2024 has been, thus far, a good year for investors if focused on the right stocks, right markets, right assets.

Stocks on the NASDAQ, S&P 500, and Japan's NIKKEI 225 have been top performers as the midway point of the year approaches. This article identifies the leading investments this year and some losers and hopes to offer some insight on what to buy, sell, or hold for the remaining six months of 2024.

The following list shows year-to-date (YTD) performance through June 14, 2024.

Disclaimer: This is not financial advice and idleguy.com, Downtown Magazine Inc., and Fearless Rick are not financial advisors. All investors should do their own due diligence.

Our last two Presidents borrowed about $16 Trillion so far.

If deficit spending continues at the current rate, then by the Inauguration there should be about $2 Trillion more in debt.

It means the past two Presidents will have borrowed as much as everyone before them combined.
It is foolish to continue to pretend that we have a currency beyond credit. We don't. We haven't had one since 1933.

It means debt cannot be retired. Instead it is only possible to delay debts' maturity date through refinancing, at the cost of time and a larger interest expense.

It is important to acknowledge this, rather than pretend that we have credit riding atop a monetary system, as existed before the Fed, in order to understand that the trajectory of borrowing is not optional while we retain a debt-backed monetary system.

Simply, before debt matures additional borrowing is necessary in order to retire the old debt, plus a sum to be the new circulating currency. Doing this means that by the fundamental nature of the monetary system we borrow at interest to repay interest, creating a compound, logarithmic, rate of debt increase that is both baked into the monetary cake and REQUIRES the rate of additional debt to eternally accelerate.

The only alternatives are to restructure, default, or to ride that logarithmic rate of debt growth until the monetary system is abandoned.

Doing nothing means that the rate of debt increase continues to accelerate. Eventually interest due will exceed the profit margin of all activities and then economic activity traded in dollars will stop.
Alternatively, they could raise rates to prevent the necessary logarithmic expansion of debt, in which case you will get debt contagion.

It is just math. Which outcome you like is optional. But getting one of the possible outcomes is not optional, hence there will be one. And the state of current debt implies that it will be soon.

If the Fed is the Treasury Lender of Last Resort, then it means the Treasury is the Fed's Borrower of Last Resort.

If you borrow $1,000 @5% for 10 years it creates $1,000 of principal debt, $653 of interest debt, and $1,000 of cash.

You can't pay off $1,653 of debt with the $1,000 of cash that the transaction creates. $1,000 cannot repay $1,653.

During the course of 10 years the borrower (government in this instance) will pay $653 into the banking system, and that money will be needed to secure larger, newer borrowing. t will not all be able to circulate.

This means that at the end of the loan period there will exist a principal debt of $1,000. There will be an entry at the bank for $653 interest paid. And there will remain only $347 of circulating currency with which to repay the $1,000 loan.

The velocity of the $347 can be anything whatsoever. But there is no way to make it repay the $1,000 principal debt. Barring additional borrowing, the debt will default.

Nor is it important that all $653 remain on the bank's balance sheet rather than circulating in the economy where the borrower can eventually earn it back. Some MUST remain in the aggregate balance sheets of the financial system or they will not have reserves for additional lending. And short by $.01 is just as bankrupt as short by $653.

It means that the ONLY ways to deal with a debt in a debt-based monetary system are to default on it, or to roll the old debt plus interest into a newer larger debt.

Rolling that debt into a newer larger debt, as the world has mostly chosen to do since before Napoleon, means that for the monetary system to continue to exist it must borrow at interest to repay at interest.

Doing this multiplies one rate by another, creating a logarithmic rate of PRE-PROGRAMMED debt increase that will continue until the system is reformed, defaults, or is abandoned altogether.

The US National Debt was about $12 Trillion in 2009.

By 2016 the debt was $19 Trillion, 50% larger in 7 years.

From 2016 until today, debt has grown by $15+ Trillion.

By the Inauguration it will have grown about $19 Trillion, or 100% growth in 8 years.

You can kid yourself to believe that the extraordinary events of the GFC and C19 caused the borrowing.
But the reality is that this rate of borrowing was always baked into the monetary cake. It had to be borrowed so that the older debts could be rolled over.

It will not take another 8 years for the debt to double again. And the next doubling after that will occur even faster.

That is the nature of logarithmic math. The debt will effectively be infinity within most of your lifetimes.

The establishment's only solution is CBDC, which they blame on a variety of technological factors. It is a lie. It is because the life of the current monetary system is nearly over, and their only offer to the world is Slavery or Death. That is what CBDCs are.

It is therefore incumbent on the rest of us to stop rearranging deck chairs and come up with a realistic alternate plan NOW.

- G. C. Johns