast computing, #Nvidia hits a major financial milestone with its staggering revenue.

Stock up nearly 280% in the past year!#AI #Crypto #Stocks pic.twitter.com/Qv9aQ3LP14

— Christiaan (@ChristiaanDefi) February 23, 2024

“The fact that the demand for these products is growing indicates to me that our society, these companies, educational organizations, all the different users of AI believe that there is great value here that can improve our lives,” David Inserra, a fellow for free expression and technology at the Cato Institute, told the DCNF. “I can’t predict that it will certainly be that way. But every indicator that we have indicates that the market is saying there’s great value here. I think that we’d be foolish to ignore that important market indicator.”

Generative AI powered by the type of technology Nvidia is leading the way on is already finding several applications in business despite being in its infancy, including in customer service, cybersecurity, personal assistants, inventory management, accounting and more, according to Forbes. The U.S. is also looking to use semiconductor technology and AI in military applications and is trying to prevent China’s access to the equipment to maintain a technological and militaristic edge.

American companies controlled around 48% of the market share in the semiconductor market in 2022, compared to 7% in China, according to Statista. South Korea controlled the second-largest market share with 19%, followed by Japan and the European Union at 9%.

The Biden administration has placed a number of restrictions on the semiconductor industry to ensure continued American supremacy, including putting sanctions on several Chinese chip manufacturers in October 2022 to prevent them from working with American firms. Congress has also approved $39 billion in direct funding for chip manufacturers as part of the August 2022 Chip and Science Act.

The rollout of the funds has so far failed to bring a substantial number of chip manufacturing plants into operation, with several companies pushing back new plant completion dates to 2025 or later due to volatility in chip prices and government funding uncertainty.

The growth of generative AI powered by new chips has also led to concerns that the technology is being given a liberal skew, such as Google’s AI chatbot Gemini taking a nuanced position on the terrorist organization Hamas’ stance on the violent eradication of Israel and whether China is committing genocide against the Uyghur people.

Nvidia is part of what has been dubbed the Magnificent Seven Stocks, which are stocks that have delivered a large portion of stock growth in the past few years, according to Yahoo Finance. Tesla, an electric vehicle (EV) company, has had a similar meteoric rise starting slightly earlier but has since remained relatively stagnant in 2024 as other competitors in the EV field emerge, raising concerns that Nvidia might not live up to expectations.

“This is always the market dynamic, right? If someone comes along and delivers a more desirable product, well then yeah, sure,” Inserra told the DCNF about the potential for Nvidia to lose its current investor hype. “Right now we’re talking a lot about AI, but what if a new kind of AI, a better type or even more advanced, better type of technology emerges and uses different kinds of computing power? We don’t know what the future of innovation could bring. So to that extent, yeah, it’s possible that Nvidia isn’t going to be the golden child of this forever, but from what I’ve read, it seems like they have been forward-leaning and looking for ways to move into new spaces in the use of their processors for AI, and so right now they have that leg up.”

Nvidia declined to comment to the DCNF.

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Mines around the world are ceasing operations or halting construction projects in response to the falling demand, such as a $1.3 billion plant in North Carolina operated by Albemarle. which announced that it was deferring spending on the project amid the market turmoil, according to the WSJ The total market share of EVs rose from 3.1% in January 2023 to 3.6% in December 2023, while the share of U.S. vehicle inventory grew from 2.8% to 5.7% in that same time frame as demand fails to keep up with supply.

Over the last few years, global mineral producers have ramped up mining operations in an attempt to capitalize on the emerging EV market, but consumers have declined to adopt EVs at the rate producers were expecting, leading to rare minerals flooding the market and driving down prices, according to the WSJ. The market for metals is often subject to boom-and-bust cycles due to unpredictable demand and the slow speed at which mines can be brought into operation.

The price of lithium is down around 90% since the beginning of last year, and the price of nickel has been cut in half in that same time frame, according to the WSJ. A mine on the French Pacific island of New Caledonia recently suspended operations, despite providing more than 6% of the world’s nickel supply.

A scramble to secure strategic minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel could increase price pressures and raise the cost of the climate transition, IMF economists write in the latest issue of F&D. https://t.co/X72oppqbAe pic.twitter.com/hoqLoenEdb

— IMF (@IMFNews) February 17, 2024

The decline in mineral demand is particularly dire to the Australian mining industry and economy in general, with the country’s government recently designating nickel as a critical mineral to give corporations access to government grants in order to provide some stimulus to struggling companies, according to the WSJ. The collapse of mineral prices has led to a loss of more than one-fifth of Australia’s mine supply.

China controls around 87% of the world’s rare earth mineral refining capacity, leading the U.S. to attempt to subsidize projects outside of China to secure access to the resources. The Biden administration has included provisions in EV tax credits that require a certain percentage of minerals not to be from a foreign entity of concern like China to be eligible.

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Out of all voters who expect to caucus for Trump, around 42% said that they were “extremely enthusiastic,” while 39% said that they were “very enthusiastic,” compared to Haley, who came in at 9% and 30% in those same metrics, respectively, according to a poll conducted by Selzer & Co. Overall, those surveyed heavily favored the former president, with 48% of voters saying they would support Trump, followed by Haley at 20% and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis at 16%.

“[Haley’s] enthusiasm numbers, again, I just think are on the edge of jaw-dropping,” J. Ann Selzer of Slezer & Co. told the Des Moines Register. “That 61% are just mildly enthusiastic or not that enthusiastic — it just seems at odds with a candidate moving up.”

Nearly half of those who said that they would support Haley in the caucus were only “mildly enthusiastic,” according to the poll. DeSantis had a similar lack of enthusiasm, with only 23% of supporters being “extremely enthusiastic.”

Despite the Iowa caucus offering voters the chance to persuade other voters, around 68% of those surveyed said their minds were already made up, while only 25% said that they could still be persuaded, according to the poll. Around 7% of voters were undecided on their first choice.

Expected Trump voters were more likely to already have made up their minds, with 82% saying their support for the former president was locked in, according to the poll. Out of Haley and DeSantis supporters, 63% and 64% said they had made up their minds, respectively.

Of Iowa Republican caucusgoers, Trump is viewed favorably by 69% of them, followed by DeSantis at 58%, Vivek Ramaswamy at 52% and Haley at 48%, according to the poll. Despite expected harsh weather on the day of the event, 62% of DeSantis supporters said that they would “definitely” attend, while 56% and 51% of Trump and Haley supporters said the same, respectively.

Of Haley supporters, 39% identify as independents, while 11% identify as Democrats, meaning half of her measured support is not Republicans since the caucus is open to all Iowans, irrespective of party, according to the poll. Trump still leads overall with independents, with 37% of those surveyed planning to caucus for the former president, followed by Haley at 33% and DeSantis at 14%.

The poll surveyed 705 likely Republican caucusgoers from Jan. 7-12 and had a margin of error of ±3.7.

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