Which is why, if you are a citizen and a budget hawk like me, you have to

If you go back in time a million seconds, that's May 25, 2025. Go back a billion

seconds, that's the year 1993.

Go back a trillion seconds, that's the year 29,685 BC.

I saw an interview with Ron Paul where he made that comment. Really puts the federal debt into perspective. The US federal debt is currently at $36.22 trillion.

That's why I align with Elon Musk's thinking on this stuff. There is no two ways about it, we have to balance the budget AND start chipping away at our debt. This is unsustainable, and government cannot be trusted.

More money for our defense? The defense budget that's already more than three times the next biggest spender and more than the next biggest military budgets combined? For a country with allies to our north and south and oceans to our east and west? For a country that's $36.22 trillion in debt? Madness.

More money for border control? BILLIONS more? Have we not already done significant improvements to border security? Madness.

Any politician who dares to cut anything, no matter what it is, will be

Which is why, if you are a citizen and a budget hawk like me, you have to

I reach out. To be completely candid, I've reached out to my two Senators.

Tiggity®

Ultimate Clemson Legend [109125]

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Joined: 2002

Most money isn't real. Most, in the US, is simply quantified demand.

Jun 6, 2025, 11:30 AM

As such, it can never become real.

Zillow says your house is "worth" $1 million. It isn't worth a single penny until someone buys it. Then, whatever that value is, becomes real, until it appreciates some more. Or depreciates.

Stocks? Not real. Not dollars. They're shares. With a market, and a demand. Elon Musk doesn't lose $150 billion when his stock tanks, he loses $150 billion worth of DEMAND for the stock. His net worth is never real until it is made real. The reason we have such high wealth "inequality" is because most Americans exchange labor for dollars, but acquire relatively few. Others, their dollars reside in mostly assets that are valued by quantified demand. So they don't have those DOLLARS, they have that asset valued at that DEMAND, given in dollars, and subject to the market demand for it.

Now I can sell all my shares of whatever, and get cold, hard cash (and pay capital gains). BUT, Elon Musk does NOT have that luxury. I mean he can sell all his shares, and get pennies on the dollar for them. He WILL NEVER GET the full share market value for his stock holdings if he sells them all. The demand would TANK, the market would be flooded with Tesla stock, and no one would want to buy it because Musk is selling it all. And this is the rub with stocks. Large companies, their stock values are carefully controlled. Institutional investors hold large swaths of stocks in many companies, think BlackRock/Citadel/etc. By controlling the stocks they have and hold, and other investors, they can shrink the universe of stocks available for sale simply by sitting on their own. This means less stock for sale, so demand can be maximized and the value stays high or climbs.

Take a huge company, say Tesla. Maybe a dozen or so huge investors own maybe 60% of the stock. Another dozen less huge institutional investors hold maybe 20% more. They are content to sit on those assets and use them as collateral for debt. That leaves 20% of the total NUMBER OF STOCKS available, at any given time, to be sold. Company buybacks do the same thing, shrink the universe of stocks available for sale to boost share prices. So the market, the "quantified demand" for Tesla stock, is based on ONLY 20% of the company's stock that's even on the market TO BE SOLD. Meanwhile, those sitting on the rest of the stock, the institutional investors, NONE of whom want to sell, they benefit from this because that QUANTIFIED demand for the 20% they don't own, transfers (somehow) to the value of their stock. And this isn't true. It's an illusion. And as this process all takes place, you start to see how crashes happen. When the large investors bolt, they are anxious to sell the highest demand.

If too many (or few depending on your perspective) institutional investors gobble up the stock, and the excess (available) market of stocks for sale becomes too small, causing prices to get prohibitively high for smaller investors, they do a stock split, to double the universe of available stock again. This maximizes the rate of increase that can be achieved, given the holdings of the larger investors. It increases the universe of stocks so that excess available stock can grow at a higher rate again as it means more shares, that become more affordable. But even as this lowers the value, that split also doubles the number of stocks the prior institutional investors held, meaning they lose nothing on the lower stock price after the split, and keep increasing asset values.

Money is real ONLY at the point of exchange. Purchase or sale.