Here are the top 7 factors we believe MUST lead to the end of the global U.S. dollar standard – what we call THE END OF AMERICA

Stansberry Research published this in January (a section of their paid monthly newsletter) and said to forward this to anyone who might be interested:

1) The price of gold has gone up for 10 years in a row.

We can’t think of another market that’s ever risen for 10 consecutive years. This is a historical anomaly, and it means something has gone badly wrong with the world’s reserve currency (the U.S. dollar). Markets, if left to find their own equilibrium, will naturally fluctuate. Gold isn’t fluctuating. Its steady move up proves something strange is happening to our money.

2) Our government’s deficits are out of control.

The government’s annual deficits now routinely surpass $1 trillion. The first $1 trillion deficit came in 2008 – and the government explained it away as the consequence of the financial crisis. But we racked up another $1 trillion deficit in 2009 and yet another in 2010. We’ll have another in 2011 and so on. Our national debt has doubled since 2005. We’ve borrowed more money in the last five years than we had in the entire history of our government until then. This isn’t sustainable.

3) The government cannot increase tax revenues enough to cover our spending or repay our debts – ever.

Our annual deficits have become completely unlinked to taxes. Total federal income taxes and corporate taxes generate $1.1 trillion a year in revenue, and we still ran a $1.3 trillion federal deficit last year. So even if we increased tax revenues by 100%, we would still have fallen $200 million short. This is totally unsustainable.

4) Special interest groups – particularly government unions – are looting our Treasury.

Self-serving special interest groups have completely hijacked government spending. We now spend $200 billion a year on federal pensions. We’re spending another $450 billion on welfare. This spending, combined with our defense spending ($700 billion), exceeds total federal tax revenue and leaves nothing to pay the $200 billion in interest on our debt, nothing to pay for actual government services (like roads), and nothing to pay towards the inevitable Social Security/Medicare shortfall. Remember…most voters do not pay taxes. It’s politically impossible to reform this interest group-based spending. These people are robbing the Treasury. They will cause our currency and eventually our government itself to collapse.

5) We’re printing money just like the banana republics we used to mock.

To support the government’s runaway spending, the Federal Reserve is now continuously buying government debt. This process was commonly called “monetizing the debt” or, more simply, “printing money.” The Fed creates new money to buy government bonds. This kind of Ponzi financing destroyed every previous experiment with paper money. If printing money were truly good for an economy, Zimbabwe would be the world’s wealthiest country. Perhaps even more worrisome than the practice itself is the leadership of the Fed, which has alternately defended this practice and then denied using it. If the Fed continues this practice, it will eventually cause a global run on the dollar that will destroy the value of our currency overnight.

6) We can’t repay our debts. Total debt outstanding in the U.S. currently exceeds $55 trillion.

That’s $681,165 in debt per U.S. family. There is simply no way to repay (or even maintain) debt of this magnitude using the income of the average American family, which is slightly less than $50,000 per family. Interest alone on these debts (based on a 5% rate) would total $34,000 per family every year. Total debt in the U.S. economy is unsustainable and can’t be financed without printing vast new sums of money.

7) Shockingly, new debt issuance in the U.S. is soaring, with the lowest-quality debtors borrowing record amounts.

Despite all the evidence that the U.S. economy carries far too much debt, both public and private debt issuance soared to new record levels in 2010. Overall, more than $3 trillion in new corporate debt was issued last year – the second record year in a row. And junk-bond issuance set a new, vastly higher record. In 2010, 509 speculative-grade corporate borrowers sold $287 billion worth of new debt. That compares to the previous record (2009) of $167 billion. Our economy has become so warped by its debt load, it cannot function without ever-larger amounts of debt. Anyone looking at these numbers must realize this is not safe and will not last long.

Why No One Else Is Issuing These Warnings

You may read these facts and ask, “Where are the ratings agencies? Why does a small newsletter based in Baltimore, Maryland seem to have the jump on everyone in Washington and most of the people in New York? Why aren’t these facts in the newspaper? On the news at night? In magazines?”

The answer: Government spending now makes up more than 40% of our economy. No big business can afford to offend its best customer. And most also depend on the government for protection from competition, in the form of licenses or permits.

Stansberry Research

VIDEO: THE END OF AMERICA